HOMES FOR CASH! HOMES FOR CASH! HOMES FOR CASH! WELLS FARGO BANK, NA JUST REFUSES TO GIVE UP THE LIQUIDITY THAT CASHING IN THEIR HOMEOWNER CHIPS BRINGS

MORE HOMEOWNERS TURN
TO MEDIATION...
AS STARVING WELLS FARGO
RACES AGAINST THEIR OWN
TO WIN
HOMES FOR CASH
JUST AS FAST AS THEY POSSIBLY CAN.

RISE, FALL AND REBOUND? : Charts show the housing industry's boom and bust this decade and forecast the possible course of its recovery the next three years.

MORTGAGE RATES
National overnight averages Today +/-
30 yr fixed mtg 4.82%
15 yr fixed mtg 4.26%
5/1 ARM 3.82%
$30K home equity loan 7.48%
$30K HELOC 5.08%

By Jeff Schweers, USA TODAY

PORT ST. JOHN, Fla. — When Mark Weeks was laid off from his $90,000-a-year construction job 2½ years ago,he vowed to hang onto his family's house here, where he'd lived with his wife, their three children and two dogs for the last six years.

But his new job as a safety officer for a Cocoa, Fla., crane rental company barely paid a third of what he used to make, and he wound up unable to pay his mortgage. At first, he tried, unsuccessfully, to get mortgage-holder Wells Fargo to defer or lower his payments.

Wells Fargo filed foreclosure proceedings in December, when Weeks was six months behind on his payments. Weeks hired a lawyer to fight it and move the case to a court-appointed mediator — which he sees as the best last hope for getting Wells Fargo to agree to lower his monthly payments.

All foreclosures on primary residences in Florida automatically go to mediation."We just want them to work with us because we can't make it right now," Weeks said. "We weren't asking them to give us a home for free."

Teri Schrettenbrunner, head of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Communication, said the bank is committed to helping homeowners facing true financial hardship stay in their homes they can afford (the proof is in the pudding, Teri), but, as is the case with all lending institutions, it has to honor the terms of its contract with the investors. "We are bound by the contracts we have with ... whoever owns the loan on the back end to do what they find acceptable in modification," Schrettenbrunner said.  (Blah, blah, blah.)

Kelly's Note:  Forgive me Teri, I know you've got a job to do.  But excuse me while I gag.  I really can't stand all the lies.  Over and over again, when taken to task (most often in Court) Wells Fargo admits their mortgage loans are owned NOT BY INVESTORS but by mortgage backed securities which in turn are backed by a list of "loans" which may or may not exist, and which certainly have at least in part been paid in whole or in part through insurance, credit default swaps and federal bailout.
There is so much fraud in this industry it is unbelievable. 
1.  Look at your Promissory Note.  
     The name of the lender on your CURRENT Note must match the name of the lender on your CURRENT Mortgage or Deed of Trust or Assignment of Mortgage or Assignment of Deed of Trust for the current mortgage or deed of trust to be an enforceable document.  If they do not match, the Promissory Note is null and void.
2.  Look at your Mortgage or Deed of Trust.
     The name of the lender on your CURRENT Mortgage or Deed of Trust must match the name of the lender on your CURRENT Promissory Note for the current mortgage or deed of trust to be an enforceable document. If they do not match, the Promissory Note is null and void.

3.  Look at your Notice of Default.  Is the date on the notice before the date of default?
4.  Look at your Promissory Note Assignment.  Is the date it was assigned after  the date it was sold?
5.  Look at your Mortgage or Deed of Trust Assignment.  Is the date it was assigned after the date it was sold?

As a matter of law, the right to foreclose goes away when the promissory note is “split” from the mortgage or the deed of trust that it is supposed to secure.

A pattern with Wells Fargo is they tell you they can't modify your loan because the investor won't allow it BEFORE YOU TAKE THEM TO COURT.  ONCE IN COURT,  they make the representation that they are the holder of the note and the investor, which is a blatant lie in most cases. Then AFTER they get the order they want, they admit that through “inadvertence” they misrepresented the facts to the court. Then they say it is not a material misrepresentation and they produce some additional fabricated documents like a limited power of attorney which upon close reading grants nothing to anyone, is subject to many conditions that are not readily determinable and is signed by party of dubious authority and dated under questionable circumstances, if the document existed before why didn’t they use it?

IF WELLS FARGO CAN'T MODIFY YOUR LOAN, WELLS FARGO CAN'T FORECLOSE UPON YOUR LOAN.   If they do not own your note, they are only the "Servicer" of your mortgage.  Your servicer CAN NOT FORECLOSE!!   Wells Fargo MUST own your note to foreclose upon your loan.   And if they own your note, they can modify your loan.  END OF STORY.

DO NOT GIVE WELLS FARGO ONE SINGLE CENT WITHOUT THEM GIVING YOU A CONTRACT, OR AT THE VERY MINIMUM A SIGNED LETTER (NOT AN E-MAIL) ON THEIR LETTERHEAD, OUTLINING THE TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT.

I HAVE PERSONALLY SEEN WELLS FARGO DO MODIFICATIONS IN 30 MINUTES.  IT DOES NOT TAKE THEM 30 DAYS.  THAT IS COMPLETE CRAZINESS.  IF WELLS FARGO WANTS TO DO A MODIFICATION THEY WILL DO IT.  IF THEY WANT TO SQUEEZE EVERY LIVING PENNY OUT OF A DESPERTATE HOMEOWNER THEY WILL DO IT.

DO NOT BE A DESPERATE HOMEOWNER.

Millions of working and middle-class homeowners are facing a similar predicament. An estimated 10% of all home loans are delinquent by 60 days or more, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported this month.In Florida and Nevada, two of the states where the housing crisis has hit hardest, the rate was over 20%, the MBA said.

Court-ordered mediation may be the best last option for thousands of homeowners in the foreclosure pipeline, as programs targeting the estimated 6 million delinquent home loans have been slow to put a dent in the crisis.

"Foreclosure mediations hold out the hope of removing major obstacles that have hindered efforts to slow the spread of the foreclosure epidemic," says Geoff Walsh, a staff attorney specializing in housing, foreclosure and bankruptcy issues for the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) in Washington, D.C.

The Home Affordable Modification Program, President Obama's $75 billion initiative to prevent foreclosures begun last March, has granted 300,000 permanent modifications through April, according to the program's latest report, released May 17. The report also estimates 3.275 million delinquent loans are eligible for the program.

In addition, HOPE NOW, an alliance of 38 private lenders started in 2007, reported in April that 2.9 million permanent home loan modifications had been offered since the program began.

While foreclosure starts dropped 5% in the past year, the number of home loans that were delinquent by 60 days or more increased 40%, from 2.85 million to 3.99 million, says Faith Schwartz, executive director at HOPE NOW.

The biggest hurdle to getting a loan modified has been getting the loan servicer or lender to actually sit down and negotiate with the homeowner, says Sean DeVries, an Orlando-based loan workout specialist.

"There is no established path to get a good, sustainable modification," he says, noting that he went through nine fax numbers for a recent SunTrust client.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., introduced legislation in December that would require any lender receiving federal insurance to go into mediation. It has been assigned to a committee, but no further action has been taken.

Many states have already passed similar measures.

"It's been very mixed, because it depends on the way the state mediation program is set up," says Walsh.

NCLC looked at 12 new or pending state statutes, he says, and "The range is incredible." Some require nothing more than the servicer checking a box on a form that says they attempted to contact the borrower. Others require servicers to show on paper their calculations comparing what they'd lose by foreclosing on a house vs. modifying the loan, he says.

"That gives the homeowner the basis for challenging whether it's a reasonable foreclosure," he says.

According to a January NCLC report:

•The Nevada Assembly approved a mediation program that took effect July 1, allowing homeowners to request mediation on non-judicial foreclosures and appointing more than 150 mediators for the program. It requires the servicer to produce several documents, including evidence that it has the right to sue and documents showing how they calculated eligibility for a loan modification.

•Maine started a foreclosure diversion program in January, setting guidelines for scheduling sessions, granting stays of proceedings and determining good-faith participation. It also authorizes sanctions on the lenders if they don't follow the newly imposed rules, including dismissal of the lawsuit.

•The New York Legislature in November amended its mandatory settlement conference law "to include all foreclosures of loans secured by borrowers' residences."

It also requires the lender to bring documents to the conferences, including payment history and itemization of the amounts needed to catch up on and pay off the loan.

Florida is consistently in the top five states for foreclosure filings, with 350,000 a year. The Florida Supreme Court issued an administrative order in December requiring all its 20 circuit courts to adopt rules for mandatory mediation on all residential foreclosures, based on a task force's recommendations.

The 18th Circuit Court in Brevard County, Fla., made mediation mandatory in March 2009, before the state Supreme Court's order. In the ensuing 12 months, 59 of the 317 cases referred to mediation have reached a modified loan payment plan, said Ollie Lyons, the manager of the mediation program there.
"The main thing we've done is, people are able to sit down at the table and actually talk to other people," she said.

But it's stressful, she said. The state hasn't added money to the mediation programs, and there are not a lot of mediators for the overwhelming number of foreclosures, she said. "I am overwhelmed and burned out, like all mediation supervisors," Lyons said.

Eric Hammonds, a Fort Lauderdale attorney representing Weeks, said mediation forces the lenders to the table. "That's a good thing, because what happens in mediation (is) we get the actual contact person.

WELLS FARGO LIES ABOUT WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEY CAN DO

Is Your Short Sale or Loan Modification Being Turned Down?

Has your short sale or loan modification been turned down and you have no idea why? Let's examine some of the reasons. These reasons may not make you feel any better or maybe they are just excuses by your lender, however there are a few things you may not even know about your loan.

Let's say that you make your mortgage payment to Wells Fargo. You can no longer handle your payments so you ask Wells Fargo to modify your loan- to do a loan modification for you. You are behind in your payments. You are in fact, in foreclosure but you are still living in your home and the judge in your case has not ordered the sale of your home at auction yet. You are scared. You see your neighbors losing their homes all around you. You are hopeful because you see on the news and in the newspapers that the Federal Making Homes Affordable Program has been helping some folks keep their home and get a loan modification.

You are no longer making your mortgage payment because your adjustable rate has been applied and your mortgage payment has gone from $1600 a month to $2300 per month. You just can not make these payments. You have been trying for almost 2 years now to get Wells Fargo to approve your loan modification. You even hired an attorney to help you with your foreclosure defense.

Wells Fargo turns down your loan modification request. You wonder, how could this be? After all, Wells Fargo is one of the large lenders and is participating in the government's Federal Making Homes Affordable program.

But Wells Fargo tells you that the investor is the one that will not allow you to get a loan modification. What in the world is an investor doing making decisions on your loan you wonder. Well, you are not alone in your confusion. Every day we are explaining the whole mortgage note owner thing to buyers agents, real estate agents and homeowners.

Just because you make your house payments to Wells Fargo does not mean they own that note that you are paying on. They are the servicer. Other words you will hear them called are  asset management companies.

The very first thing you need to do before you ask for a loan modification is to find out who actually owns your note. You can do this by calling who you make your mortgage payments to and asking them.

If it is Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae that own your note- you have a much better chance at getting your loan modification approved if you qualify. If it is a private group of investors, your chances go way down. Why would this happen?

One in eight homeowners' loans were sold to investors on Wall Street. What happens is that a bunch of loans are packaged together. These are called mortgage-backed securities. They are then sold off to investors. Homeowners who have mortgage-backed securitized loan are five times more likely to be late on their house payments. Many of these borrowers were given loans they were not qualified for from the beginning. Many of the homeowners getting these loans did not read the fine print and did not realize how high their mortgage payments might go when adjusted.

The rules to allow modifications, short sales and terms of foreclosures and deficiencies are ambiguous at best. Homeowners who are told no by the investor have little recourse.

The federal Making Homes Affordable program lenders who participate in the program must modify all homeowners that qualify. The exception is when the investor has a rule that they do not allow modifications.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported to Congress on June 3rd that these securitized mortgages are a "hurdle" to the success of the Making Homes Affordable program. The treasury department has not disclosed why the modifications are denied so there are little to no facts to go on.

Why would the investors say no to your loan modification? Well, Wells Fargo's response is that the investors need their money. Wells Fargo has one situation where the borrowers ( the homeowners) are trying to get their loan modified but Goldman Sachs is the issuer and Deutsche Bank is the trustee. But when you go and talk to these investors and we have on several occasions when doing short sale negotiations for our sellers; the investor passes the buck back to the servicer. For instance, Deutsche Bank says that Wells Fargo is solely responsible for the decision to modify a loan or not.

Some people say that the investors are the scapegoats. Everything can easily be blamed on them. Since you rarely get to speak to anyone at the investors' group it is hard to tell who is telling the truth. In this particular situation Wells Fargo is saying that the investor is not forgiving the past due debt and that makes the payment go up on a loan modification because then Wells Fargo would have to put that past due balance along with all the penalties and fees into the loan modification which then may cause the homeowner to not qualify financially for the loan modification.

Servicers have agreements, contracts that they sign with investors. These agreements contain the rules for modifications. These agreements are called Pooling and Servicing Agreements which is known as PSA's. The PSA is most often what the servicer says is the reason for them not being able to do the loan modification or release the deficiency on a short sale.

But when you talk to other people in the management areas or to the investors they claim that there is nothing in the PSA's that would prevent the servicer from approving loan modifications, short sales and releases. There is a new study coming out from a law school wherein they state that only 8% of these mortgage-backed securities  agreements contain any language that says the servicer is not allowed to do a loan modification for these notes. That means that about 92% of all the NO's; could actually be YES's. So why would that even happen?

Fear of law suits! The language in the PSA in question here, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank- it says that Wells Fargo can "waive, modify or vary any term" as long as Wells Fargo as the servicer makes a "reasonable and prudent determination" that the modification is in the investor's best interest. Attorneys examining these agreements say there is quite a bit of room for servicers to make these decisions. But the language itself in this agreement is enough for the servicers legal counsel to be concerned with the investor suing them for not acting in the best interest of the investor. They can not, no matter how inhumane this sounds, put the homeowner ahead of the investor. This is about business and if they want business from investors they need to make sure they are looking out for the interests of the investors.

The treasury department has stated that the fear of law suits is the biggest deterrent to getting the servicers to approve loan modifications and short sales. So doing little or simply turning down the loan modifications are the answer many servicers choose. This is not personal and this is not against you, the homeowner. The position of the servicers is to watch their own backs and to protect the assets to which they have been entrusted with, your mortgage-backed security. The Treasury Department says they can relieve some of the pressure of the fear of lawsuits by standardizing requirements for loan modifications and also provide some type of calculation to figure out if the investor will make more money by the loan modification or by the foreclosure.

WELLS FARGO CAUGHT ... LIEN-ING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

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A Mortgage Paper Trail Often Leads to Nowhere December 28, 2008 A Mortgage Paper Trail Often Leads to Nowhere By GRETCHEN MORGENSON WITH home prices in free fall and mortgage delinquencies mounting, pressure to modify troubled loans is ratcheting up. But lawyers who represent candidates for modifications say the programs are hobbled by the complexity of securitization pools that hold the loans, as well as uncertainty about who actually owns the notes underlying the mortgages. Problems often emerge because these notes — which are written promises to repay the full amount of a mortgage — weren’t recorded properly when they were bundled by Wall Street into pools or were subsequently transferred to other holders. How can a loan be modified, these lawyers ask, if the lender cannot prove that it actually owns the note? More and more judges are asking the same thing about lenders trying to foreclose on borrowers. And here is another hurdle: Most loan servicers — the folks responsible for handling all the paperwork surrounding monthly mortgage payments — aren’t set up to handle all of the details involved in a modification. Loan servicing operations are intended to receive borrowers’ payments; producing loan histories and verifying that payments were received or junk fees were not applied is considerably more labor intensive. This cuts into profits. “These servicers are not staffed up and they don’t have a chance in the world to do the stuff they are supposed to do,” said April Charney, a consumer lawyer at Jacksonville Legal Aid. Many servicers continue to stonewall troubled borrowers who ask for a history of their loan payments and fees, she said. “This is your biggest, hugest expense — your home — and when you ask for a life-of-loan history your servicer tells you to get lost,” she said. “And when you ask for a list of charges in the loan history that’s not going to happen.” So even if loan modifications were to rise rapidly, it is unclear that borrowers can trust what lenders tell them about what they owe. Consider a federal bankruptcy court case in Colorado. It involves two borrowers who got into trouble on their loan but agreed, under a bankruptcy plan, to make revised mortgage payments to get back on track. The lender in the case is Wells Fargo, and last Monday the judge overseeing the matter took a tough stance on the bank’s recordkeeping and billing practices. In June 2004, Brandon M. Burrier and Denon A. Burrier received a $183,126 loan for a property in Arvada, Colo. The note was later transferred to Wells Fargo, court filings show. The Burriers fell behind on their loan and in February 2007, they filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, agreeing to pay $12,000 that Wells Fargo said they owed. Chapter 13 bankruptcies allow debtors to retain their property and work out a repayment plan based on their income and the level of their indebtedness. The Burriers’ payment plan was confirmed by the bankruptcy court in August 2007; last December, a second plan requiring higher payments was approved by the court. Two months later, Wells Fargo told the court that the Burriers had failed to make four of their payments and that it should be allowed to begin foreclosure proceedings. The Burriers denied that they had missed payments, but in April, to keep their home, they agreed to make double payments to cover the ones Wells Fargo claimed they had missed. If the borrowers could prove that the mortgage checks were submitted, Wells Fargo said, their account would be credited and they would no longer have to make up the payments. The proof required by Wells Fargo and approved by the court was “valid, accurate and true copies” of the front and back of the checks the borrowers sent in. Last August, the parties were back in court, with Wells Fargo stating that the borrowers had failed to comply with the deal. Ms. Burrier testified that she had asked her local bank repeatedly for proof of the payments made to Wells Fargo, but had had no luck. The payments to Wells Fargo were processed electronically, she learned, and that meant it did not return the checks to her bank.

The borrowers did produce bank statements showing that the checks Wells said were missing were actually cashed by “WFHM,” an entity that they assumed was Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. But Tara E. Gaschler, the lawyer representing the borrowers, said that Wells Fargo continued to maintain that it hadn’t received the money. The bank flew in an expert to testify that all checks received by Wells Fargo from borrowers in Chapter 13 cases were processed by hand, Ms. Gaschler said. “Even when presented with bank statements, they told the court there must be some mistake,” she added. Finally, Wells Fargo demanded that the Burriers provide the routing number of the account at Wells Fargo that their money went into. If they could not, the bank said, they would have to keep making extra payments. But Sidney B. Brooks, the judge overseeing the case, was clearly dismayed by the bank’s performance. In his opinion, he fumed that Wells Fargo had asked the borrowers for canceled checks as proof of payment, even though such checks were often not available. Wells Fargo’s request for canceled checks was especially troubling, the judge said, given that the bank was a proponent of the 2003 law that allowed banks to stop returning canceled checks to customers. The only institution that could have the original checks is Wells Fargo, he concluded. “The payments have, evidently, been lost in a black hole of the creditor’s organization or through accounting mismanagement,” the judge wrote. “This is a major lender/mortgage loan servicer where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing — the collection department does not know what the check processing and accounting departments are doing.” Because this is not the first time the judge has encountered problems in Wells Fargo’s operations, he is considering sanctions on the bank. “This dispute might portend a widespread abuse of collection practices or creditor overreaching,” he wrote, “demanding of debtors what it, the creditor itself, is unable to provide: accurate and reliable record keeping and billing practices.” A spokesman for Wells Fargo said: “We are currently reviewing the court’s opinion to determine whether or not an appeal is appropriate. The Burrier case is quite factually specific, and we disagree with the court’s conclusions. We are confident that our payment processing practices are accurate and sound.” Ms. Gaschler says that this kind of dispute is becoming more common in her practice and that borrowers wind up losing too often. “A lot of times clients don’t keep canceled checks or maybe their bank account was closed and they can’t go and get the proof,” she said. “The bank gets that extra money for as long as the debtor can keep it up and when they can’t they are pushed out of their homes.” While judges are starting to see how flawed loan servicers’ systems can be, those rushing to modify loans may not be as aware of the problems. In the interests of fairness, modification programs should require life-of-loan histories from servicers and a justification of each entry. New loans, especially ones backed by taxpayers, are no place to bury dubious fees or extra borrower payments to cover those that were allegedly, but not actually, missed.

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