“The dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens…must be broken, or it will break us.”
Thomas Jefferson
They are telling you to run away from loan modification companies who charge a fee. They are paying the politicians to introduce laws making it difficult for you to hire an attorney when negotiating a loan workout. They want you to contact them directly and without the assistance of an advocate. They are scaring you to think that anyone who charges a fee for helping you negotiate a loan modification must be a crook. They claim all mortgage professionals, lawyers and forensic loan examiners who charge a fee are scam artists. They say it should all be free because theoretically you can do all of it yourself.
Just like you can file your own taxes and represent yourself in court, you can also spend the time and effort to learn the ins and outs and nuances of negotiating a favorable loan modification with the same predatory bank that put you in the mess you are in. You can stay up all night and study law so you can go up against their high priced lawyers. You can take time off work and stay on the phone four hours a day trying to get through to their loss mitigation departments. You can re-send the same documents over and over again because mysteriously they keep losing your entire file more than once. That is right you can certainly do this all yourself.
And the reason why you should go to the negotiating table all alone and without any backup is because they want to protect you from the big bad lawyers, mortgage auditors and loan modification companies who have the nerve to charge a fee for helping you! Imagine that. People actually want to make a living while providing a valuable service. What a crime.
Is anyone with an IQ above 10 buying this nonsense? If you had a choice would you go to an IRS audit without a skilled CPA? Would you defend yourself in a criminal trial without the best lawyer money could buy? So why should negotiating with a bank be any different than negotiating with the IRS? Because bankers are more ethical than IRS agents? That must be it.
The same ethical banks who are so concerned about you getting ripped off are going to court every single day, fabricating documents and lying under oath so they can foreclose on mortgages they don’t legally own. They have been paid in full by third parties and are now foreclosing so they end up with the property, the money, and a deficiency judgment. They are backdating assignments and forging signatures because most borrowers are not challenging them in court. So of course they don’t want you to hire an advocate. Of course they don’t want an expert to audit your loan documents. They want you to take whatever they offer you and quietly go away. They want you to sign new loan documents and waive your rights because the old ones will not stand up in court under scrutiny.
But more and more people are waking up and fighting for their rights. One of the most important victories for homeowners came on June 19, when Ohio Bankruptcy Judge Morgenstern-Clarren agreed with debtors Kenneth and Michelle Wells and ruled that U.S Bank had failed to prove ownership of their mortgage thus not allowing the bank to file a claim. U.S Bank was not the original lender and it had not secured a proper assignment after purchasing the loan. It is worth noting that the majority of loans originated in the past few years were securitized and sold without proper assignments, so you can only imagine the impact this ruling will have on the millions of pending and future bankruptcy and foreclosure cases.
This is a war you can win as long as you surround yourself with aggressive and skilled advocates and not allow corrupt bankers and politicians manipulate you any more than they already have. It is your right to hire and pay for a forensic examiner and an attorney if you so choose. Don’t let them take this right away from you when you need it the most.
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