We were sent a form in the mail. Our modification number was R040210-21815. We were stretched to make our mortgage payment and contacted them on 4/13/10 to see what a modification could do to help us. I spoke with "George" at ext. 142. He said that they would have us send in information, they would do a forensic audit, and be our "legal" advisors/negotiators with our mortgage company, Bank of America. "George" said that there was a one time fee of $1495. Once this was paid they would contact Bank of America and we would automatically be in the modification program. We were told that this would automatically "freeze" everything. It would automatically give us a 30 day grace period from our mortgage payment and the modification process would only take 4-6 weeks. I was told that any payments we were behind already would be placed at the back of the loan. At that time, it was either pay our mortgage payment for March (in mid-April), or send our payment to Residential Relief Foundation and have everything "stop" until the modification process was complete. I told "George" I would need to discuss it with my husband and would get back to him the next day. I got his extension number (142) and told him I would call back, either way, the next day. I looked online and Residential Relief Foundation was owned by a group of lawyers and seemed to be on the up and up. I discussed it with my husband, and we decided that we needed to decrease our monthly payment, due to his decreased work hours, and that this program would do this for us. The next day, April 14, I called "George" and asked him SEVERAL times, "So you're telling me that if I take my $1500 and pay you, instead of my March mortgage payment, then we are automatically in modification, and everything freezes until an agreed upon modification is complete? And you (Residential Relief Foundation) will contact our mortgage company and negotiate with Bank of America to get our mortgage payment lowered, and what we are currently behind put to the back of our loan?" He said yes. That as soon as our money was in, we would be in modification status and that they would "notify" Bank of America. Then once the forensic audit was completed, all of our information would be sent to Bank of America, at which time it would take 4-6 weeks to negotiate a modification. He also said there was no point in paying our mortgage payment, because once the modification process started it would "freeze" everything, and that we would be "throwing your money away, " and once the modification was negotiated, then we would just start paying our new/lower mortgage payment. We paid them by electronic check or debit card on April 14. We submitted the documentation that they requested within a couple of days. I called Bank of America on May 11, with our expenses, as we were told they would not accept a written expense report. I also notified them that we would be sending additional information via fax. On May 11, at 12:54 I faxed the information Residential Relief Foundation said to fax to Bank of America. They acknowledged receiving it in June, and asked for further information. They also stated that we were NOT in modificaton, and that Residential Relief Foundation could not put us into modification status, only they could. They also stated that noone from Residential Relief Foundation had yet to be in contact with them. We have been in contact with Residential Relief people (our file has been passed from desk to desk) until late October/early November. This was after the second conference call with Bank of America, at which time I realized that the Residential Relief Foundation "negotiators" were asking the same questions and getting the same answers that I got each time I called Bank of America. As a side note, I was able to obtain modification status for our loan, in late July. Since then we have been passed from desk to desk at Bank of America. We have called almost weekly to Bank of America to check our modification status. We have been asked to send the same information to them 3 times. Once we found out what was happening with Residential Relief Foundation we were already over $10,000 behind in our mortgage payments. We are now over $17,000 behind. All we wanted to do was to lower our monthly payments. We are upstanding people in our community. We have two cars that are paid in full. We negotiated with our other creditors in January and February to have "fixed" payments and closed those accounts. With all of these account closings, and being behind on our mortgage, our credit scores have gone from over 740 to around 500. The only payment we are behind on is our mortgage. At this point, we are sure we will lose our home, but are praying for a miracle. Furthermore, here we thought we were being smart and closing accounts and renegotiating our mortgage payment, so that we could pay our bills on time and in full, but our next biggest fear (first being losing our home) is even being able to qualify for housing/apartments that are in safe areas for our children to grow and play. This home was to be the only one we would have, until we were ready to be in assisted living. Now we just pray that we will have a place to live.
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