Your Stories
Dreams of Retirement Slipping Away
Molly from Emerald Isle, North Carolina is a home owner grappling with the grief of losing her husband and fighting for her home. She shared her story with us:
My husband died about 5 months ago. My income was cut about $1700 per month. I have not missed a payment or ever been late with one, yet [my bank] will not renegotiate my mortgage or help me determine a way to make the present one workable for me. I am 66 years old and have been handicapped since age 22, following a stroke. I manage quite well considering my disabilities, but my husband's death and this financial crisis collided to cause me to have to sell my home. I do not want to move and do not know if the housing market will even rally enough for me to find a buyer. I would prefer to refinance and continue paying my bills and living in the retirement home that my husband and I enjoyed.
Tell us your story, have you tried to modify or refinance your mortgage?
A Business in Need of Loans
Richard from Salt Lake City, Utah owns a motorcoach company with buses financed by a bank that has received TARP funds.
Richard is frustrated by his restricted access to credit in this difficult economic climate and writes in frustration that, “Although it is my understanding that these funds were meant to loosen credit markets, it seems that [the bank] is doing nothing more than increasing efforts to close down small business.”
Richard has been a “customer for close to 20 years with an exemplary financial record,” and he is frustrated that the bank isn’t willing to be more flexible with his loans and is instead threatening repossession.
He worries that his “own tax dollars… will do nothing more than close my business.”
A Family Struggling to Refinance
Marilyn from Charleston, South Carolina and her husband, retired from the air force, have owned their home for nine years. They never had a problem paying their bills until this year, with cutbacks in her husband’s work week
When Marilyn and her husband tried to refinance their loan, they were told that their debt to income was too high considering her college loans. Even though they paid their bills on time, they are unable to refinance their loan at a more affordable, lower interest rate.
Marilyn asks: “What are the banks waiting for to give people in our situation a loan? What if the banks were told that their debt to income was too high and we could not bail them out?”
“We are the people who need help right now,” she says.
Jennifer’s Story:
“My home is so underwater I don’t know if it’s worth it”
Jennifer from Los Angeles, California recently passed on her story to the Panel:
To make a long story short, I've had an extreme hardship the past year and a half. It started with a loss of my job, then my Grandfather who lived in Northern California had heart, spine and stomach surgery (and serious problems with his caregiver) and I needed to travel up North and help. Just before this - almost 2 years ago - I had a major amount of money in equity in my house. Because I wasn't working I decided to do a HELOC loan on my house as a very temporary solution. Shortly after I did the HELOC loan I decided to take a safer route instead of drawing from the HELOC… I decided to sell my house to get the cash out… I put my house back on the market to try to sell. It was not selling so I kept reducing the price. I used my HELOC money to pay my mortgage. I used my IRA money to pay my mortgage. I now know this was not a good idea, but it was not apparent that the housing market would crash this hard when I was in the middle of this, and I didn't have good advice. I tried for months and months to sell my house, but it was becoming underwater. I had to do the work myself without a realtor because I could not afford the commission, and the realtors did not want to spend money marketing the house.
I had tried to get my lender to work with me for months to refinance down to a reasonable interest rate (my HELOC was 9.75%), but they would not. I finally had no more HELOC or IRA and had to stop paying my mortgage. It ruined my credit. I immediately tried to contact my lender again. After several months and several times trying they agreed to modify my loans. I have been in the middle of a modification for months and months now… I have had to spend so much time dealing with this that it has become almost a full time job. When you're in this situation you just keep thinking…ok, if I can just get through this next little while the market will pick back up again…no one had any idea the extent of the problem…so you just keep holding on…but it doesn't get better, it just keeps getting worse.
I would like to keep my house. I have lost everything in an attempt to keep it. My home is so underwater I don't know if it's worth it… I am currently trying to get back up on my feet, and I could pay a reasonable mortgage if they will work with me and adjust the mortgage to something that makes sense for both of us.
A Small Business on the Brink
Stephen from West Deptford, New Jersey owns a manufacturing company that has “grown from 2 part time employees occupying 4,800 s.f. of leased space to 8 full time employees occupying 15,000 s.f. of space.” He has invested his life savings in the business and personally guaranteed a major business loan. As Stephen says, he and his wife “have laid a very strong foundation without any government assistance of any kind.”
Because of the economic downturn, however, Stephen said, “I may be forced to attempt to sell my home and to close my factory because I cannot obtain additional funding from commercial banks and the businesses that purchase my products simply aren᾿t buying inventory in light of the current economy and their inability to obtain small business funding.”
Stephen thinks that the government should make low interest business lines of credit quickly available to small business like his, either directly or through government guarantees. “While small businesses can᾿t claim that the sky will fall if they fail,” he says, “they have been and will continue to be the backbone of the American economy and deserve to receive government help.”
He concludes: “I᾿m not looking for a government bailout; only a fighting chance to get my company through a tough time where credit is tight and the economy has stalled.”
Tell us your story.
“Our Life Fell Apart”—A Family of Public Servants at Risk
When the financial system goes south, families can find themselves facing hard times in a hurry.
Nina of Fairport, New York has been a nurse for 25 years, and her husband has been a police officer for 20 years and had perfect credit until her husband got injured on the job saving a family of seven from a burning building.
This injury moved them to the brink of financial disaster, with no help in sight.
“Our life fell apart,” said Nina, “[and we asked our mortgage company] to resume our 30 year mortgage rather than a 15 year which we took out before my husband was injured and our finances crashed.”
The career public servants have had no luck modifying their mortgage.
Even though she trusted her mortgage company to help, all she’s received is “hundreds of phone calls to collect.”
Based on her experience, Nina has come to the realization that “the perfect credit client does not exist ...life happens...things happen which you cannot control.”
Tell us your story.
An Adjustable Rate Mortgage Story
Like many Americans, Joi from Macon, GA is struggling to deal with rate changes in her adjustable rate mortgage.
She recalls, “I was marketed an adjustable rate mortgage as a way to save money, get a low interest rate and payment. I was promised that I could refinance into a fixed rate as long as I maintained a good FICO score…”
Things have not turned out as she expected because the drop in her home value has left her with negative equity. Joi wrote, “I called [my bank] to refinance but was told that I could not refinance without putting down a large amount of cash because my house went from $285,000 to $225,000.”
As a teacher, Joi does not believe that she can put together the necessary down payment to refinance and secure a more affordable mortgage payment.
She added:
Our pension is state run so I am unable to borrow from my retirement plan to save my home. I listen faithfully every night thinking that help for homeowners is coming but nothing is being done. I have been told to just stop paying so that they will have to help me but that would wreck my credit rating and drive my interest up on my credit cards which would cause more money problems for me.
Let us know about your experience.
One Broker’s View on the Foreclosure Crisis
Robert from Dana Point California is a longtime mortgage broker and real estate agent and has had a front-row seat as the housing crisis has unfolded.
He shared his story via COP.Senate.gov:
I have been in Real Estate sales for 32 years.. I have been a Real Estate broker since 1984. I am proud of my record as I have never had a complaint lodged against my license. I sold houses, investment property, sold REO and now I'm working with people who are losing their homes…
[One story] that will always stick in my mind concerns an 84 year old man who could no longer work and his 80 year old wife. His wife had two jobs trying to keep their home. She would go to work in the morning early work until about 3:00 pm go to sleep and then work as a dispatcher late in the night. I think it was for the police department in her town.We tried to get them a loan modification putting the 3 or 4 months they were behind on the back of their loan… The second lender was willing to help the 1st was not. They would not help because she could only find some of her medical bills to prove she was sick. She did have some but not the bill from the hospital were she had to pay her portion of the bill…
The lender was relentless, foreclosing on the couple and forcing them to move out in the middle of an Idaho winter…
Tell us about what you are seeing in the market today.
