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Feldman Law Center – In a recent interview, Steve Feldman of The Feldman Law Center said “Only by holding ourselves to extraordinarily high standards will we be able to deliver the best results possible to our collective clients.” Standing behind that statement is The Feldman Law Center’s Code of Ethics and Practices which sets the standard that all Feldman employees adhere to every day.

The Code:  

1) In our negotiations with lenders on behalf of our clients, The Feldman Law Center will employ all its resources to get the best results possible in each case every time.

2) We understand that every client has unique circumstances which shape their current situation. To that end, we analyze their total financial picture to determine which course of action will provide the best outcome.

3) Regardless of our opinion on the optimal course of action, each client always has the final say on their goals and objectives. Once determined, we will pursue those goals with passion and diligence.

4) We are obligated to work with urgency and efficiency for every client.

5) A flat fee for services will be charged regardless of additional work, time, and effort spent above and beyond the normal loan modification process.

6) The entire team at The Feldman Law Center owes each client its best efforts throughout the entire process. This includes regular updates and correspondence until the process is completed.

7) During all interactions with clients, proper expectations should be set and communicated. Standard procedure is to always provide accurate and straight forward information.

The Feldman Law Center prides itself on providing optimal results specific to the circumstances of each of their clients. If you are struggling with your mortgage payments you need a dedicated team of professionals to get the results you need, now. Call The Feldman Law Center today at (800) 527 8497.

 

President Obama’s historic presidency began in the midst of possibly the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.  The housing and real estate markets seemingly jumped off of a cliff, taking with it the financial stability of every other industry.  Obama passed sweeping legislation to help homeowners make payments and deal with the financial crisis while staying in their homes.  This plan in turn helps lenders who need homeowners to continue making their mortgage payments.  A key part of this plan is the loan modification process, which now helps homeowners even more.

The federal government is relying heavily on loan modifications with the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009 and Making Home Affordable Program.  Under these programs, current borrowers who are at imminent risk of default may qualify for a loan modification as long as the immanency of the default is tied to a specific event.  By specific event, they mean a pending interest rate increase in your mortgage loan or a demonstrable change in economic situation such as your spouse losing his/her job or a severe medical condition.

Ultimately, the plan centers around the thought that struggling borrowers can stay in their homes as long as they make their monthly payments (regardless of the sharp decline in value).  The plan has many backers, including billionaire Warrant Buffet.  In a recent letter to shareholders, Buffet wrote “Commentary about the current housing crisis often ignores the crucial fact that more foreclosures do not occur because a house is worth less than its mortgage (so-called ‘upside-down’ loans).  Rather, foreclosures take place because borrowers can’t pay the monthly payment that they agreed to pay.”

In the end, regardless of what the cause is for the foreclosures, homeowners are looking for ways to stay in their homes and everyone is hoping that Obama’s plan is the path toward that reality.  For homeowners facing foreclosure, struggling to make payments, and overwhelmed by creditor and lender phone calls, having someone they can trust by their side could make a huge difference.  During these difficult financial times, California loan modification attorneys are doing their best to be more than just an attorney; they are trying to be a confidante.  

A California loan modification attorney can sit down with you and discuss your options and if any new options were opened up under the Obama plan.  At the Feldman Law Center, our California loan modification attorney team is up to date with all federal and state laws governing loan modifications.  FDIC loan modifications, California loan modifications and more all fall under our jurisdiction.  We can help you find the program that’s right for you and your financial situation.

Millions of California residents are investigating California loan modifications as a possible solution to their financial troubles and as a way to avoid foreclosure.  If you find yourself in this situation, you should contact a loan modification attorney and get as informed as you can about all the state and federal loan modification programs available to you.

Visit Feldman Law Center at feldmanlawcenter.com or call 800-588-0425.

Feldman Law Center – Eileen Ulery wasn’t a real estate speculator. She was an executive assistant at Arizona State University that bought a condo in Mesa, Arizona for $77,000 in 1997 where she had lived ever since. Several years and a couple of refi’s later, her mortgage balance was up to $140,000 and then the bottom fell out. University budget cuts resulted in the elimination of her job, which she had held for over twenty years. With some severance pay and social security she was able to keep up but once the severance ran out, her mortgage payment was more than she could handle.

After hearing about the Obama Administration’s new “Making Home Affordable” plan she went to the CountryWide (now part of Bank of America) website which directed her to the official government site for the program, makinghomeaffordable.gov. After taking a test at the site to determine her eligibility she was informed that she might qualify for a loan modification.   

Calling the bank in April to start the loan modification process, the bank’s representative said that the bank was not doing loan modifications for “people like her”. The rep then countered with something the bank could do for her; if she could write them a check for $18,000, they would raise her interest rate slightly, and she could save $77 dollars per month. $13,000 would go toward her loan balance and $5,000 would go to the bank as fees to re-do the loan. The monthly savings would come from the reduction of her loan balance.

Jenni Engebretsen, spokesperson for the Treasury, confirmed that homeowners like Ms. Ulery who are current on their mortgages but struggling with the loss of a job are eligible for loan modifications under the program. Eligibility, however, does not mean anything in terms of getting a loan modification done if the lenders are dismissing every do it yourself borrower that is not on the brink of imminent foreclosure.

Rick Simon a spokesman for Bank of America Home Loans, confirmed as much when he said “The bank is now focusing on modifications only for those borrowers who are already in severe threat of foreclosure.” After acknowledging that Ms. Ulery had been offered a refi instead of a loan modification he said, “We’re still putting the systems in place to handle people who are current on their loans. It’s still very, very early in the program.”

Ms. Ulery’s experience in attempting to modify her own loan is not unusual. In fact it’s quite common that lenders will counter a loan modification request with either an offer to refinance or to set up a payment plan requiring higher monthly payments. Both types of offers do nothing for the borrower while providing the lender with higher interest, fees, and higher principle payments.

Asked whether she took the bank up on its offer to refinance her home Ms. Ulery said, “I just laughed. It was a really good deal for them.”

   

“We’re still putting the systems in place to handle people who are current on their loans,” Mr. Simon said, declining to say how many loans Bank of America had modified. “It’s still very, very early in the program

President Obama promise that help was on the way for homeowners like her, people who had lost jobs and could no longer make their mortgage payments.

Yes, she was teetering toward delinquency. She was among millions of homeowners rapidly sliding toward danger for whom the Obama administration had devised an aid program — some already in foreclosure proceedings, others headed that way as they ran out of means to make their payments. But unlike those in imminent peril of losing their homes, Ms. Ulery had never missed a payment

More than three months after the Obama administration outlined a new program aimed at rescuing millions of distressed homeowners by compensating banks that modify mortgages, Ms. Ulery’s experience illustrates the mixture of confusion, frustration and limited assistance that now reigns.

Through many months of wrangling over the fate of the financial system, with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars dispensed on bailouts, distressed homeowners have waited for their own rescue amid talk that it was finally on the way. Modifications of so-called subprime and Alt-A mortgages — those made to people with tarnished credit — actually fell by 11 percent in May from April, according to research by Alan M. White at Valparaiso University School of Law.

The bank is now focusing on modifications only for those borrowers “who are already in severe threat of foreclosure,” he said.

 “I just laughed,” Ms. Ulery said. “It was a really good deal for them.”

 

MESA, Ariz. — She had seen the advertisements for the new government program offering relief. She had heard President Obama promise that help was on the way for homeowners like her, people who had lost jobs and could no longer make their mortgage payments.

But when Eileen Ulery called her mortgage company — Countrywide, now part of Bank of America — the bank did not offer to alter her mortgage. Rather, the bank tried to sell her a new loan with a slightly lower monthly payment while asking her to pay $13,000 toward the principal and a fresh $5,000 in fees.

Her problem was that she did not yet present a big enough problem to merit aid.

Yes, she was teetering toward delinquency. She was among millions of homeowners rapidly sliding toward danger for whom the Obama administration had devised an aid program — some already in foreclosure proceedings, others headed that way as they ran out of means to make their payments. But unlike those in imminent peril of losing their homes, Ms. Ulery had never missed a payment.

“I don’t know who this bailout is helping,” she said. “We’ve given these banks all this money and they’re not doing what they say they’re doing. Something’s not working right. They keep saying they’re doing all this, but we don’t see it down here at this level.”

More than three months after the Obama administration outlined a new program aimed at rescuing millions of distressed homeowners by compensating banks that modify mortgages, Ms. Ulery’s experience illustrates the mixture of confusion, frustration and limited assistance that now reigns.

Through many months of wrangling over the fate of the financial system, with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars dispensed on bailouts, distressed homeowners have waited for their own rescue amid talk that it was finally on the way. Modifications of so-called subprime and Alt-A mortgages — those made to people with tarnished credit — actually fell by 11 percent in May from April, according to research by Alan M. White at Valparaiso University School of Law.

A Treasury spokeswoman, Jenni Engebretsen, confirmed that homeowners like Ms. Ulery — current on their mortgages yet grappling with a hardship like unemployment — were eligible for loan modifications under the program. She said mortgage servicers had offered to modify more than 100,000 loans since the department announced the program.

But how many loans have been modified? Ms. Engebretsen declined to say, noting that the Treasury was working with mortgage companies to “fine-tune reporting systems.”

A spokesman for Bank of America Home Loans, Rick Simon, confirmed that the bank offered Ms. Ulery refinancing and not loan modification. The bank is now focusing on modifications only for those borrowers “who are already in severe threat of foreclosure,” he said.

“We’re still putting the systems in place to handle people who are current on their loans,” Mr. Simon said, declining to say how many loans Bank of America had modified. “It’s still very, very early in the program.”

Ms. Ulery, 63, is the face of the latest wave of troubled American homeowners, a surge of people in financial danger not because of reckless gambling on real estate, but because of
lost income.

Far from being one of those who used easy-money loans to speculate on homes proliferating across the desert soil of greater Phoenix, she has lived in the same modest, stucco-sided condo in suburban Mesa for a dozen years. She bought the two-bedroom home in 1997 for $77,500.

For two decades, she worked as an executive assistant at nearby Arizona State University, bringing home more than $1,000 every other week — enough to pay the bills.

Round-faced, wry and given to staccato bursts of laughter, Ms. Ulery regularly visits yard sales, seeking out plates and patchwork quilts for her collections. She takes pleasure in her two grandchildren and her beagle. She enjoys an occasional glass of wine, favoring a $6 merlot that comes in a screw-top bottle.

“I’m not an extravagant-type person,” she said. “I see these big houses all around, and they’re beautiful, but I’m comfortable in my little condo.”

Like tens of millions of other American homeowners, she added to her mortgage balance as the value of her condo swelled, at one point exceeding $200,000. She refinanced to pay off some credit cards and settle into a 30-year, fixed-rate loan. Later, she took out a home equity line of credit to buy a new Hyundai. She refinanced again in 2007, borrowing $20,000, mostly for a new roof.

Over the years, her monthly payment swelled from about $600 to more than $1,000. With planning and self-control — she tracks her monthly expenses on a color-coded spreadsheet — she always came up with the money. “I’ve never been late,” she said.

But the equation broke down last year, when she lost her job in university budget cuts. Ms. Ulery received six months of severance. She arranged a monthly $1,500 Social Security check. But when the severance ran out in October, her mortgage finally exceeded her limited means.

With so many people out of work, and with her doctor counseling rest for a stress-related illness, she did not pursue another paycheck, negotiating to have her university pension begin earlier. She has been leaning on credit cards.

Across the country, millions of homeowners in similar straits have been sliding into delinquency. Some owe more than their houses are worth.

Ms. Ulery is among that unhappy cohort — her house is worth about $122,000, and she owes $143,000 — but walking away is not for her.

“In my family, we don’t do that,” she said. “You pay your bills. And I wanted my home.”

In March, she heard about the Obama administration program. The Countrywide Web site directed her to a government site, makinghomeaffordable.gov, she said. There, she took a test to determine her eligibility for a loan modification.

Was her home her primary residence? Check. Was she having trouble paying her mortgage? Check again, and so on until the screen told her that she might qualify.

In April, she called the bank. The representative said the bank was not doing modifications for people like her, she recalled. He shifted the conversation: if she handed over $18,000, he could lower her payment to $967 from $1,046. Her interest rate would actually increase slightly, with the drop largely because she was putting down more money.

“I just laughed,” Ms. Ulery said. “It was a really good deal for them.”

To which she poses her own question: What sort of deal is it for the American taxpayer? As she sees it, the same banks that generated the mortgage crisis are now getting public money to fix it, while doing little more than seeking new fees.

“I don’t think the government gets it,” she said. “These are the same people you couldn’t trust before.”