All Forum Posts by: Jake Carter

In March I had my credit checked when I applied for the loan on the new house. I was at 778 and the approval was conditional on us selling the CA home before we could close. We are now partially moved into the new house in South Carolina, waiting on carpet before we can move in the rest. Both Ocwen and WaMu have reported to the credit bureaus. It shows up from both as "ACCOUNT PAID IN FULL FOR LESS THAN FULL BALANCE". My credit score is now 714, for a total loss of just 64 points. Well worth it to me, I still have excellent credit and I don't own a house with -40% equity. I have received letters from both WaMu and Ocwen saying that the accounts are closed and that it's a done deal. Thanks to that and the debt forgiveness act of 2007 I can sleep well at night now :-)
I was not successful in asking either lender to not report against my credit. I do have the friends that were able to and have heard of a few other cases where that was possible. All of them were with people behind on payments. In case anyone missed it, I never missed a payment to either lender. There is no law requiring lenders to report, I didn't push too hard because I knew I had been extremely lucky to get the deal approved and didn't want to risk ticking anyone off.

wandamou, yes persistency is vital. WaMu told me that there were 3 key elements in getting this to happen 1) My constant calling and making noise up the mgmt chain 2) A hardship, although not behind on payments it was obvious to them that we would be in a bad situation in the coming months if they didn't approve 3) The drastic drop in value and that it is still going down sharply in our area, their appraisal came in lower than our offer, which made them realize 8 to 9 months down the road when they get it back in foreclosure they will, not might, be in a deeper hole.

The buyers loan funded on Friday, they got the keys from my realtor and started moving in. All of our stuff is in storage now and we'll be living with the in laws for the next month. We are in NC now, left Friday morning, got the call that they funded while in the check in line at the airport. Today it recorded so we are officially done... Today was a big day for another reason, we looked at several houses over the weekend a put an offer on one today and had it accepted within a few hours. We sold our house in CA for 350k, 5 bedrooms 3 baths, 2600 sq ft, 4500 sq ft lot.... this house is 295k, 5 bedrooms 4 baths, 3300 sq ft, 4.75 acres!
We are going to miss our family and friends back home but we have a lot to look forward to here. It will be a great place to raise our kids and the property is beautiful, dozens of mature trees, a creek, room for horses, etc... Something I just looked up: our old zip code currently has 36 sex offenders according to the megans law site, the new zip code has ZERO. Thanks to everyone on this forum who posted words of encouragement and sent PM's over the past couple of months. It's been an educational experience and I hope this thread will benefit others or at least give them hope on their own SS's.

Jake

5/3: Buyer had inspection done, only 1 small issue and she chose to ignore it. She release contingencies and signed her loan docs later that day.
5/5: WaMu sent to QA department.
5/6: QA department sent to Closing department and they will send final approval letter and instructions for closing to the title company today or tomorrow. Buy is hoping to fund tomorrow and close Thursday. We leave for a week long trip to NC on Friday morning with a preapproval from BofA in hand to put on offer on a house there. The timing this last 2 weeks couldn't have worked out better. We'll be living with my mother in law until our kids get out of school and then driving a penske truck to NC the 3rd week of June.

Seems to be a typical scenario when there are 2 different companies servicing the 1st and 2nd. I am in the process of selling my home at short sale and it took a long time to get the 2nd, Ocwen, to finally cave in and accept the 1,000 WaMu was allowing them to get. My advice is to call back often and keep talking to different people. That's what worked with Ocwen. In the same day I was told by 3 people that they would take no less than 8,500, that they'd rather go to foreclosure and finally that the 1,000 is fine and I could have approval if I would just have my realtor submit a CMA (Comparitive Market Analysis). Call back and keep asking what it will take for them to accept, ask if an appraisal or BPO would help. If that doesn't work ask for a supervisor or manager.

So she called again asking if I could come up with something towards the 188k, saying that it won't be approved without it. My take is they just want to be sure I'm feeling some of the pain they will feel by taking on such a big loss. I told her I have 4k I can give at closing and she called back to say we are APPROVED! Finally, 3 months into the process, about what my realtor said it would be, but I cannot explain how much I underestimated the effort and stress that would be involved. I would not wish this process on my worst enemy, well maybe I would, but there is seriously something wrong with the system and these lenders need to get their acts together and figure out how to streamline the process and make it better on all parties involved. I took me calling them everyday for the past 2.5 months, and spending about 1 to 2 hours a day on average.

Today we are sending over an updated HUD1 showing that I will write a check to WaMu for 4k at closing. They will send us the approval letter and the buyer will be trying to close within 2 - 3 weeks. Hopefully there are no more bumps in the road and we are done dealing with the worst of it.

Jake

Here is what has happened since my last post.
4/24 - no call from WaMu
4/25 - She leaves a message saying that the "Executive Committee" had to review it due to the large amount of the loss to them. She said that she gave them the file and they were reviewing and that she expected an answer Monday ( 4/28 )
4/28 & 29 - no call from WaMu, I left 4 voicemails without a reply.
4/30 - Finally got a call today and not what I was hoping for. She said the committee will only approve it if I sign a promissory note for 188,288.18. She said from their viewpoint we have excellent credit, have not missed a single payment, etc. So basically they do not believe that I will actually let it go to foreclosure. I assured her that is exactly what I plan to do and that it was ridiculous to ask for the 188k. Our buyer has been hanging on for 2.5 months now and will walk away from the deal Friday if it hasn't been approved. If we were to go back to active on MLS right now we'd need to drop at least $25k more in price.
So, I told her in foreclosure they will lose far more than the 188k they are asking me for and that I hope they can call me back with a better answer. We'll see what happens...

Hey Christine, thanks for stopping by. Yes this short sale process is a mess, I can't tell you how stressful it's been. Hopefully you have a good outcome with your's.

Jake

You can try calling the main line and talking to someone else in the loss mit. department. Tell them you have left multiple voice mails and would like them to email her. I did that once and got a call back a day later. You can also try asking them for her supervisors name. If you get that name you can try emailing them with [email protected]. The supervisors have direct phone numbers that ring at their desk where the only way to get to the negotiator is to call the 8669268937 line and enter their extension after all the prompts. So if you can get a supervisors phone # you should get much better response. I don't want to give out the name of the supervisor I am working with because she has been such a great help and responds the same day when I leave messages... don't want to get her mad and mess that up. Like someone said above they could be watching message boards and find stuff like this. Yeah the chances are small but I'm in a position where I can't risk it.

WaMu called back the next day (4/11) to say they had approved it but needed to get the investor to approve it as well. They submitted the package and BPO to the investor on 4/17.
4/21 I got a call from WaMu saying that the investor had requested an appraisal. The appraiser came out the next day and got it back to WaMu within a few hours.
4/23 the appraisal was submitted to the investor and WaMu has told me to expect at answer by the end of today (4/24).

Quick update. WaMu ordered a BPO on 4/2, the agent came by on Sunday. My contact at WaMu called this morning to say they received it last night and are going to review it today and should have an answer for me today or tomorrow.

That is WaMu's policy as well, that if they are taking a hit on the 1st they will not allow the 2nd to get more than 1k.
When I first went to Ocwen with that the guy laughed and said they would need 35k. So I hung up and called back, the next person I talked to said no problem on the 1k, saying that its typical and they get zero if the 1st forecloses so they might as well take the 1k. A few days later had someone else tell me they wanted 6500 to close it out, again I called back and talked with someone else and the 1k was fine. Now I have an approval letter from them stating its for a discounted payoff of $1,000 and full release of claims. :D
So I'd call your 2nd back and keep calling until you get someone that will agree to the 1k.