Bank of America accused of misleading tactics

[HLS]

Bank of America routinely denied qualified borrowers a chance to modify their loans to more affordable terms and paid cash bonuses to bank staffers for pushing homeowners into foreclosure, according to affidavits filed last week in a Massachusetts lawsuit.

“We were told to lie to customers,” said Simone Gordon, who worked in the bank’s loss mitigation department until February 2012. “Site leaders regularly told us that the more we delayed the HAMP [loan] modification process, the more fees Bank of America would collect.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100818866

[bearishgurl]

HLS, I saw a piece on “60 Minutes” a while back where former Countrywide (later folded into B of A) loan officers and servicers were interviewed who stated they (as loan officers) were compensated judicously (mostly with usurious points charged the [often subprime] buyer and the use of YSP’s). The servicing employees in their divisions which ran the HAMP mod program and “Deed in Lieu Plus” programs had absolutely NO CONTROL over their employees in the loss mit division, who would be initiating simultaneous foreclosure on the same property. So what was going on was that borrowers working with the servicing dept to apply for and process a mod were being foiled by the loss mit dept who was initiating the steps of foreclosure on their property with their trustee (“Recontrust” in CA). Of course, most “trial mod” and some “deed-in-lieu” applications never got approved and processed because the delinquent trustors lost their homes to foreclosure in the interim. To the untrained eye, this all looks like a “comedy of errors” perpetrated by the right hand opposing the left hand. But it was all part of a grand plan for B of A to “pretend” to be “helping” delinquent borrowers by publicizing their “help-line” phone numbers. This was also borne out by my own experience assisting a delinquent Countrywide loan-mod applicant AND a Countrywide “Deed in Lieu Plus” applicant, BOTH of whom got foreclosed upon mid-stream. Only the deed-in-lieu applicant received $3000 about ten days after their foreclosure to vacate the property and leave it “broom swept.” The dissed loan-mod applicant received nothing, and, in any case, had already vacated the property and moved away at the time of the trustee sale.

This would all be palatable to JQ Public if B of A didn’t receive any TARP funds, only to screw with borrowers minds’ in attempt to prolong the foreclosure mess for the rest of us.

[spdrun]

And why exactly should BoA be obliged to give deadbeat borrowers a free ride?

Don’t pay child support: go to jail
Don’t pay car loan: get car repo’ed

Why should mortgages be a sacred cow?

[SK in CV]

[quote=spdrun]And why exactly should BoA be obliged to give deadbeat borrowers a free ride?

Don’t pay child support: go to jail
Don’t pay car loan: get car repo’ed

Why should mortgages be a sacred cow?[/quote]

They’re not a sacred cow. Millions of homeowners have had their loans foreclosed. That’s not the issue here. The issue is good faith bargaining. Lenders took risks. Bad ones. And got bailed out, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Coincidental to that bailout, they were required to negotiate in good faith to modify loans. BofA in particular, and other lenders similarly, have demonstrably failed to do so.

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