Oops. It looks like one couple’s home loan was modified right out from under them:
PHOENIX — Despite being up-to-date on their modified mortgage payments, a Valley couple found Chase foreclosing on their home.
"You work so hard. Put a lot of money down on your house. You pay your taxes. You pay your mortgage, and it’s all stolen from you,” said Jeff Zerner, the homeowner.
He and his wife, Yanthy, found out about the foreclosure when the new owner posted a notice on their door Nov. 4.
“I get this notice that says you have five days to vacate the property,” he said. “So I called the number (on the notice) and I say, ‘Who are you?’ and they say, ‘We’re the legal owners of this house. It went up for foreclosure."
Just days before, the Zerners thought their home was safe. They had finished their trial modification with Chase and were led to believe they would qualify for a permanent modification.
“We paid Chase several hundred dollars, which they accepted in good faith,” said Zerner. "I feel extremely ripped off.”
Chase officials admit they made an error by selling the house.
How did this happen?
Loan modifications and foreclosures are parallel processes. In the Zerners case, the sides failed to communicate with each other to halt the foreclosure until it was too late.
It doesn’t sound like the bank has a lot of confidence in the ability of their borrowers to go on to permanent modification. Homeowners in a loan modification process might want to keep an eye out for a Notice of Trustee Sale, just in case.
What strikes me is that in this era of supercomputers this kind of thing happens quite a bit. Here in my own town in Massachusetts they still have not chnaged the property tax bill name for my address a year after I bought it (from my wife’s mom, so not big deal). When I called the clerks office they said this is normal. OK. I imagine a simultaneous modification/foreclosure process would certainly miss each other as well.
What’s funny to me is the wording of the story. They quote the poor, forlorn homeowner saying “You pay your mortgage, and it’s all stolen from you.”
Um, no jackass, you apparently sought a modification because you WEREN’T paying your mortgage in the amount you actually contracted for. And they don’t call him on this. Did he have a written agreement to amend the agreement and change the payment amount? If so, then the sale was probably illegal, and if not, then you get what you pay for (which is apparently a lot less than the cost of the house he was living in if his mortgage was only “several hundred dollars”).