Well it may be about time. It appears after many long months of distressed borrowers trying desperately modify their mortgage or short sale their property their frustrations may be finally heard. It has recently been reported that the Treasury Department is planning to rate mortgage companies on how they treat customers as part of the Obama administration's $75 billion foreclosure relief effort.
How do you think Bank of America and other will rate?
Read the full story below….
The new report will include measurements of how each company is handling borrowers and is expected by July, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Senate lawmakers on Thursday.
More than 100 companies participate in the program, which is designed to help up to 4 million borrowers avoid foreclosure.
Speaking in unusually strong language, Geithner said many companies "are not responding to the needs of responsible and increasingly desperate homeowners."
If they don't comply with the program's rules, he said, "We will withhold incentives or demand their repayment."
The program is designed to lower borrowers' monthly payments by reducing mortgage rates to as low as 2 percent for five years and extending loan terms to as long as 40 years. Mortgage companies get taxpayer incentives to reduce borrowers' monthly payments. Homeowners have to complete at least three months of payments to qualify for permanent loan modifications.
About 231,000 homeowners have completed this process so far. That's about 20 percent of the 1.2 million borrowers who started the program over the past year.
Many experts say that's inadequate. "Families are tragically being foreclosed on when foreclosure was preventable," said Richard Neiman, New York's top banking regulator and a member of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel. The panel was set up to oversee the government's financial bailout programs.
And the number of dropouts is rising. About 155,000 homeowners didn't complete the initial trial phase. Another 2,900 fell out even after their loans were modified. Many more are still in limbo.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press, Alan Zibel, AP real estate writer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I would love to see Bank of America get a report card from the real estate community. For years BofA has tried to build relationships with us to get us to refer our buyer clients to them for new loans. I for one was a very loyal supporter of the bank and my local BofA mortgage officer. They took great care of my clients. Now that the market has changed they are killing us. Is that anyway to say thank you for all the business we have sent them? Their short sale department is bar none the worst on the planet. Their staff are unprofessional, untrainded and in many cases just plain not responsive. There new Equator System isn't improving anything. They have deficiency language in 99% of their approval letters. They take months and months to approve a short sale and then they want you to close it in 15 days. We all know BofA can't close a new loan in 15 days. Who are they kidding. Their system is soooo broken. I for one will no longer represent sellers or buyers on short sales where BofA is the servicer. I will recommend that the sellers consider foreclosure as this will be less stressful and the process much shorter. Buyer RUN like your hair is on fire if the short sale is with BofA. It may never close.
Bank of America is a joke when it comes to working with distressed mortgages. They will not not contact you to answer questions they don't return phone calls. Every time there is an offer they drag their incompetent feet and loose records. They make you get an offer and then they pass your file to someone else and you have to start over. We started in February and this week after the fourth agent they came back with a counter offer and the only buyer for our house in two and one half years had enough and decided to look some where else. I hope Bank of America is investigated by the government for fraud. If they are receiving assistance from the government it should be stopped.