WASHINGTON: Shirley Burnell, a community activist from Oakland, California, has been trying to get her sub-prime loan restructured since 2007.
She never missed a payment, but the adjustable rate mortgage she got in 2004 shot up to a monthly payment she could no longer afford.
First she provided documents without getting any response, and then she was denied in April by her service, Bank of America, for not providing documents it never actually asked for.
As one part of the bank appealed that decision and approved her for a trial modification, another part denied her again twice providing two new reasons in part based on inaccurate calculations, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
When asked about Burnell's case, a bank spokesman said she was unable to qualify under "imminent default provisions," a third reason that Burnell said she had never been given.
At one point, Burnell even received notice the bank would accelerate foreclosure proceedings, despite her perfect payment record and the letter itself saying the bank owed her $281.01.
"They gave you a funky loan in the first place, and now they're refusing to work with people to get it worked out," Burnell said. "It just keeps you upset all the time."
Bank of America is "committed to keeping customers in their homes whenever the homeowner has the financial wherewithal to make reasonable payments and the desire to keep the home," a spokesman for the bank said.
Three years after the foreclosure crisis began, the process to apply for a loan modification remains a bureaucratic nightmare that is complicating the housing recovery and could dull the impact of any Obama administration initiatives in the works.
The administration's biggest foreclosure-prevention effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), targeted to help 3 million to 4 million homeowners, has reached only about a quarter of that since its 2009 inception.
The program pushed mortgage services to cut interest, extend terms, or defer parts of a loan in an effort to reduce monthly payments and keep borrowers in their homes. But services have dragged their feet on providing wide-scale modifications.
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