Why hire outside help to walk away from your mortgage?
I had previously posted about mortgage walking and a firm which assisted homeowners with walking away from their mortgage obligation– I remain uncertain as to why you need to pay someone in order to stop making payments to your lender....
RealtyCrisis appears to be another entity that a troubled homeowner can pay to assist them in walking away from their mortgage. According to their web site:
“Wilshire purchases, takes title to your property and assumes the loan(s) subject to your original agreement. IT'S REALLY THAT SIMPLE!”
But wait… The loan is still in the homeowner’s name, unless the lender has agreed to transfer the loan (or allow an assumption). And if the loan remains in the homeowner's name, it is the homeowner's credit that is impacted.
Their site further explains…
“Late Payment, Notice of Default, Foreclosure, Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure and/or a Short Sale...all of these items will seriously affect your credit and will hamper your ability to secure another loan on a new property for many years.
When you sell your property to Wilshire, these negative items that will appear on your credit history may be protested under the FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT from the date Wilshire acquired your property.
You will be supplied with the names and addresses of all three credit repositories plus self-help instructions including successful strategies for credit repair. If negative statements should appear on your credit history, follow the instructions and write the bureaus demanding removal. You are also permitted to place an explanation on your credit report. “
Hmmm..... 
Wow! That's a new one... Never seen anybody advertise such blatant fraud yet! I'm the president of a loss mitigation company (OptionNext), and I have to say, we don't charge any fees up front, and we negotiate a good solution between the homeowner and the mortgage holders. We never charge a fee up front, and don't charge the homeowner any fees at all. Instead, we get the bank to pay our fees from the proceeds of the sale, as a commission... Any company that advertises the kinds of things you quoted above should be investigated by the DA's office. In fact, have you considered sending their website link to your local DA's office, or even the US Attorney's office for the region?
Reply to this
If you don't charge up front fees and are only paid for a successful outcome (like me
As far as the others... they have web sites, they are advertising on the radio.... it is not a secret - what they are doing.
I don't think the DA gives a "hoot".
Reply to this
You know, the sad part is that you're probably right. Here in NY, I have some friends in the DA's office, so whenever I see a local company doing stuff like that, I always forward their link to the DA. But you are probably right, unless you have a friend in the DA's office, you may as well hold up a sign and rant in the streets. Now that I think about it, that may be the cause of a lot of this. All those unscrupulous mortgage lenders got away with it for so long specifically because there was no oversight. And now all of these fake loss mitigation companies are going to make it even worse. Of course there's still no oversight, so we can rest assured the problem is here to stay... Personally, I think the only two worthwhile options for the homeowner are a really qualified local realtor (such as yourself) or a really honest loss mitigation company that acts as a consultant to a local realtor who doesn't have the time or experience to deal with the banks all day (such as our company, OptionNext)... If you ever need to outsource any mitigations let me know. Also, when we have properties come in without a realtor, we always list them with a competent realtor in the area. I'd be curious to know if you'd want any such properties referred to you? We generally take 2% from the real estate commission, with a discount for quantity, and a flexible discount in the event the bank attempts to negotiate the commission...
Reply to this
DA - do they follow up? I have the feeling in CA that there is so much fraud and abuse and that because of lobbyists or ??? no one cares, the people getting hurt - no one cares about.
As a Realtor - most of them are so far underwater, all I can do is tell them the truth.
AND I am always interested in new business opportunities BUT are you taking 2% of 5-6% commission? Leaving the Realtors only 3% - 4% to split? Because I can't work off of that, BUT thanks for the opportunity and complement.
Reply to this
Just figured I'd let you know, we reduced our fee from 2% to 1%, so that may make it a bit more interesting for you. We did, however, implement a small processing fee ($495), to cover the costs of processing and shipping the packages to the banks...
Reply to this