While trying to help some friends with foreclosure issues on May 3 2011 my wife and I received a letter from Merrill Lynch which included a Notice of Intent to Foreclose. They claimed that we had not made a payment for six months but this was the first that we had heard from them so you can imagine our surprise. When I contacted PHH who is the servicer for Merrill I was told our payments were being held because we asked a about a refinance to lower our interest rate. Even though we have a perfect payment record and our payments are made electronically we were denied. The denial letter came in Dec. 2010 which is exactly when we were denied. If we did not have electronic proof that our payments were made who knows what could have happened. After raising hell with both PHH and Fannie Mae who is the investor of our mortgage the payments have now been properly applied. The issue now is the repair of the credit score which reflects six missed payments. Using what I have learned about foreclosure fraud during my research to help friends and now my own personal experience I am even more determined to take down the parties responsible for this mess. Here is a story that ran in our local paper last week. Daytona News Journal.
Housing crash diminishes couple's financial options
BY MARK HARPER, STAFF WRITER
June 12, 2011 12:05 AM
Carmen and Vince Faulkner’s Ormond Beach home has lost around 41 percent of its value since 2005. (N-J | David Tucker)
ORMOND BEACH -- Vince and Carmen Faulkner bought their home -- a handsome if unremarkable three-bedroom, two-bath, 13-year-old house in the Park Ridge subdivision -- in 2005 and got married a year later.
They couldn't have known it at the time, but their personal wealth was about at its peak.
In the six years since, they got hit with a double whammy -- Vince's health requiring him to step back from his work, and the burst of the housing bubble, sending their wealth into freefall.
They bought the house for $230,000, using a $45,000 down payment that came from the sale of Carmen's home in Jacksonville.
"We were sitting there with a $190,000 mortgage balance. It was realistic. It was doable," Vince Faulkner said last week from the home.
But in 2007, home values across the United States, and in Florida, in particular, plummeted. Today, the Faulkner's home is worth about $136,000 -- less than what is owed.
Late last year, they decided to seek refinancing through two federal foreclosure-reduction programs. By reducing their interest rate from 7 to 4.25 percent, Faulkner figured it could save almost as much money as they were underwater.
They were denied.
And to make matters worse, an error by the company that services their mortgage payments led to Merrill Lynch, their mortgage holder, threatening to foreclose.
It turns out, Faulkner said, that even though they made their $1,500 monthly mortgage payments faithfully, the servicer held the payments. Faulkner is still not sure why.
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