Hey OCWEN…You Are Short Sale Busted!

Florida-based Ocwen Financial Services painted itself as quite the caring and concerned company when a profile ran about it in a Florida newspaper earlier this year. This publicly traded company that manages and services residential and commercial mortgage loans, has approximately 350,000 mortgage loans valued at $50 billion on its books.

The company painted itself as a firm who wants to find workable solutions, even stating that it loses money if a home goes into foreclosure and the best resolution would be for a loan modification to be worked out. Such a result would be a win-win-win for everyone involved—the borrower, the investor and Ocwen as the servicer.

However, a case sent to one of our Short Sale Daily News Experts puts a huge chink in Ocwen’s armor. It seems the agent got a short sale approval letter near the end of the month with a deadline of early the next month. A foreclosure sale was already in place for the 15th of that month and the agent was trying to get Ocwen to give a small extension to the end of the month, thereby giving them about 28 days to get the closing done.

The answer was a resounding no and continued to be no all the way up the ladder. Finally, the agent found a way to email the company president (the one who had been so richly quoted in the above newspaper article). The reply back was pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of what had been printed in the newspaper.

The president failed to understand how a short sale would help the homeowner and said there was no meaningful difference between a foreclosure and a short sale.  The homeowner’s credit rating and area property values would soundly disagree with that comment! He also said if the agent had a buyer for the property Ocwen could always sell them the house in a post-foreclosure sale.

Doesn’t sound to me like this is a company operating under the opinion that they would lose money if they had to repossess the home. A little digging online and I found many more negative comments about Ocwen’s lack of professionalism and failure to follow any code of ethics.

Check it out for yourself by entering Ocwen’s company name at www.ripoffreport.com and www.complaintboards.com. It’s important to note that if you put in just “Ocwen Financial,” you get less than a hundred complaints listed. However, if you type in just “Ocwen,” more than 2,000 combined complaints at these sites will pop up. I’d say that’s SHORT SALE BUSTED, wouldn’t you?!