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Eliminating ‘He Said, She Said’ on Loan Modifications

WHEN it comes to home mortgage modifications, everyone seems to have a complaint.

Borrowers accuse mortgage servicers, which process the paperwork, of often losing important documents like pay stubs and bank statements. Servicers assert that the borrowers fail to submit certain papers and claim that they did, or submit the wrong ones.

Now, an industry group is rolling out an online portal that could eliminate these issues. Hope Now, a partnership of mortgage companies and nonprofit housing counselors, this month introduced “LoanPort,” which lets borrowers seeking a permanent mortgage modification upload digitized versions of their documents and track the progress of their application, with the help of a loan counselor.

“With this, there’s no ‘he said, she said’ element with lost documents,” said Faith Schwartz, the executive director of Hope Now, which is based in Washington.

But Howard Glaser, a principal of the Glaser Group, a consulting company in Washington, predicted that the initiative would be too small to have much impact on what he characterized as a broadly dysfunctional loan-modification effort.

“Marginal improvements are not going to have a significant impact on increasing loan modifications,” Mr. Glaser said.

10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You

10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who've Been Screwing You

Tired of getting pushed around by faceless big business? Here are 10 ways to push back!

The New Year is nearly here, and so much has happened. Wait, what’s that? Nothing major at all has happened, you say? Oh right, we’ve been stuck in neutral since dumping the toxic trash of the Republican Bush administration and embracing Democratic promises of hope and change, neither of which have blossomed.

A year of our collective life has flown by and our global culture is still rife with schemers, screw jobs and sorry excuses for solutions. And we just sit back and take it, year after year. But no more. When you make that hefty list of New Year’s resolutions, drop some of these bombs. Then duck. You’ll get your change faster than you can say, “Teabag this!”

1. Mortgage underwater? Just walk away from it. Even academia says it’s OK. Move to the city and rent.

“Homeowners should be walking away in droves,” University of Arizona law school professor Brent T. White told the Los Angeles Times. “But they aren’t. And it’s not because the financial costs of foreclosure outweigh the benefits. One can have a good credit rating again — meaning above 660 — within two years after a foreclosure.”

In a scholarly paper called “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis,” White tells cash-jacked homeowners that they can return the screw.

We’ve been championing that course for years, with reports on walkaways and trashouts, as well as violent homeowner blowback. Hell, we called the Great Recession before most did, and we’re still calling it another Great Depression in the making. So trust us. And if not us, then take it from the professor, who will soon be joined by a chorus of similarly credentialed whistleblowers as the financial crap truly hits the fan in the years to come. Go ahead, move back to the city and rent. You’ll end up there anyway when your suburb runs out of water and malls.

The Unemployment Game Show: Are You Really Unemployed? – From Mint.com

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December 18, 2009 | Filed Under Financial Crisis, Video | Leave a Comment

Credit card’s newest trick: 79.9 percent interest

Credit card's newest trick: 79.9 percent interest

It’s no mistake. This credit card’s interest rate is 79.9 percent.

The bloated APR is how First Premier Bank, a subprime credit card issuer, is skirting new regulations intended to curb abusive practices in the industry. It’s a strategy other subprime card issuers could start adopting to get around the new rules.

Typically, the First Premier card comes with a minimum of $256 in fees in the first year for a credit line of $250. Starting in February, however, a new law will cap such fees at 25 percent of a card’s credit line.

In a recent mailing for a preapproved card, First Premier lowers fees to just that limit — $75 in the first year for a credit line of $300. But the new law doesn’t set a cap on interest rates. Hence the 79.9 APR, up from the previous 9.9 percent.

42% of parents have paid a child’s debt

42% of parents have paid a child's debt

Before bailing out offspring, ask yourself whether you’re really helping.

A new poll by CreditCards.com found that 42% of people with adult children have paid a debt for their children at some point. But should they?

The debts most commonly paid off were auto loans (40%) and medical debt (37%). But the survey also found that parents had paid utility debt (31%), credit cards (30%), student loans (29%) and mortgages (11%).

“It used to be that kids would be embarrassed to ask for help. Not anymore,” Michael McAuliffe, president of Family Credit Management, a Chicago nonprofit credit counseling agency, told CreditCards.com’s Connie Prater.

The current generation of parents has always provided more help to their children than their parents’ generation did, helping with everything from homework to science projects to college essays and beyond.