No Bailout for Monica Parchment: works to negotiate mortgage problems with bank, but is declined

[Bluebear]

Monica Parchment could only think of one thing when sheriff’s officers boarded up a house on her street a few months ago.

"I’m next," she said. "Tears came to my eyes."

She saw the officers put the furniture out on Linden Place in Orange. Then watched it get soaked a few days later when rain fell. Parchment, 52, has been trying for a year to keep this from happening to her. She is behind $19,000 on her mortgage and trying with no success to negotiate mortgage relief with Bank of America, which assumed her mortgage when it merged with Countrywide Home Loans.

In a short span this nurse, who at one time held three jobs at once, has fallen into desperation. Life came at her hard.

She was diagnosed with coronary disease in 2003. Her father died in 2004, her sick mother passed four years later after a long battle with sickness. Parchment said she cared for her mother and worked as a full-time registered nurse while holding two part-time gigs as nursing supervisor and instructor teaching nurses aides. But Parchment was stretched so thin she couldn’t work the hours demanded so she lost her two part-time jobs.

Parchment said she tried to make partial mortgage payments, but the bank kept rejecting them. She went to Essex-Newark Legal Services and New Jersey Citizen Action for help. The consumer watchdog group came up with a proposal, but Abbie Gorin, an attorney with legal services, said the bank rejected the terms. Gorin said a mediation session with the bank was held that seemed to favor Parchment getting her loan modified. All she needed to do was submit additional financial information.

But for some inexplicable reason, Gorin said the bank took the position that Parchment’s financial information wasn’t sufficient to warrant a loan modification. And since she was behind more than 12 months on the FHA loan, Gorin said the bank told him that it is not obligated to modify the loan under federal loan guidelines. Gorin, however, said he proposed that Parchment buy back some of those months, because she had a lump sum of $6,000 to pay down the debt. He said the bank declined that offer....

http://blog.nj.com/njv_barry_carter/2009/12/nj_woman_works_to_negotiate_mo.html

[naaman fletcher]

1. Parchment said she tried to make partial mortgage payments, but the bank kept rejecting them.

gotta be something wrong with that part of this story.. the banks will never not take your check, unless of course you try to write on it that it is full satisfaction for the loan.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. I believe that if they take a partial payment they have to start

the foreclosure process all over again. Otherwise the little guy might be able to catch a break and we can't have any Commie crap like that happening here. USA USA USA!

[alstephenson]

4. Yes, you're right OWTH.

The bank can't accept a partial payment without jeopardizing their position in the foreclosure process.

[truedelphi]

15. It creeps me out that if she was able to pass them the

Check for 6,000 she would still owe for the full amount of a mortgage begun for 2005. (When prices were at their high end.)

But once the house is foreclosed, it will be on the market for one third to one half of what it was worth or even less.

Like Mike Malloy is always saying, Gawd, have I mentioned yet today how much I hate these people?

[Lorien]

2. They take HER tax money and then refuse to work with her

I hate these banks. I truly do.

[notesdev]

5. Something essential is missing from the story

Without which this reads very much like a propaganda piece.

Where's the info on the mortgage itself, and the relevant info about her finances? Year, amount, terms? Amount of assets and debts, sources and amounts of income?

I have a feeling this story could not be written as is, if we were given that information. But it is essential to evaluating the merits of her claim.

[Bluebear]

7. "Propaganda piece" lol

[notesdev]

8. Hey I condemn the banks at much as anybody

but I've also seen a lot of buyers who weren't exactly on the up-and-up, either.

How to view this really depends on what kind of deal this woman had, how much she owed on the house and what the terms were. If she is a minimum-payment option ARM borrower, then the reality just may be that she is sitting in a lot more expensive a house than she should ever have been given the keys to. $19k is a lot to owe and not have gotten foreclosed yet - is she a year behind on payments or is she paying for an expensive house? The story isn't telling us.

It could well be that this woman is part of the problem rather than an unwitting victim. If she bought more house than she could afford under the assumption that she could resell it for more before her ARM recast, then it is scorn, not sympathy, that is deserved. This story could be very different depending on whether we are talking about a woman holding onto a humble cottage, and a woman sitting in a McMansion, with a greater appetite for luxury than ability to pay for it.

[Bluebear]

9. On a day where we are giving 3.8 billion more to GMAC, I ask where is her bailout?

[notesdev]

10. I don't think anyone should get a bailout!

People who did the right thing shouldn't have to pay for people who didn't. Anyone who ran up debts they can't pay, person or company, we have a process to handle that and it's called bankruptcy. All this bailing out prevents that healthy and necessary corrective action from occurring and turns everything it touches into subsidy-dependent zombies.

[Bluebear]

11. OK then

[Hello_Kitty]

12. She was working with an attorney who said her chances of modification looked good.

Is that not enough for you?

[Edweird]

13. Maybe this will help clear it up for you:

Nationwide, 24 percent of the nation's 3.3 million troubled home loans have been modified, the Treasury Department said.

Few who get loan modifications hang on to their new deals under the Obama program. Nationwide, of the 728,408 loans modified, only 31,382 have become permanent.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-loan-modifications-banks-20091210,0,3685174,full.story

Let's see. 3.3 million troubled loans. 31,000 permanent modifications. Something tells me the problem isn't HER.

[Hello_Kitty]

14. And the banks get $3k in TARP money for every modification, whether it becomes permanent or not.

:grr:

[asdjrocky]

6. The bankers are living in big houses.

They will eat the best of food tonight. They will drive cars and move in limos that we will only wash.

The bankers have friends in DC. Very good friends.

In the last year, in my neighborhood, I've seen one of my best neighbors go, and another is soon to follow.

The bankers are tearing us apart, and no one is picking up the pieces.