A Chase mortgage holder goes through a long process of applying for a trial loan modification which takes forever (as expected) and involves sending and resending and calling and calling again, and is finally approved with a not so stellar loan modification. But she decides to decline it as she has heard all the stories about people paying trial loan modification payments for a long time only to be denied in the end and then Chase demands a balloon payment of the cumulative difference between the trial and regular payments or they will foreclose, or they just foreclose anyways.
But even though Chase didn’t get the actual Ok from her, they went ahead and started the trial loan modification anyways.
Seriously, do they have a bunch of monkeys working in the back room?
Chase has been sued in New York City by three homeowners that claim they were denied permanent mortgage modifications under the federal Home Affordable Modification Program despite the fact that they should have been eligible.
Chase claims that their incomes were inadequate for a permanent loan modifications but refused to specify what the income qualifications were. You’ve got to love that Chase.
This LoanSafe.org post claims that Chase is willing to settle HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) loans for less than the full amount:
Many people are not aware that Chase actually may allow a borrower to settle a second mortgage anywhere from five to fifty percent of the loans remaining balance.
I suppose it is worth a try, although from all the information we come across, it is certainly not a pleasure to deal with Chase on something like this.
It isn’t clear if this lawsuit is the same one we previously reported on.
The basics are that Chase has been recommending to customers facing hardships but current on their loans that they stop paying the loans otherwise they won’t be considered for a loan modification. This ends up causing all kinds of problems down the road when the customer is eventually denied a loan mod (most are) and Chase either demands all the payments in arrears immediately or ends up foreclosing in parallel with the loan modification process. In either case, it’s not good.
This story is a sad one but quite typical of Chase. Every loan modification story we hear, we learn more about just how broken the Chase loan modification machinery is.
A responsible homeowner has been in her home for 12 years, with a mortgage that was very much within her means. But she got laid off, exhausted her savings, and her prospects aren’t good. She was laid off in March 2009. In November of 2009, applied for a loan mod with Chase. She is still waiting for an answer 7 months later. What does Chase have to say about this?
When the story’s authors contacted Chase, Chase claimed that they had only received the paperwork the day the journalists first contacted them. Is it really possible for paperwork to rattle around inside Chase and only surface after seven months? That appears to be how things work there.
The good news is that once contacted by the media, Chase started working on her loan mod. So, the way to get a loan modification going is to have the media contact Chase and inquire about it. Hmm.
David Lowman is the CEO of home lending at JP Morgan Chase. During recent testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, in response to questions about what people could do if there weren’t getting help with problems like, being in a loan modification program but still getting collection letters, he told the committee that people should come to him for help.
As the video link above shows, he literally got mobbed after making that statement. Anyone with problems should take him up on his offer and try to contact him for help.
This blog seems to think (i.e. states as fact) that Chase loan modifications are simply a tool the bank uses to get more money out of people before they foreclose on them and calls the whole program a scam.
Update 4/21/10: Here is another story that is essentially the same: Chase strings someone along while they make trial modification payments, tells them they are approved, and then denies them and demands a balloon payment of all they are behind, which the customer can’t make, so Chase forecloses.
This customer applied for a loan modification and was eventually denied. Chase told them they didn’t qualify under the Federal Governments Making Home Affordable program so they processed them through Chase’s program instead, but they didn’t qualify. The customer subsequently discovered they did infact qualify MHA. Why did Chase not qualify them for this program?
Ineptitude, Loan modification | admin May 9, 2010 | 
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