Reasonable Efforts - I Reasonably Doubt It

“You’re trying to get a loan mod? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! You will NEVER, EVER, get it!”

Those were the words of a foreclosure defense attorney I recently met at a birthday party for one of my friends. The attorney’s tone of voice was so shrill and bitter it had a visceral effect on me.

“Why not? SOMEBODY gets them, why not me?” I asked her.

“Ninety-two percent of the people who apply for them DON’T get them, that’s why,” she said. “The only ones who do get them have connections and hire slick lawyers to beat the system. If you’re doing this on your own, you will NEVER get a loan mod.”

I started feeling sick to my stomach. Birthday cake was no longer looking appetizing to me, which should tell you just how sick I was feeling. I live for birthday cake – and Three Buck Chuck.

“But I know of people right here in this town who have gotten loan mods on their own,” I said. Actually, I didn’t know anyone personally who has succeeded in this endeavor, I’ve just heard stories about them. I’m starting to think they are urban legends.

“Where are you in the process?” the lawyer asked me.

“Well, I haven’t been able to pay my mortgage for over two months, I’m waiting for the final decision from Freddie Mac.”

“Did you get a default notice from the bank?” she asked.

“Uh, yes, just one,” I told her.

“You’d better check up on that. They can put you into foreclosure without you even knowing it. They can sell your house right out from under you. Contact the bank first thing tomorrow and see if they have a sale date scheduled.”

She was freaking me out. How could the bank possibly put me into foreclosure without my knowing it? How could they sell my house without my knowledge?

I called the bank immediately the following day. I learned that I had been put in foreclosure that very day. What a coincidence.

“When were you planning on telling me?” I asked Jane, the bank foreclosure person.

“You will get a notice from the attorney we hired.”

“Can I pay something to stop it? I mean, I could pay something, not much, but something.”

“No, you can’t. We can no longer take your money. You have to get reinstated through the lawyer we hired. And there will be additional costs. You’ll owe legal fees, penalties, fines. Contact the lawyer.”

“Why should I pay legal fees? You hired the lawyer, not me. You could have told me yourself that I was going into foreclosure,” I scolded.

She had no answer to that.

She gave me the name of the lawyer CitiMortgage hired, and I called them. They never heard of me. “We don’t have your case file, and until we do, we can’t do anything about it,” the snarky lawyer told me. “Contact your bank. If we don’t have your file, you can still work with the bank.” Then she hung up.

I called the bank back. I called the EXACT same number I called before. This time I spoke to Christie in Homeowner Support Department.

“You called the wrong department,” Christie told me.

“I called the very same number I called last time. It’s on the default letter I received.”

“What’s the number you called?” she asked me.  I told her.

“That’s not this number. This number is a different number,” Christie said.

“I really don’t care. Transfer me back to Jane in the foreclosure department,” I said.

“I can’t do that,” Christie said. “I can transfer you to Aisha, who is your agent who can help you.”

“NOOOO, Please, not Aisha!” I begged, but it was too late. I was being transferred.

My agent Aisha, as usual, didn’t take my call. I talked to someone else in Aisha’s department who told me Aisha is the one to help me get my loan reinstated, and to tell me about my payment options. Aisha never returned my call.

Three days later I got a letter from a DIFFERENT lawyer who was handling my case. The first lawyer I’d been referred to by the bank was the incorrect lawyer. Apparently, there’s a very large selection of debt collection lawyers in Michigan. No surprise there. The sharks are circling... Meanwhile, the clock was ticking on my foreclosure.

The lawyer’s letter began with, “All reasonable efforts afforded you to cure this default have failed…”

All reasonable efforts???!!! I got ONE letter from the bank. One. Not a phone call, not a follow-up letter, not an effort to work out a payment plan, nothing. If that’s how they define “reasonable,” I’d hate to have them for a jury, left to determine “reasonable” doubt if I were charged with a crime. I could just see it: “Well, she had a nail file in her purse, and the victim was murdered with a pointy instrument, so we don’t think there’s any reasonable doubt about it. She’s the murderer.”

The new lawyer informed me that, according to Michigan law, I could request a meeting for mediation and that would put my foreclosure on hold for 60 days.

“Then I’m requesting that meeting,” I told him.

“You can’t request it until you get a letter from us,” he said. “Then call back and request it. At that point, we can work with you.”

“What exactly will you be doing to work with me?” I asked. “Setting up a payment plan? Lowering my interest rates?”

“We will give you a package of paperwork to fill out, and then we will work with CitiMortgage to see if we can…”

SPOILER ALERT!! What he said next will either make you want to stick a pencil in your eye to offset the pain in your butt or cause you to fall off your chair laughing at the absurdity, or both.

“We will see if we can get you a HOME LOAN MODIFICATION,” he finished.

“You have got to be kidding,” I said. “I am already working with CitiMortgage to get a loan modification.”

“Then you know what paperwork we will be asking from you. It’s exactly the same,” he said.

“What is the point of this? Why should I pay you to negotiate with CitiMortgage for a loan mod when that’s exactly what I’m doing now, on my own?” I asked.

“You don’t have to work with us,” he said glibly. “But if you don’t, we can’t put your foreclosure on hold.”

Oh, now I get it. The banks are THE GOOD GUYS. They are actually creating jobs. They’re creating jobs for debt collection lawyers who can charge me to try and get a loan modification. And if - or perhaps I should say when - they fail, I then have to PAY them as well as try to come up with enough money to pay off my arrears, fines, penalties and everything else the bank says I owe them.

What a racket. Now I have reasonable doubt about the legality of all this mess.