Delinquent in Your Mortgage Payment? Don't Run! Don't Hide!

Are you delinquent in your mortgage payments?  If you are, Don't Run, Don't Hide!

HUD and Mortgage lenders are trying to find delinquent homeowners.  In particular, they are trying to find homeowners who have not returned phone calls and letters.  THIS IS NOT AND ATTEMPT By LENDERS or HUD TO COLLECT or PUNISH!  This is in an attempt to help deliquent homeowners avoid foreclosure!  Foreclosures cost banks much more than to workout a new financing plan.  This is in part why six of the nation's largest mortgage lenders are suspending foreclosures for 30 days (02/12/2008).  The Six mortgage lenders are:

• Bank of America Corp.,
• Citigroup Inc.,
• Countrywide Financial Corp.,
• JPMorgan Chase & Co.,
• Washington Mutual Inc. and
• Wells Fargo & Co.

Why would lender be doing this?  Money!  The typical foreclosure costs lenders more than $50,000. In most cases, it is cheaper and less time-consuming to lower the borrower's interest rate, put them on a repayment plan or sell the home at a loss.  The challenge is to reach the delinquent borrowers who have eluded or not made an effort to return phone calls. 

Why is it so hard to contact these homeowners?  TRUST!  These homeowners do not trust lenders or their offers of help.  There are lots of reasons:

• Borrowers have tried reaching out before an interest rate increase pushed the monthly payments out of their reach, only to be told to call back after they fell behind.
• Borrowers have been pursued before by aggressive debt collectors using badgering techniques who encouraged them to use their retirement accounts, borrow from family members or raid their child's college fund to catch up on their bills.
• These borrowers are bombarded with questionable offers of help and do not know which to trust.

An organization that works as a borrower's advocate is ACORN.  ACORN works with both with lenders (Bank of America and CITI are 2 of the lenders) to help borrower's work out strategies for homeowners to keep their home.  For example, ACORN works with lenders to lower interest rate and payments or ACORN works with its banking partners (ACORN Program) to provide refinancing guidelines to help borrowers in trouble.

Some lenders pay nonprofits to go door to door. Countrywide has hired Acorn employees to go door to door, telling the homeowners they found that they would like to help.  The ACORN employees offered borrowers the use of the ACORN employee's cell phone to call a toll-free number to speed them through the process.

HUD itself or in partnership with lenders or credit agencies are also being aggressive in trying to find ways to reach out to homeowners who are not responding to contact attempts. 

For additional information:

1. There Is HELP for the Delinquent Borrower!
2. Don't Make Foreclosure Worse for Yourself

You can find AJ Nisen on Active Rain at Contra Costa California Mortgages  or at Bank of America Mortgage