Dear Ken,

I have been following your article and followed your advice to call and negotiate with the lenders myself. I own two properties one is of a rental and another one that I live in. After hours and hours of waiting and being transferred a gazillion times, I finally got the approval from my lender Countrywide to reduce my interest rates to a payment that I am very satisfied with. My advice to your readers is that be patient and persistent. Be very organized, and they can do it themselves too, I have friends paying thousands of dollars to loan modification companies but am not getting any results. So I am happy that I have successfully modified my own loan. Your comments about loan balance reduction is true, none of the lenders is willing to reduce my balance, so I gave up that hope.