Category: Foreclosure

Chase mistake cause of foreclosure; help John’s mom keep her home

Join John’s petition to help his mother keep her home, which she is in danger of losing due to Chase’s mistake in calculating property taxes.

Chase’s current practices preys on widows or widowers of borrowers who own homes with loans taken out by their deceased spouse. These practices are also callous and cause unnecessary mental anguish to people who lose their husbands or wives.

My mother has lived in her home for almost 24 years, including her entire 19-year marriage with my step-father, who died in 2008. She was late paying her real estate taxes in 2010, and her lender Chase began escrowing taxes but made a mistake in their calculations and almost doubled mom’s payments instead of just increasing by $90 per month as they should have. My mom couldn’t afford the doubled payment, and tried to tell Chase they were collecting too much for taxes but all their associates refused to talk to her because my step-dad had gotten a veteran’s loan in his own name. Chase refused my mom’s payments for a year because they weren’t enough according to their mistaken figures, and their associates called constantly and kept asking to speak to my step-dad and sending letters addressed to him. My mom had to repeatedly tell them, “My husband is dead,” a painful and almost daily reminder of her loss. Chase would never update the information in their records even after we sent them certified death certificates twice. Chase sent mom a notice correcting her payment amount a year after the increase, which showed her correct monthly payment to be only $90 more to cover the taxes. Mom could have paid that all along, but by now she was behind because of all the payments Chase refused to accept, and Chase would never talk to her about any type of settlement or loan modification. When mom hired a lawyer Chase’s lawyer told us Chase would agree to talk to mom if she re-opened the estate file of my step-father and got them more paperwork, but after we did all that and completed all sorts of paperwork to modify the loan at their request they told us they would not work with her or even review the paperwork they had asked for because she was not the original borrower. So basically Chase made a mistake and doubled her payments, caused her mental anguish on a daily basis by making her repeat the phrase, “My husband is dead,” made her incur attorney’s fees to re-open my step-dad’s estate, made her complete paperwork they never intended to review, only to tell her they are foreclosing on her anyway.

I’m sure my mom is not the only widow or widower who has run into this situation with Chase. Chase’s practices are callous and irresponsible, especially when they caused my mom to fall behind in the first place with their own mistake in calculating her payment. Their practices are also likely to affect two especially vulnerable groups — the elderly and the poor — who are the most likely to be widowed and unable to financially handle a big change in their mortgage payment due to the lender’s mistakes, even temporarily.

Please help us tell Chase that their practices on dealing with widows and widowers are not acceptable, and get them to modify mom’s loan like they do with other homeowners and let her make payments to keep her house.

Bad bad Chase, Foreclosure, Ineptitude | admin January 8, 2013 | Comments (1)

Chase plays games with bankruptcy

From a reader:

We are looking for help with this again. We were notified buring our BK7 due to our business failing and the economy. We recieved out of the blue a notice to foreclose on our home for non payment and a hearing date set for June. We immediatly contacted chase to speak with someone about this, at first they were very nice indicating according to their records all is fine and up to date. THEN, hold on…bla bla..sorry we cant talk to you contact your attorney. We did and $1000 later and a stinging letter, and all our bank docs and cancelled checks Chase cashed.. to the attorney rep Chase they droped the case. They did not repond to her RESPA letter.. just kind of sorry and withdrew the motion. We continue to pay what is on our statement every month..period. our bankruptcy is over, then it just happened again! A notice to foreclose to due lack of payment, and we have not missed a payment.. So I am almost convinced Chase deals wiith people whom have a note discharged in a different
manner in an effort to wear them down and leave the home so they can retain there interest they lost in the BK…HELP, we cant afford $1000 every time chase make this mistake.

Bad bad Chase, Foreclosure | admin September 22, 2012 | Comments (1)

Chase Loss Mitigation Guide

Want to know how Chase handles customers in arrears? Someone uploaded Chase’s Loss Mitigation Guide for Prime Collections to Scribd. Makes you wonder if the have a different guide for subprime borrowers.

Customer service, Foreclosure | admin July 3, 2012 | Comments (1)

Another example of Chase destroying someones life unnecessarily

Posting this on behalf of a reader. Another example of Chase’s ineptness or downright uncaring attitude royally screwing a customer. If you got screwed by Chase in a bogus foreclosure, check this out. They might have to pay you for their mistakes.

How Chase Mortgage practically ruined my life

146 Stonegate Circle

After divorce, I kept the home and refinanced to my name, the loan was sold to Chase

The story is so complex and twisted, I hardly know where to start. What should have been a simple mistake made by the mortgage company, Chase, to my payments caused a downward spiral which has lasted for years and led to much turmoil and grief as I find myself now unemployed, swimming in debt and living in a 2 bedroom apartment while my home sits abandoned with Chase completely unreachable, sending me conflicting mail, conflicting balances & completely unwilling to correct the situation?

It all started several years ago in the beautiful Summer months. I am a single Mom of three fun and active girls, working a very demanding job in management in a Japanese Automobile company, making a fairly impressive salary. I struggled as any Mom would with affording extras; however, I made my mortgage payments and all other payments with a fair amount of ease and managed to add some enjoyment after the bills were paid. Just before the ending of my 15 year marriage, my ex-husband and I purchased this home at 146 Stongegate Circle. The home was an effort to save our marriage as we were both commuting and maintaining a much larger home and the three girls. In the divorce, I was awarded the home and would need to refinance if I could not sell. I did not necessarly plan to stay in the community due to my lack of emotional support in the community and the undesirable Lincoln School System. However, I happily made payments & poured some energy into landscaping and other improvements to the home for enjoyment and to improve the value in hopes of eventually selling. Eventually, I was forced to finance in my name by my ex-husband and all was well–or so I thought–I had a fixed-rate mortgage with my insurance included in the payment which I set up for automatic deduction from my bank account so as to never be late while managing my complex life. I never put any thought into insurance and continued to assume it was with the original insurer, Howell Hurt. I did receive a letter that the mortgage had been sold to Chase, but all would remain the same.

Just making my payments and planting my flowers

The nightmare begins-!st month Chase overcharges by nearly $300

One fine day in Alabama, I am managing my job as a Quality Engineer/Manager and I receive an email that my car insurance payment-which is automatically deducted-is declined due to insufficient funds. I am puzzled as I keep enough of a balance to know my bills will clears. Immediately I log on to my bank account to see if someone has stolen my identity and what I see first is the first of a series of months of torture from Chase. My house payment had been deducted, but it wasn’t the typical $1047.00. Instead, Chase had deducted $1355.00. Not too much of a difference this time, however as a single Mom, I am managing it closely. I decided not to panick because in my life I have learned ‘everything can be worked out–usually with a nice phone call– everything until now. I am going to walk you through the steps that led to my payment escalating to nearly $1500 dollars, harassing phone calls at work from collectors, yet noone could help resolve the issue, eventually leaving the home in fear of foreclosure, hostility at work leading to unemployment, rental home burning and I am now unemployed, homeless and Chase will not provide any relief– just continued phone calls to collect a debt I did not owe. The stress this has caused me is impossible to place into words.

Landscaping improvements

What happens when you call Chase?

Here’s the process. Call the number for Chase. Auto system answers and request your account number. You enter you account number. The auto system tells you the current payment information; You are eventually given the opportunity to request to speak to a representative; Wait. A representative finally gets on the phone and it is difficult to understand them as they have a very strong accent. You begin to explain there is a problem with your account and the endless chain of transfers begin-each time placing you back through the system to re-enter your account number, hear the account information, representative; transfer. At some point your lunch break is over. I began to sneak off into conference rooms to get on the phone, taking lots of breaks and doing all I could to try to straighten this out. I was transferred to every department and met with the same repeated routine.

Getting my job done before Chase started harassing me

Bills are getting behind, frustration is mounting & work is suffering

Next month. Same drill. After three months of being overcharged and nobody can tell me why, I am starting to get behind on other bills. My insurance can’t be paid. My insurance on my vehicle is cancelled due to late payments. The bank financing my car receives notice and places a forced insurance on my vehicle, several hundred dollars a month. Received a ‘random’ audit from the state of Alabama on car insurance. Tried to explain and fax proof of insurance. Continue calling Chase every other day. People at work start staring at me while I’m on the phone. As a female manager, it is easy to become a target. Females in HR giving me dirty looks. I shrug it off.

Chase admits mistake & makes attempts to correct

FINALLY. I speak with the mortgage company who sold my loan to Chase. They were so very apologetic this was happening to me. Turns out the local insurance company had a scandal and sold all it’s business to another insurance company. The information was somehow messed up and Chase was billing the wrong insurance company. Did not find insurance so placed a more expensive insurance which drained my escrow. I had no knowledge of this. Chase apologized and reimbursed me the overcharges.

Next month…. payment up to $1455. This was not corrected until I moved out of the house. I moved out of the house? Yes. The demise continued to a point where the only hope I had of surviving was leaving the house and renting before foreclosure and then sue.

Ok. So months continue until I decide the only way for me was to pay the amount I owed… not what there statements said (which changed every month on a fixed rate mortgage. I must’ve have spoken to every single representative in every single department at Chase. At the same time, the loan modification rage started. This seemed to be the ONLY department that would work with me. They were holding a workshop in Atlanta, Georgia for those struggling with their mortgage. I went. I took a day from work and headed to Atlanta to meet face to face with my enemy, Chase Mortgage. By the time this meeting occurred, I had been overpaying Chase for a year, took out 2 credit cards to continue the excess charges while they were working it out, stayed behind on other bills and felt completely trapped. At some point, I declared to Chase that I would STOP paying the amount they were charging and only pay what my payment was supposed to be. Therefore when I sent my 1100 dollar payment, they would hold it over til the next month and apply to the next payment and my mortgage was falling behind.

The representative seemed to be a very nice man. He assured me he could take care of it. His idea was to modify the loan and start over. Great. I brought him most of the information he needed to the meeting and we exchanged emails. I explained I am ultra busy at work and I am being watched carefully. (My environment had continued to worsen at work; The HR dept. seemed determined to prove I was doing something besides working) I let him know I would have a tough time making copies and getting information. Now, every time I sent him something, he’d ask for something else. The process grew more complicated and I grew more frustrated. He was requesting I prove I had hardship. My only hardship was caused by Chase’s mistake. He continued to treat me as if he was doing me a favor and I’m holding up the process by not showing hardship. I continued to remind him I did not lose my job, I did not suffer a loss of income, that my hardship was Chase had made a mistake on my mortgage. It came to a point when I realized this modification process was not going to happen. I placed my home on the market and prepared for the worse. I knew I must sell it before I lost it. Well, then, guess what? Somehow this representative contacted my realtor.My realtor called and let me know, he thought they were starting foreclosure. This caused a strain with my realtor and myself as I assured him I had done my best to keep paying while Chase was over-charging.

Chase representative will not help and will not give me another representative

Suddenly the Chase representative became very rude and would not return my emails. I asked him to PLEASE assign me to a new representative. I never heard another word back from him. I did not know what to do. I kept getting phone calls from Chase,repeatedly on my work phone. I tried to tell them over and over that I had a rep I was working with. I spent way too much time on the phone with them. Co-workers began to give me disdainful looks at I hid in conference rooms for privacy. The worst happened when I spent too much time prior to going into work one am and an HR Manager began to record my time. I did not know at the time how much I was being watched. They actually asked a guard to log my time as I traveled between plants. She began to question associates who worked with me about what time I arrived and if I was on the phone. I filed a complaint as this was now harassment.

I was stressed beyond words. I still had done nothing wrong. I paid my payments just fine until Chase made this mistake. Now, my car insurance premium was high, my mortgage was behind, my home wouldn’t sell, the representative wouldn’t return my emails, I now had credit card balances, feared foreclosure and now feared losing my job. All because I did nothing but attempt to pay my mortgage to keep a home for me and my three girls.

I felt forced to Rent before my credit was ruined…. then, the worst happened… lost my job and my rental home burned. Still no help from Chase

Not knowing what to do, I figured if Chase would not modify and they were threatening foreclosure; it would be best to leave now and rent before they ruined my credit. I did. I left the home on the market and rented a farmhouse for me and my girls and told Chase I was tired of the struggle, just go ahead and foreclose. Now, I’m maintaining the Power Bill at the old home and the new. I continued to visit the home owned by Chase and paint and keep it up. Yet, they charged me a huge amount of money to winterize the home.

I asked the Chase representative repeatedly to give me another representative. He would not answer my emails. I never got another representative. I eventually lost my job due to the situation caused by Chase Mortgage. Then, shortly after, I came home to find a horrible accident of unknown origin happened and my home that I rented had burned. I am now jobless and homeless. I cannot make the mortgage, I cannot modify the loan, I cannot get Chase to return my emails, I cannot sell the home and Chase is completely unreachable. The power bill for the home owned by Chase was up to 1500 dollars to maintain it while trying to sell. I never got a new representative to work with so every attempt to talk to them was still the same chain of representative transferring my calls. I can’t afford the power bill to even move back in, so I rent a nasty apartment that flooded and had

Bad bad Chase, Foreclosure, Ineptitude | admin June 24, 2012 | Comments (2)

The time to challenge your foreclosure is NOW!

If there ever was a time to challenge your Chase foreclosure, it is now.

It’s late, and it’s limited, but for borrowers who feel their homes were wrongly or inappropriately foreclosed upon in 2009 and 2010, there is now recourse.

As part of a larger enforcement action (so-called “consent orders”) taken last April against fourteen of the nation’s largest mortgage banks/servicers following the so-called “robo-signing” scandal, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is beginning a “multi-faceted independent review of foreclosure actions.”

The major banks, including Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, GMAC, and EMC, will have to fund these independent reviews to evaluate, “whether borrowers suffered financial injury through errors, misrepresentations, or other deficiencies in foreclosure practices.” If they did, those borrowers get some kind of “remediation.”

“The challenge is substantial, but the steps we have required the servicers to take are vitally important to resolving these issues in a way that respects the rights of those who have been harmed and helps to restore confidence in the system,” said John Walsh, Comptroller of the Currency in a statement.

The major mortgage servicers began sending out letters to eligible borrowers today to explain the process. The requests for the reviews must be received by April 30, 2012. So how many do they expect will request these reviews, given that there are potentially four and a quarter million eligible borrowers according to the OCC?

Read more …

While most of the press I’ve read about this focuses on people who were foreclosed upon that should not have been (i.e. they were current on their mortgage) that represents just a small portion of the people Chase has wronged.

Where Chase has done the most harm is with the people that it told to stop paying their mortgage so they could be considered for a loan modification (and then foreclosed), the people that Chase said didn’t qualify for a loan modification (even though they should have), and the people that Chase blatantly foreclosed upon while they were in a trial modification and paying according to the rules (parallel foreclosure).

It is hard to say whether such customers will get a serious look under this program, but by challenging the foreclosure anyways, you are helping to send Chase a message and perhaps the regulators overseeing this process will take notice.

In other words, it’s worth a shot.

Foreclosure | admin November 7, 2011 | Comments (0)

Sacramento homeowner loses house twice to [mistaken] foreclosure

Oh bother, and Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says that no-one has lost their home due to paperwork errors. WRONG!

SACRAMENTO, CA – Miriam Lord lost her home of 19 years to a bank error, then lost it again while the bank tried to correct its mistake.

“It was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing,” said Lord’s attorney, Paige Hibbert.

Lord fell behind in her payments to Chase Home Finance two years ago following a divorce and personal injury, but was approved to enter into a trial loan modification program in March 2010.

“If you make your new payments timely…we will not conduct a foreclosure sale,” the letter from Chase promised.

Home auctioned during trial period

Lord dutifully made four monthly payments by mail and in person at the Chase branch near her home beginning in April 2010.

When Lord called Chase in July 2010 to ask about progress on a permanent loan modification, a bank representative told her the house had been sold at auction.

Fannie Mae, which owned the loan serviced by Chase, began eviction proceedings a month later.

Homeowner evicted

Lord fought the eviction on the grounds the foreclosure was improper, but a Sacramento judge ordered her out of the house no later than Feb. 1, 2011.

Lord and her teenage son moved into a rental house at the beginning of the year.

Loan payments misapplied; bank realizes mistake

Chase bank statements later revealed the four trial loan modification payments had been applied to the wrong account.

Property records suggest Chase and Fannie Mae recognized the error in early March, when the trustee’s deed upon sale was formally rescinded.

Foreclosure round two

On March 12, Chase sent Lord a letter notifying her that her loan modification had been approved, but the bank sent the letter to the house where she no longer lived.

Lord, of course, made no mortgage payments because she didn’t know the house was hers again.

Warning letters came in the spring, followed by notice of a new foreclosure auction scheduled for Aug. 4.

Vacant house vandalized

Hibbert said the bank’s letters were eventually forwarded to Lord’s new address, but by the time she got them, the house was already a wreck.

Following Lord’s eviction, the house was vandalized, fixtures were stolen and there was evidence squatters had taken up residence.

“In essence what (Chase) said was ‘here, have a piece of garbage back. Now you’re the owner. Start making payments again,'” Hibbert said.

Hibbert is suing Chase for $1 million in general damages plus $5 million in punitive damages claiming negligence, unlawful business practices and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Chase spokeswoman Eileen Leveckis said she could not comment on the circumstances surrounding the double foreclosure because of the pending litigation.

Adding insult to injury

Sacramento County code enforcement filed a complaint against Lord in July about the shabby condition of the home because she is still the owner of record.

The Aug. 4 auction was postponed for unknown reasons and according to Auction.com, no new date has been set.

Lord said she has no interest in returning to the only house she ever owned.

“It used to be a home and it’s no longer a home,” Lord said. “It’s just got a lot of bad memories.”

Full story

Foreclosure, Ineptitude | admin September 29, 2011 | Comments (0)

Come on Chase, have a heart

Oh Chase, you just really want bad publicity, don’t you? For God’s sake, just let this father of an injured active serviceman coming home from Iraq stay in his home a little longer so that the son has a home to come back to. After all, you are foreclosing because you told him to miss payments so he would qualify for a loan modification.

20-year-old soldier Aaron Collette is currently on a tour of duty in Iraq. Next month, he’s scheduled to return to Oregon for two weeks of hard-earned leave. After surviving an IED explosion next to his squad this month, Aaron is looking forward to some quiet time with his family.

There’s a problem, though. Through no fault of their own, Aaron’s family will be kicked out of their home on August 9th – just ten days before Aaron returns. JPMorgan Chase is foreclosing on Aaron’s father Tim Collette, and has so far refused to modify Tim’s mortgage.

Tim Collette is on a mission to save his home – at least, temporarily. He’s simply asking for Chase to delay foreclosure proceedings so that Aaron can come home to Oregon this summer.

Like many homeowners in foreclosure, Tim Collette played by the rules. He put a $100,000 downpayment on his home when he purchased it back in 2006. But when the economy crashed in 2008, Tim’s cabinet refinishing business dried up. Tim struggled to make his mortgage payments each month, and eventually called Chase for assistance in restructuring his loan.

The bank told Tim that he’d need to miss two payments to qualify. Once he did that (per the bank’s instructions), the bank began foreclosure proceedings. After yanking Tim around for more than a year, Chase decided not to modify Tim’s mortgage and scheduled the final foreclosure date for June 20th.

When news of Tim’s story initially broke, JPMorgan Chase quickly told reporters they’d find a solution for Tim and placed his June 20th foreclosure on hold. But as soon as the media attention waned, the bank called Tim again and told him the foreclosure was back on – now scheduled for August 9th.

U.S. law prohibits banks from foreclosing on the homes of active duty military members, but JPMorgan Chase has mistakenly foreclosed on at least 27 service members. Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said of this mistake, “There is no class of citizen that we hold in higher regard…this is the worst [mistake] we’ve made. We deeply apologize to our veterans … and we’re sorry.”

Tim’s son Aaron isn’t the homeowner in this situation. But this is Aaron’s home. It’s his bedroom. His family. His safe place to return to after serving his country in Iraq. Chase Bank has already shown that, when under scrutiny by the media and with the determined advocacy of groups like Economic Fairness Oregon, they’ll delay foreclosure proceedings. Let’s see what happens when Change.org activists send thousands of messages to Chase Bank in support of Tim and his family.

Bad bad Chase, Foreclosure | admin June 29, 2011 | Comments (1)

What gives when Chase calls you to offer a short sale?

We recently received this comment from a reader:

Hello, I have a property which was a 2nd home. My brother-in-law and I bought it 7 years ago in Nevada. A few years back I started covering my brother-in-laws share. I’am about six months unpaid and presently the property is in foreclosure. I have sent no paper-work as request since it is biased. Well around 2-months ago during the foreclosure I got a call from a Chase rep. on a Sat. morn. stating that I qualfied for a short-sell. He asked me if I wanted to proceed and to select from a list of real estate brokers they have used in the area or if I had an agent. I said I have a real estate agent and set a conference call between the rep, agent, and I. We just had an offer and I accpeted, though now they want me to sign my life away. The document they sent me is called a request for consideration of Short sell? They requested the and even set-up the short sell to me, and they offered me a 25.000.00 check upon closing with no forbearance. Have you heard of people not giving any paperwork and going this far? This is very misleading! Should I get a lawyer?

Here is my advice:

Get a lawyer! Chase is a sneaky bank and it is more likely than not that this will benefit them somehow.

For one, Nevada appears to be a state that allows for a deficiency judgement, which means that they can go after you for the amount you ow in excess of that paid on the loan through the short sale. California by comparison is a state where you can not be held liable for additional debt as a result of a short sale or foreclosure.

Until Chase either forecloses or the property is sold, they can’t do anything to go after you for the unpaid loan balance. For agreeing to a short sale, you allow them to move forward on obtaining a deficiency judgement and going after more of your assets.

Furthermore, Nevada appears to be a one-action recourse state, which means that they can either foreclose on your property, or sue you to recover the unpaid debt, but not both. By agreeing to the short sale, you are allowing them to sue you for the unpaid debt whereas otherwise they would not be able to if they foreclosed on the property.

Let me repeat my first remark – get a lawyer, preferably one familiar with Nevada law.

Bad bad Chase, Foreclosure, Tips | admin June 15, 2011 | Comments (0)

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