Question:

How can I stop a foreclosure sale date?

Answer:

You can’t really stop a foreclosure sale date, but can only postpone it. The outcome depends largely on each lender or servicer, but your sale date will definitely not be postponed without a viable and workable laon modification or short sale already in progress. Even then, postponement is never guaranteed. Preseverance and patience are needed in the postponement process.

While I have worked with a few servicers and lenders who will automatically postpone a pending sale date with a workable short sale or modification, that is rare. Most lenders/servicers require that a request be placed to postpone the sale date. Each lender/servicer has different criteria for these requests.

Bank of America, for example, requires a “request to postpone” be called in no more than five days before a sale date. Contact your specific lender/servicer as soon as you receive the forecosure notice on your door …

Being on either side of a short sale is tough enough, but at least one company appears to be outsourcing their work to employees or contractors who are based outside of the United States – creating a whole new layer of complications to the short sale process.

I encountered this when starting a short sale for a client in which I had to reach out to Ocwen Loan Servicing. Ocwen Loan Servicing, based out of Florida, services a huge number of loans in the U.S. Different than lenders, loan servicers don’t actually lend money for loans. In essence, servicers process the mortgage for a fee for the lender, making sure each loan is paid on time, assessing late fees and providing customer service, including processing loan modifications and short sales.

In starting a short sale for a client, I contacted Ocwen customer service to get general information on their document submittal process. To …

As if there wasn’t enough on their plate, Bank of America and other large banks are extending their reach in the loan market by taking on the loans of other lenders. It troubles me that some of these bigger banks are taking on even more responsibilities since they are already under fire for a number of questionable foreclosure practices.

Here’s an example:  I was doing a loan modification for a client whose loan was with Taylor, Bean and Whitaker. Although off to a rough start in initially getting paperwork to them, things were going rather smoothly overall. A few months later, I was on the verge of getting a response for my client. That response never came. In fact, a Taylor, Bean and Whitaker representative informed me that the loan had been purchased by Bank of America and they no longer had information on the loan.

Weeks later, my client’s loan documents …