In 2000 I decided to become a homeowner. I found a modular home and let the company find the financing for me. As a single parent this was an accomplishment for me. I was financed with a company called Green Point, I now know that's just a longer spelling for CROOK! I used my land as a down payment, the modular home company did the appraisal, it didn't appraise at the right value, so they had them go back and re-appraise it, since the rep knew the guy as a "friend" of his and said that he could get the value up for me.
So this time it passed appraisal and I was on my way to owning my first home, I had acheived the "American Dream".
We moved in April. Then the trouble began! The very first week we were there the electricity went out in the front half of the house. I had to get the modular company to come out and fix it. They were prompt and did it within 24 hours. Then even more problems began. The windows in the ENTIRE house failed to go up, I called the modular company to come out and fix this problem since it was a warranty issue, they said no it was not a warranty issue.
So I then decided to call my mortgage company and ask them if they could do something to help, hoping that they would want to "protect their assets". They said they could not help. So I was left to deal with trying to fix this problem myself, being a single parent this was almost impossible to do.
So at this point I'm just praying that my home does not catch on fire or that we need to make a quick escape through the windows for any reason as we would have been dead.
This was just my first month at my "dream home". I lived in that nightmare for 5 YEARS! After the first few months of these problems I just gave up. I did seek out legal advice and was told it would only bankrupt me since the seller and mortgage companies would just draw it out for as long as they wanted to since they had "deep pockets" in which to do that.
I even tried to "skip" a payment holding it "ransom" hoping that the mortgage company would make the home seller fix the warranty problems, all that did was put my credit rating in jeopardy and the problems never did get fixed. Then other troubles began. All of a sudden the mortgage copany was calling me and telling me that I was behind in payments, which I was not since I made the "ransom" payment to them. But they insisted that I pay them or they would take "their" house back.
Funny, all of a sudden it has become "their" house when they told me before about the warranty problems that it was "my" house and that I would have to fix the problems myself. But then more trouble started. The harrassing phone calls that started early in the morning and lasted well into the evening. The only relief I got from that was when the phone number got changed, I feel sorry for the person who got that phone number reassigned to them.
I did not want to lose my home. I refused to give in to their bullying tactics and harassment. But it was not meant for me. I had requested several times that Green Tree send me a printout of my payment history with them so I could see on paper what they had credited my account for and if I was really as far behind as they said I was, as I wanted to compare my payment receipts to theirs.
All I got from them was a phone conversation that said I had to catch my account up to date to get any sort of printout and until that happened they would continue to bill me and eventually take my house. They even went so far as to tell me that I had bounced a check but could not give me the check number so that I could verify this with my bank, but they did give me a dollar amount and ironically I was holding that cancelled check in my hand during that entire conversation, keep in mind that my mother had also sent in a check for the exact same amount and she also had her cancelled check during that conversation as well. Neither checks had bounced! (But they continued billing me that additional fee even AFTER we had both sent in the copies of our cancelled checks.)
About a year after I moved in I lost my job due to a disability. I had to go 2 years without any income at all. I had no insurance to help pay my mortgage as Green Tree told me that they did not offer this type of insurance when I got my mortgage and there was nowhere else in my city that offered this to me either as I checked around as I wanted to make every effort to make sure that I was able to keep my house in this type of event. I had to go on Welfare where I only got $289 a MONTH! I had to ask my parents to help me out to make my house payments as well as utilities.
During this time I was constantly harassed by Green Tree. This was before my phone was changed so I was getting those phone calls and being spoken to as if I were some kind of scum lower than dirt. I was already in a weakened state of physical health and was told to stay away from stress, this did not help. Many times I got off the phone from them in tears and even had to make a few trips to the hospital because of thier treatment of me. And to make matters worse, my house payment was going to go up more because it was an Adjustable Rate Mortgage. So my life was going to be getting worse.
I was trying to get Social Security, which takes some time to get, and was told by Green Tree that once I did get it to call them and they would give me a fixed rate on my mortgage and waive any fees for doing this. After I did get approved to receive benefits I did just exactly as I had been instructed to do and was told that they don't do that and wanted me to send them more money even though my mortgage was caught up by my records. They told me that there were "other" charges but could not discuss them with me.
This was my account and they could not discuss details of the billing of my account with me! Talk about a big red flag! I pretty much gave up at that point. It was then that I changed my phone number and used *67 to call them from that moment on.
As I said, this nightmare went on for 5 years.in September I just gave up and let my house go into foreclosure status and let it go back to Green Tree who seemed more than excited to finally get it back. I have heard and read that most banks don't want your property that they just want your money, but when I DID communicate with Green Tree they never wanted to work out any sort of payment arrangement. One time they called me and said they were calling to make a "payment arrangement", so I thought to myself that this was my chance to "save" my home.
So I asked her if I could send in a certain dollar amount each month, this representative told me that I had to send in the full amount due or they would take my home. I then asked her why she called me, she said to make a "payment arrangement", I told her okay, let's make an arrangement and even gave her the definition of "payment arrangement". She said to send them in the full amount and it would be caught up and wanted me to give them my checking account number so they could take that amount over the phone and charge me extra fees for that.
I told her I no longer had a checking account so she wanted me to "wire" the money to her, again paying additional fees. I told her they would get the money in so many days they said that wasn't good enough for them they needed the money that day. At that point I finally woke up and ended my nightmare, I kept that money and let it go.in December I was served papers to get out of the home that I had fought so hard to keep. My mortgage started out at $248 a month and had skyrocketed to $384 a month, despite the fact that mortgage rates had remained fixed at that time, plus property taxes and utilities.
I sat down one night after the everything was over and ready the fine print on my mortgage papers, I was sickened to see that in 10 years time my mortgage rate was going to go up to 10% and that over the 30 year term of my $50,000 I would have repaid over $150,000 for a house that just sold on the market for a MERE $19,000!
Thinking my nightmare was finally over I moved on. Until the other day when my mother tried to refinance HER home which was next door to my nightmare and found out that there was a lien placed on it by Green Tree for $50,000. This was placed on there because the home carries my name on the deed AFTER her name. And after meeting with an attorney today I find out that in the state of Indiana they can pretty much do whatever they want to do and that as a consumer who was wronged by them in multiple ways I have no legal rights to fight them!
I am not a dead beat and I did not want to lose my home nor give it back to those vultures who in turn just gave it away. I fell on hard times like many others before me.
Many have complained on here that something needs to be done. Well, I want to be that person to do something about this company. I am setting up an account on myspace dot com backslash consumers for consumers, please use underscores between the names, and look me up and let's get something done to stop this company from further ruining our lives, our parents, grandparents and even our children. You can even find me at my name at verizon dot net. Haven't we been through enough of this?
I have also been looking up attorneys who handle class action law suits and will be contacting them starting Monday and telling them to look here for reports and information.
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