This is a letter I’m posting on behalf of my friend Angela.
Like her, I used to believe that doing the right thing was the right path, and that if you had good intentions, it’d all work out in the end. But things in this country are so insane right now, and the mortgage companies and banks have strayed so far from decency (let alone rational thought) that situations like hers have become quite commonplace. I haven’t yet blogged my nightmare with Chase Mortgage… that’ll come later, once it’s all over. But for Angela’s story, as you can see from the letter, it is now all over.
Her story is far from unique. And that’s what’s sad. I wish I knew how to fix what’s wrong, but just like Alan Greenspan, I am at a loss to explain or contend with greed so deep it ruins its own companies.
Here’s Angela’s story.
I just wanted to report how Countrywide has treated my family and I over the last year. I have attached my last two letters to them below as text and a PDF of the form letter that they sent us, since no one human could be bothered to ever return my calls and tell me directly their decisions.
For over a year, we have tried to deal with Countrywide and been treated horribly. We first tried to save our home, got nowhere, went to sell, and now can’t even do that, because they’ve denied our short sale for being “too low”. This, for a house in one of the worst crime areas currently in West Los Angeles. Everywhere else in the city has improved, while our street specifically has become worse and worse.
We have the misfortune to be half a mile away from very affluent homes that have no crime. As a result, if you don’t know the area, you would think our home is worth a lot more money, if all you did was run a computer search. It takes nothing into account of our drug-dealing, drive by shooting infested street.
We tried to do the right thing. As of today, I’ve mailed Countrywide the keys to the house, because they’ve left us no choice. They’ve deliberately ruined our credit and put our buyer out of a house that he was happy to be getting.
I can’t adequately describe how I feel about this situation. I have always believed that doing the right thing was a reward in and of itself and paid off. I am beginning to wonder.
I hope our story can help others and can show Countrywide for the gang of thieves and fraudsters that they are. My husband and I are happy to talk to anyone about our experience. Silence would only let these people get away with murder.
Sincerely,
Angela Hunt
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Countrywide – Short Sale Department
Attn: Lori Raya
400 Countrywide Way
Simi Valley, CA 93065
Re: Angela Hunt & Matthew Hunt Loan # 169742213
2008 S. Bedford St.
Dear Ms. Raya:
Since Countrywide has made it abundantly clear that it has no intention of dealing with us in good faith, please find enclosed the keys to our house on 2008 S. Bedford St., Los Angeles, CA 90034.
We moved out of the house at the beginning of February, certain that Countrywide would do the right thing and approve our short sale, as we had one of the few buyers for our neighborhood. Considering the rampant crime, including drug-dealing and shootings that had occurred in the recent previous years, we felt lucky to have found a buyer at all and so quickly. It seemed a blessing on top of my job loss and our financial hardship that we are still recovering from.
Imagine our shock to receive a computer generated letter, dated all of two days before our escrow was supposed to close, denying our sale for having an offer that was “too low.”
When I researched doing a Deed-in-Lieu on your company website, since that seemed our final option, I discovered that it would take an additional 90 days to get approval, if at all and would be contingent on our financial situation. A situation I have sent to your company five times now, yet at no point has ever been considered “sufficient”. Apparently, if we’re not on food stamps and near homeless, we’re not worth helping. At this point, I’m sure the property will be completely foreclosed on before this approval could be received, if we would even receive it. I realized that we have no recourse.
Countrywide has for over a year done nothing to help us. From the beginning when we tried to keep our house and your company falsely reported to the credit agencies that we were 180 days late on our mortgage, when we were only 30 days late, to now, denying a hard offer on our property that we were lucky to get at all.
I am informed by my agent and others, that suing your company would do nothing to help us, so I’m letting it go, even as I know that your company will continue to report us as late and destroy our credit till the house is officially foreclosed on and goes to auction.
I hope you are happy with the outcome. I hope you get some deep satisfaction out of destroying a family’s credit worthiness and forcing us from our home. It’s the only reason I can think of that this situation could have come to pass, other than gross malfeasance and incompetence on the part of your company. We will be doing our part to share our experience with everyone we can, from the media to blogs to all relevant regulatory agencies, both state and federal. I wish you joy of the house. Over the last year, through all of our attempts to do the honorable thing, it has brought us none.
Sincerely,
Angela N. Hunt
cc: Kacie Miller Mike Costello
Angelo Mozillo Raquel Robinson, Office of the President
Linda Turner, Supervisor Office of the President Mary Archer, Legal
Daniel Whitehead, Executive Relations Coordinator Joe Riggio, Senior Vice President
Angela De Aro, Vice President Melissa Guerra, 1st Vice President
Patricia Mckenzie Rina Jariwala, Vice President, Operations
David Bigelow Chris Oltmann
OCIP Aura Armon-Howell
January 7, 2009
Office of the President
Attn: Adrienne Ely
400 Countrywide Way
MS SV-314
Simi Valley, CA 93065
Re: Angela Hunt & Matthew Hunt Loan # [redacted]
Short Sale of [redacted] – Hardship Letter
Dear Ms. Ely:
On November 17th, 2008, we received an offer on our house at [redacted], that was for less than the total amount of our loan with Countrywide. As it was the first and only serious offer we had received after being on the market since August, 2008, we accepted it, and, as requested by your company, sent a hardship letter and all other required paperwork on December 2nd to the Short Sale Department explaining our financial situation and requesting a referral for review and approval of the Short Sale.
On Monday, January 5th, 2009, over a month later, my real estate agent informed me that Countrywide had contacted her, informing her that I had to call Countrywide’s Short Sale department and request a referral for a Short Sale. This caused me serious concern, as we have been in escrow for over a month, and my understanding was that the Short Sale review and approval process had been underway since the first week of December.
When I called Customer Service, the representative—who, incidentally, refused to give me her name—told me that not only was there no record of our request for a Short Sale in the system, but there was no record of a real estate agent having ever contacted them regarding the Short Sale of our property. Our real estate agent has detailed records of phone calls made, and documents mailed and faxed over the last six weeks which clearly refute this.
The representative said that, basically, our file had been “lost”, and we needed to begin the process all over again. She told me that a negotiator would contact me within 72 hours, which also caused me concern: over the past year, I have been promised multiple times that a negotiator would be contacting me “within 72 hours” to discuss our loan, and I have never, in any of those instances, been contacted. I informed the representative of this, and she told me that despite what I may have been told in the past, no negotiator has ever been assigned to our loan…which at least explains why no one ever contacted us.
Here, in brief, is my situation. At the beginning of 2008, I was unexpectedly unemployed for four months, which led to my husband’s and my falling behind on our loan payments. I was able to find a new job, but it pays substantially less than my previous job, which makes it impossible to pay our monthly mortgage payments and still afford even the basics for survival, like utilities, food, and health care for our four year-old daughter. We initially tried to rework our loan with the Loss Mitigation department of your company, but were offered new terms that were actually worse than the oppressive terms we were trying to renegotiate. A short time later, the national financial and mortgage crisis erupted, and it became clear that—given the new, worse terms given by the Loan Mitigation department of your company—Countrywide was forcing us to either Short Sell our home or go into foreclosure. We decided to put our house on the market, knowing that it would probably not sell for the full amount of the loan, but that if we could manage to sell it, we would at least be able to pay off a portion of the amount we owed, as opposed to a foreclosure, which results in a total loss for everyone.
For over a year now, I have been trying to deal with your Loan Mitigation, Customer Service, and Short Sale departments. Every time I have asked for their assistance to reach the best possible solution to my current situation, I have been told that there is no record of any prior communication, and that I need to resubmit extensive paperwork, and that “this time”, someone will contact me. Each time, no one has contacted me, the paperwork I sent in has been “lost”, and all records of my communication have also been “lost”. I have already gone through this process four times now with the same result each time.
Additionally, I am now five months pregnant with our second child, and dealing with the ongoing promises and failures of the departments and personnel within your company is causing me greatly increased distress and aggravation, which could potentially negatively impact my health and the health of my unborn child. The Short Sale review process is supposed to take 30 days, and it has now been 35 days, and is putting at serious risk the planned closure of escrow, and all of the arrangements that my family—not to mention the buyer’s family—have made over the last 2 months. And to add one more insult to this entire process, my real estate agent contacted your company this morning and was told that, despite what she had been told just two days prior, our file—miraculously “found”—was suddenly “under review.”
In order to assure that this review process is completed promptly, and that all files and records are not “lost” yet again, I request and require that Countrywide immediately supply me with the following:
The life of our loan history
Copy of Note
Copy of the Deed of Trust
Copy of the Title
Riders
All Assignments of the Deed of Trust
Right of Rescission
Lender Final HUD-1 from closing
Copy of Initial Loan Application and Final Lender Loan Application
All Disclosures and all Loan Documents from our file
Copy of Appraisal
I also request and require that I be given the name and direct contact information of a specific representative within the Short Sale department who can directly facilitate the review and approval of our Short Sale, as the past year’s repeated behavior of lost and missing files and records indicates to me that no one has taken any responsibility for our file in any way at this time.
I am greatly disappointed in Countrywide in general and its customer service in specific. The stress of this situation has made my pregnancy more difficult, and I fear that our buyer will walk away from the deal because of Countrywide’s poor handling of our request and our file, and that all parties—myself and my husband, the buyer and his family, and Countrywide—will be left in a far worse position due to the incompetence of the Countrywide representatives’ handling of this process.
Sincerely,
Angela N. Hunt
cc: Raquel Robinson, Office of the President
Linda Turner, Supervisor Office of the President
Mary Archer, Legal
Daniel Whitehead, Executive Relations Coordinator
Joe Riggio, Senior Vice President
Angela De Aro, Vice President
Melissa Guerra, 1st Vice President
Patricia Mckenzie
Rina Jariwala, Vice President, Operations
David Bigelow
Angelo Mozilo
Chris Oltmann
OCIP
Aura Armon-Howell
