Anatomy Of A Foreclosure

It has been a crazy nine day stretch since my last post. Let's see if I can do a fair job of presenting it here.

So, our foreclosure sale date was still set as the 23rd. We were still awaiting the modification documents that we had been told were mailed on the 2nd. Finally, on the 13th, my wife called Litton. When we put in our loan number, we are automatically routed to Litton Loan Services' very own Jennifer Howard. More on her later. She did not pick up the phone, my wife left a voicemail.

No callback... So V called again. Talked to someone that said she showed the documents being mailed out .. but she would mail it again. Fax, please? Maybe email? "Oh, no, we can't do those things." Seriously? In 2009, you can't fax or email documents? Sounds suspiciously like not wanting to leave a paper trail of actions. But this lady doesn't set policy, she just follows it. Fine, mail us the documents.

On the 16th, still nothing. We are now 7 days away from our sale date. Another 4 calls to Ms. Howard, with no response. Ms. Howard's voicemail also contains a fax number for faxing documents to them. So I created a script that faxed her every hour asking her to call back. Between the 16th and 17th, 27 faxes were sent and received by a fax machine on their end. No callback. So on the 17th, I called and left another couple of voicemails in Ms. Howard's voicemail box. Of course, no response.

So I finally did an end-around. I put in a bogus loan number so that I would be routed to Customer Service instead. I gave them the real loan number and asked them to fax the documents or send them by some trackable means. Or email. Of course, they are not allowed to do that. It's beginning to become clear to me now why people that go through foreclosures take chainsaws to the supporting studs in their foreclosed homes.

So I asked to speak to a supervisor. During the transfer my call was dropped. I laughed... Not quite a maniacal laugh, but ...

Okay, so I dialed back again, got a very helpful man whose name I did not write down, otherwise I would have given him credit here. Sorry, anonymous helpful guy. He put me in contact with the foreclosure team where another helpful lady named Kendall (who is apparently the only person in the organization allowed to operate the fax machine) faxed the documents to me and tried to get the foreclosure date moved back a month. Seriously, Kendall, from the bottom of my heart if you're reading this... Thank you.

So we cobbled together all of the information they needed, plus the money they wanted for the August 1st payment and stuffed it in a Fed Ex overnight envelope, and V took it to Fed Ex on Saturday for Monday delivery. Cost some bucks, but the tracking capability is crucial. If I haven't said it yet, I know that thousands of other places have - Write down EVERYTHING. Every conversation you ever have with them, every attempt at communication (there should be lots). Try to get them to send you anything via trackable means as well, though they probably will not. Document, Document, Document.

I have every one of my 27 fax receipts, each of the phone calls are documented, and with the exception of anonymous helpful guy, the names of everyone we've talked to. You hope that this information will not be needed, but it's FAR better to have it and not need it than the other way around. In truth, it helps when you're talking to others in their organization when it sounds like you're documenting everything - "On the 17th, I called and talked to so-and-so, and she said this. I'm calling back to check on the status of things..."

Anyway... This morning, having received a delivery receipt from Fed Ex, I called back and just for fun and nostalgia, left another voicemail for Ms. Howard. I have no idea why that is funny to me.

I was able to get to the Foreclosure department where I talked to another very helpful lady named Chivon. Apologies if I spelled that incorrectly. She and I talked for a while on things - First and foremost, the documents all said that there was a due date of the 15th... we didn't even receive the documents until the 17th. She assured me that it was fine, they knew that there was a disparity there... I am optimistic, but have the nagging feeling that will come back to bite me later.

We also talked about the sale date. She showed that the date had been moved back a month (I think from Kendall's good work, but I'm not sure), but that I would need to contact their attourneys to get verification. We did so, and they also showed a month reprieve. Finally, it was recommended that we contact the company that actually does the selling. We did so, and registered an account at www.fidelityasap.com, where we could actually see our house up for auction. I can't tell you how mixed my feelings were at that moment. In any event, I saw that even they had the date moved back a month... So it appears for now we have a month of breathing room to get the loan modification approved.

It's been pretty stressful, and policies and procedures that seem to impede progress just make it that much more difficult. Add in a person that refuses to return calls, and you've got a recipe for a lot of frustration.

Stay with it though, and document. Call a lot, and document everything.