Loan Modifications and Loss Mitigation for Illinois Homeowners
A modification application and a foreclosure lawsuit are two different fights, and most homeowners end up with two different people running them - a lawyer who does not touch the application and a company that does not go to court. Here they are the same file, in the same office, on the same calendar.
What we actually do:
Identify the servicer and the loan. We start from your most recent mortgage statement, so we are working with the servicer that can actually decide your file and the loan number it recognizes.
Get the right application. Servicers use their own forms and their own document lists. We request the application for yours instead of sending a generic package that comes back rejected.
Assemble and complete it. We collect the income, hardship and property documents, fill the application in, and send it to you to read and approve before anything is submitted in your name.
Submit it and put the clock on our calendar. Once it is in, the deadlines belong to the servicer - the date a missing-document letter is due, the date a decision is due - and nobody sends you a notice when one passes. We docket them and follow up.
Ask the court and the servicer to hold the case. Where an application is under review, there are grounds under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 114 and the federal mortgage-servicing rules to ask that default proceedings not go forward while the review is pending. We make that request in writing and, where necessary, in court.
When the answer is no:
A denial is not the end of the process, and the two kinds of denial call for opposite responses.
If the file was closed as incomplete - no real eligibility decision was ever made - there is nothing substantive to appeal. The answer is a fresh, complete application, submitted properly.
If an actual decision was made and the stated reasons do not hold up - vague, unsupported by any figures, internally inconsistent, or contradicted by the servicer's own valuation - we respond with a single letter that is at once an appeal, a Notice of Error and a Request for Information under the federal servicing regulations, demanding the guidelines, inputs and calculations behind the decision. Servicers answer that letter differently than they answer a phone call.
If the servicer simply does not respond, or keeps giving answers that are not answers - that is a litigation problem, and we already have your case in litigation.
Dual tracking:
Federal rules restrict a servicer from advancing a foreclosure while a complete loss-mitigation application is pending. Watching for that - and documenting it when it happens - is part of what having a law firm run the application buys you.
One thing worth being clear about:
We are a law firm, not a loan-modification company. Your file is handled under an attorney-client relationship, the same lawyer is accountable for the court case and the application, and nobody here will promise you an approval. What we will tell you is what your file's real chances look like and what the servicer's own rules require it to consider.
Get a free case review. Call (312) 857-8320.