My sister refinanced about 5 years ago to get away from BofA and they bought her new mortgage after a few months. She refinanced again last year and they bought that loan, too.
That’s kind of what I thought could happen, so thanks for the confirmation. Refinancing for this reason would only make sense if I could somehow research the practices the new lenders has regarding paper they are holding. I would have no idea how to do that, and I certainly can’t take their word for it. And besides, regardless of their common practices, they have a right to sell it and I’m reasonably sure I have no say in the matter.
Boyo Jim, I’m really sorry to hear about this. I know how tough things can be.
IANAL, and if I were a lawyer, you wouldn’t be my client, because I would only take paying clients (please take the attempted humor in that).
I would strongly recommend talking to an attorney, and I’d start out with Legal Services. There is a reason for the adage that a when a person is their own attorney is they have a fool for a client, and that is that people get emotionally invested and don’t see the legal strategies which will help them. The courts are going to be looking for specific things (which I don’t know, I’m not an attorney) and having legal advice will help.
The second point to echo what Dinsdale says. Figure out what your long and short term strategies are. Again, this is where legal advice will be helpful. My aunt walked away from a mortgage thinking that she would be free and clear but the bank came back to her for the balance between what she owed and what they were able to sell the house for.
Cat Whisperer posts from Alberta, Canada. We’ve not had a housing bubble up here, and our banks are financially sound and well-managed, so there are still things like early pay-off penalties.
Then my question becomes, you guys don’t have early pay-off penalties? I mean, we paid off our mortgage then took out another one; it wasn’t like we just paid it off and were done. The bank could have waived the penalties because we wanted to remain with them and continue giving them our interest payments, but they decided to be dicks instead and charge us a large penalty for paying off our mortgage before the five year term was up.
I don’t think they’re all that common. I know pre-payment penalties exist, but none of the mortgages we looked at had them. We just paid off a 15 year mortgage about 7-8 years early, and there was no penalty. The other 15 year mortgage we have on another property also has no pre-payment penalties associated with it. From what I know, there are some mortgages where you can shave off a bit of interest (like a quarter point) by agreeing to a prepayment penalty.
Here’s a Q&A real estate column from this year I could find about it:
IANAL, and I am not in your state. But that’s how it worked when our upstairs neighbor filed for bankruptcy while in foreclosure proceedings. The bankruptcy filing stopped the foreclosure until the bankruptcy was discharged. I second everyone else’s suggestions to talk to a lawyer familiar with foreclosure and bankruptcy law. For all I know, it’s possible to file a bankruptcy and then withdraw it if you resolve your other financial issues in the meantime - I honestly have no idea. The university law clinic sounds like a fabulous idea. They may or may not have the resources to take your case, but even if they don’t, I bet they have a referral list of reputable private attorneys. A consultation shouldn’t cost much, and at least you’d find out what your options are.
And some of the predatory and/or subprime loans are likelier to have them - nailing the people who can least afford them. They get the mortgage, their situation improves and they could refinance for a more reasonable rate… but they get slammed with a prepayment penalty.
That said: we’ve had something like 8 different mortgages and none of them have had prepayment penalties.
I have also heard that some car loans come with (or used to come with) prepayment penalties of a sort - they calculated the interest over the life of the loan, and if you paid it off early you still had to pay all the outstanding interest. This is quite rare these days, fortunately. See “Rule of 78s”.
Huh. Our mortgage allows us to (going from memory) repay an extra 15% of the original balance on each payment, and a lump sum payment of 15% of the original balance each year, but if we won the lottery and wanted to pay the whole thing off now, we would be hit with a penalty. From what I understand, the banks here calculate that they will be getting $XXX from you for this mortgage in interest, and if you can pay it off early, they will lose out on $XXX, so they need to get $X from you in lieu.
I am taking haf a day off from work Thursday and going to a “foreclosure clinc” sponsored by the UW Law school and staffed by law student volunteers (hopefully with real lawyer supervision). We’ll see what they can tell me about the next steps.
I also have an appointment to speak to a credit counselor this evening. I already have a plan to repay my creditors, but I want to find out if I’m getting offered good, bad or indifferent repayment terms/offers from the two credit card owners that I’m in debt to. I haven’t finalized any deal with either yet, so it’s conceivable that I might be able to get better deals than they’ve offered so far – I don’t really have any basis on which to judge the merits of the offers they’ve made.
Sounds good, Boyo!
I decided it was time for an update to this thread. Late week I completed my 6 month probationary employment period and I now have permanent status in the WI Civil Service. I have re-paid in full or made repayment arrangements with every one of my creditors …
… except CitiMortgage. With them I was the subject to a blizzard of letters and emails from different CitiMortgage representatives, some of them unsigned so I didn’t even know who to reply to. Within a couple of weeks I received instructions to begin repaying my mortgage, and later instructions telling me they would not accept any money from me unless I could pay the entire amount due at once (which unsurprisingly I cannot do). Everyone gave me different instructions and wanted me to provide different information. The last communication with them was when I sent an email on Oct 24 asking for clarification – exactly what information did I need to provide and to who? That was not answered.
In early December I received another set of court papers from CitiMortgage’s attorneys, and more from the court. A preliminary hearing was set for Jan 28. CitiMortgage asked for a summary judgement against me, based on the “fact” that I did not reply to the original complaint. Of course I had, and I could prove it, and my response was already on file with the court.
I was the first case on the docket that day, and the judge was running late, and I was sitting entirely alone in the court room except for a county cop who was there for security. So I started talking to him and asking some questions, and he turned out to be a very nice guy who had some reasonable advice, and told me not to worry about the legalities, the judge would understand that I wasn’t a lawyer and she would find the legalities, if any, in whatever it was I had to say.
And the start time rolled around and the judge appeared and the other lawyer literally phoned it in – appearing via speakerphone. I was tempted to ask if I could have phoned it in too (the wind chill that morning was nearly 30 below) but I decided not to play smartass with the judge.
It started pretty good for me. The other attorney had to begin by apologizing to the judge for his colleague’s misstatement on the affidavit to the court – yes, he acknowledged, I did reply to the complaint.
It stayed pretty good for me too. I was invited to stand up and explain my objection to a summary judgement. And the first words out of my mouth were, “Your honor, I don’t know if I have any legal grounds to object or not.” I then went on to explain that while I had made payment arrangements with every creditor EXCEPT CitiMortgage, with them I had run into a wall of bureaucracy, red tape and contradictory instructions about how to proceed.
The closest I got to being in trouble was when I specifically mentioned the instructions to begin repayment, and the judge asked my if I sent a payment. No, I hadn’t, I said, because a local lawyer had advised me that while the case was in court, if they accepted any money from me, for some legal reason it would be tantamount to them giving up their foreclosure case. The judge was not happy with that answer, saying that if I had an attorney advise that, the attorney should be with me in court explaining that advice.
But I got out of that trouble by explaining that I had replied to them by email, specifically asking about the repayment scheme, as I had received two sets of instructions within a few days, one talking about repayment and one not mentioning it. And in reply to that email, I received one saying that they could not accept any money from me unless it was the entire amount.
The most heartening thing of the whole process is that all three of us seemed in agreement that a financial settlement was preferential to handing over the property.
It was an interesting change of mood over time by the judge, and even by the other attorney. The judge started out with an attitude toward me like I was a poor dumb rube who simply wasn’t able to understand what I needed to do to save my home – which was not terribly far from the truth, and an attitude that was more to my benefit than against it, to tell the truth. And the attorney seemed to buy into it, saying stuff like, “We know this can be terribly confusing for people …” However, within a few minutes the judge seemed to have reversed her opinion – now her statements seemed to suggest that it was CitiMortgage, not me, who was confused.
She ordered me to provide documentation to the opposing attorney of my claim about the contradictory information I was receiving from CitiMortgage, and specifically about the instructions to pay and then not to pay. I actually had that stuff with me, and had he been in court I could have handed it to him, or produced it for the judge on the spot.
She instructed the attorney to provide me with specifics of who to talk to at CitiMortgage and what specific information I need to provide them. In thirty days there will be another proceeding of some sort to assess the progress of reaching a settlement.
I emailed the attorney scanned copies of my documentevidence on Thursday, asking if that was acceptable to him.
On Friday I got an emailed reply thanking me for my documents. On his part, he apparently looked up the phone number of the CitiMortgage “Loss Mitigation Department” and said call “them”, “they” will help me.
This really pissed me off, because as far as I’m concerned the judge ordered him to do significantly more than that. So I replied, “Just to be clear, is it your understanding that providing me with the CitiMortgage Loss Mitigation Department phone number represents full compliance with Judge Genovese’s instructions? Should I not expect any further communications from you except for those directly concerned with the legal proceedings of the foreclosure case?”
He wasn’t dumb enough to say “yes” flat out, but is answer of “You can contact me at my office, but understand I have no power to negotiate the terms of your settlement” said almost the same thing.
My final email on Friday, which he hasn’t answered yet, said “… Can you at least provide me with the name of a specific individual with whom I should be corresponding? Can you tell me that I can safely ignore communications from other people at Citimortage who give me conflicting instructions or want different information from the designated individual?”
This was my understanding of what the judge asked of him, though I might be reading a bit more to her instructions than were literally there.
But if I can’t even get the name of an individual to deal with from him, I’m thinking I should call the judge’s office back and complain that he’s not following the judge’s orders.
Anyone have thoughts on that?
I don’t think the judge’s office enforces their own orders. I’m not sure who does, but I think a strongly-worded letter is advised: “You are in violation of Judge X’s orders on Y date, which obligated you to do Z. Please rectify this immediately.”
I am not your lawyer.
Were I in your position, I would swear an affidavit exhibiting the correspondence between you, the lawyer and you and citimortgage, and each response, which I would file or hand up at the next mention.
This will demonstrate your attempts to comply with the order.
tl;dr
First and FOREMOST:
ALWAYS FILE A RESPONSE
The Court House will have stacks of the various forms and, if not busy, a Clerk just may tell you the form number.
Just respond, stating you now have income and hope to find a satisfactory agreement, but for now, you will need additional time to locate an attorney.
NEVER lets a plaintiff get a Default Judgement - it costs filing costs (find the form to file for a movement to grant relief from filing fees - it means you don’t have to pay normal filing fees because you are broke).
SPEED!
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE - sometimes, it reallly is, and this is one of those times.
Had you read anything you might understand how completely irrelevant your post is.
I’m glad you’re back on the road to success. Perhaps it is time to write to the president of the bank personally? Perhaps you could add that if the bank does not wish to comply with the court order then you will ask the court to cancel the debt?
It is not a bank. It’s CitiMortgage – the million pound gorilla of mortgage service agencies. Their attorney might or might not be in violation of the judge’s instructions, and while the judge might sanction the lawyer, I’m extremely doubtful that would affect the status of the loan. A local lawyer has already assured my that judge can’t order CitiMortgage to settle with me – only encourage it. They are on solid legal grounds in getting a foreclosure, though a settlement makes more economic sense.
And another update. I called Citi Monday noonish, and was told my account was closed, and I would have tp give them a bunch of information I’d already given them to reopen the account. Since I was calling from work, I told them I would call back after work.
When I called back after work, I was told that my account was “locked”, and it would take 48 hours to “unlock” it, and they couldn’t take any information from me until it is unlocked.
I’m feeling deja vu all over again.
I will call them again after work today. If I get another conflicting story, I will call the judge’s clerk and see if I have any options. I may end up losing the place through their sheer incompetence at arranging settlements, even though they claim they want one.
See post #54.