desperate to keep home

[Joel Fraser]

This story has similar threads as others have had as well. Over the last 3 years my wife and I have been ripped off of a substantial amount of money. Seven figures. Some was our money as well as family and relatives. The person who ripped us off has ripped off a total of 400 people. Maria Arche ran a real estate Ponzi scam that took our life savings as well as others. Maria is going to go to club fed and her trial for that purpose is in August. Needless to say, this event has put my wife and I in financial hardship. I had to use credit cards to live and use one to pay the other. We were hoping for a fast trial. This did not occur and needless to say my wife and I have to file Chapter 7. It wrenches my heart to go through this and see what burden this is now on our family. During this process, we had to refi our house just to live. Our house payment went from $2800 a month to $6800 a month. We refied at the peak and are now upside down on the house by $100K. When we refied we were told it was a two year loan fixed and the adjustable after that, however since we were so high at 8.5% it would never go above that max. It was libor plus 2 never to exceed 8.5%. If we knew it could have skyrocketed, we would have never signed. That being said, the house payment will be going up from $6800 to $8112 a month. I cannot afford this as the original was also to hard for us. We have never been late on a home payment for 25 years. This loan was originally refied through Aegis Home Lending based out of Phoenix Az. They are the biggest crooks around. Homecomings financial now has my mortgage. Our lawyer told us that the lender will not even listen to our issues until we are late on our house payment. I could not believe what I heard, but I spoke to a friend who worked at HSBC for 10 years and he also confirmed this. I was blown away. Someone who wants to be proactive and get help cannot, but if you don't pay, you can. It does not make sense. Needless to say because of the issues we have had we are now 45 days past due and in default of the loan according to the lender. I have asked the lawyer for loss mitigation to get some help from homecomings financial. However I cannot continue to wait. I'm scared about losing my home and I cannot sleep at night over this mess. A mess that a crook put my family in. We lost everything financially and are trying to hang in and keep our home. I'm looking for any help or assistance or advice anyone could give. Thank-you in advance. Larry