An avid reader of The Mortgage Insider alerted my attention to a petition home owners seeking loan modifications can use to voice their frustrations with America’s foot-dragging lenders.

I can surely empathize with home owners facing foreclosure in that they were told by the Obama administration at the beginning of the year, Obama’s Plan would make things easier.

Sadly, it has not.

It’s not really a surprise financial institutions have received a “free pass” from the new administration based on who Obama has put in charge of financial issues. Every person Obama hired to manage the financial / banking / mortgage crisis, from Timothy Geithner to Larry Summers, is a Wall Street insider.

So now home owners must depend on Congress to get any real reforms. I don’t have a lot of hope on that front either, but it’s worth a try.

To make your voice heard…give this petition website a shot.

The petition letter states among other things:

“Tens of thousands of homeowners across this nation have spent hundreds of hours dealing with mortgage servicers who have little incentive to actually help them/us achieve permanent loan modifications; while in the process of obtaining a modification, many homeowners have been lied to, misled, foreclosed upon or threatened with foreclosure.

We propose an immediate halt to all foreclosures until new, mandatory guidelines are established and that these guidelines be overseen by a new Consumer Protection Agency, which was recently recommended by President Obama and endorsed by Sheila Bair, chair of the FDIC. We also demand that these guidelines include not only a simple 31% of the borrower’s gross monthly income, but that the Net Present Value (NPV) test: (a) be created and administered by the government, not the banks, (b) have its data, assumptions and formula published so that they may be verified by the public, and (c) be made available at www.makinghomeaffordable.gov in a calculator form so that people can learn immediately, with the other eligibility questions available there now, whether they’re eligible for HAMP. We are also strongly advocating that additional guidelines be formulated that would open the door for modifications at an even a lower rate in significant hardship conditions and for rightdowns of principal when homes are severely underwater.

We propose there be clear and enforceable guidelines regarding the time between the initial request for a modification and the achievement of a permanent modification, and that there be no reward to the bank for a trial modification. The rewards, if any, should be only for successful permanent modifications.”

Add your name to the Petition…by clicking here.

Good Luck!

PS: Thanks Catherine!

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