Saturday, January 28, 2012

Inside of the foreclosure machine: Homeowners are still fighting servicers’ mistakes that threaten their homes

Like millions of stories from the great recession, this one begins with homeowners struggling to keep up with a mortgage payment they simply couldn’t afford.

By 2009, the adjustable interest rate for Cassandra and Bernard Gray’s Durham, N.C., home loan had spiked to more than 12 percent. “I didn’t know if we were going to be on the street or in a shelter,” Cassandra recalls. “We couldn’t afford groceries. It got pretty bad.”

They were thrilled to sign up for a modification plan with their loan servicer, GMAC Home Mortgage, Cassandra Gray said.

The modification lowered their payment from $1,128 to $768 per month. But after three months, GMAC began returning their payments, the Grays claim in a complaint filed with the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks.

GMAC customer service representatives told them there was a “computer glitch” and that the problem would be resolved. Instead, GMAC twice started a foreclosure action.

GMAC claimed it had no record of any payment being received. The Grays have submitted bank statements that appear to show GMAC returning the $768 payment — several times. GMAC has since assessed more than $20,000 in interest and fees.

“I thought I was doing the correct thing” by obtaining a loan modification, Cassandra Gray said in a recent interview. “But I came home one day and there was a foreclosure notice on my door and a sign in my yard. I called constantly, but it was as if the dots were not connecting.”

A North Carolina clerk of court recently dismissed the foreclosure on grounds that GMAC had not properly demonstrated that it had standing to bring a foreclosure. But once GMAC gets its documentation in order, the loan servicer can foreclose again.

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