Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Wild women do, and they don't regret it!

I'm three weeks into my new position, and so far I'm really happy. At my firm, we mostly focus on loan modifications and debt settlement. Most of my clients are my behind on their mortgage and can't afford to pay their mortgage and all their other household expenses. Through a federal program enacted by President Obama, Making Homes Affordable, if you can get a lender to agree to drop the mortgagee's payment to about 38% of their monthly gross income, this program will subsidize the lender the other 7% so that the mortgagee is only paying about31% out of their monthly gross income. While 31% may seem like a high amount, its pennies to what these people have already been paying.

One of my clients was just offered a trial plan, which is a 3 month payment plan, before their are accepted into a permanent plan, that will save her over $600 a month on her mortgage. That's an insane amount.

On top of that, a lot of our clients have serious amounts of credit card debt, and if they're not paying their mortgage, they definitely aren't paying their credits. So I also get to negotiate payments on their debts for pennies on the dollar.

Its really satisfying to help these clients, because they really do need the help. But its also incredibly frustrating to deal with a lot of these lenders. Its always a waiting game. You send something in, they don't upload into their system for 3 days. 2 weeks later, they tell you the form isn't right and they need a new one. And the process starts all over again. A lot of my clients have also already tried to negotiate with their lender or handle their own loan modification, only to be ignored and pushed away. Its incredibly frustrating that you sign a note for this large sum of money, and they'd rather not help you at all.

Its also frustrating because you wonder why on earth a lender would ever agree to giving a person a mortgage of this caliber. Sometimes it seems like they've been waiting for the mortgagee to fail all along. The flipside is though given our economy a lot of clients had no problem paying their bills and had plenty of money left over. But when the economy took a dive, a lot of people lost their jobs, had reduced hours, etc. Its not just that people agreed to a mortgage they could never afford.

I'm sure to anyone reading this, it screams out "NERD," however its actually gratifying when you can get a lender to work with you and you can help someone out their financial mess.

To make a long story short, work is going well. Its a lot of hours and it can be pretty intense, but I seem to handle it well and my clients seem to be happy with my performance. I also manage to make it to the gym about 4 days a week after work and I try to make it there one day on the weekend; however it is a 30 minute drive from home, so sometimes that can be pushing it.

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