Anatomy Of A Foreclosure

Today is the 8th. Not the 15th, as they said to call them; the 8th, because we wanted to see if anything was moving forward. We wanted to see if there was any news at all. So, we waited a week from our last call, and called them again. I was all settled in for another 20-30 minutes of frustration.

Wow.

Today was the first sign that I know of that Litton knows what is going on; that there might be some financial trouble out there.

Granted, the people in Litton surely must understand that there is a problem in the financial world. But until now, I had not seen where that knowledge translated into a policy shift. It's as though they were still acting as though there wasn't an overabundance of foreclosure inventory. They were heading right down the road to foreclosure with us, and no attempts to communicate or reason were met with any interest at all.

Note I used the past tense there.

Today's call was ... mind blowing. When I called this time, Carmen P. answered the phone. She told me that she was happy to deliver the good news; that our trial modification was approved. The significance of this didn't strike me just yet. What does a trial modification mean? Is it like the last time they modified us, where the monthly payment went up by $900.00 a month?

Not even close.

Apparently, Litton mailed out the acceptance documents on July 2nd. We haven't received them yet, but they may be in today's mail. Here's the details:

• Our first payment is due August 1st
• This is the beginning of a 3 month trial
• Interest rate is at 2% for this trial
• At the end of the trial, providing we have made the payments as stated and provided all the documents requested, Litton will look at the market rate, and begin stepping us to that rate. Hypothetically - if the standard market rate is 5%, we will begin a periodic (possibly annual) step from 2% to 5%; so the first year at 2%, second at 3%, etc.

See? Wow. Just... Wow.

So at 2%, my payment is going to be a bit more than half of what it's been. Even at 5%, the payment will be significantly lower than the previous payment.

Moral of the story? Stay persistent, if you're still in your home, it's not too late to talk to the lender. Keep at it... This is a total 11th hour save, and I can't believe it will be the only one.

-=C=-