EMC Loan Mod

[Joel Fraser]

Hi everybody. This is agreat site and forum, I have learned a lot from it and I think I am ready to start requesting a loan mod from EMC. I woul like to know if anybody has any contact info for EMC Loss Mitigation and if anybody has gone thru the process with them. My personal situation (financially speaking) got complicated by helping a "friend" buy a house with my credit...I know, I learned the lesson so no need to remind how fool I was, in any case I spent all 2007 trying to salvage the situation once my friend walked away,throwing good money at a situantion that was doomed from the get go. Anyhow, I depleted my savings, kid's college funds, borrowed up the yin yang just to finally realized I was not getting anywhere, after fixing the house ( he destryed the place) so I can rented I decided to short sale it to the tenant. It s been 10 months but it finally looks its going to get approved (loan is with GMAC). This whole sitaution created, as you can imagine, a financial nightmare. Now I have to address the fact that I need a loan mod for MY home. I live in Miami Dade county were property values have declined almost 30%, I paid $675K, now is worth $472K maybe $500K but value is declining and I can see many vacant houses around my neighbourhood which means foresclosures are looming! I was planning to pay the taxes on the house at the end of the year (one year behind) but EMC basically forced me to pay them NOW or they will escrowed them (14K in property taxes!) but not only that, they will also escrowed next years, which meant my mortgage payment was going up by at least $2400.00/month So to make the story short, I paid the taxes to avoid that but now I am behind 30 days going into 60......I can probably catch up but I see no reason why to; I know that if you are not behind at least 60 days they won't even listen to you (I approached GMAC many times about the other house and they kept telling me: "you are current we cannot help"!! When I bought the house 2 years ago, I planned to negatively amortized the 1st mortg. for 3 years (due to prepayment penalty) and then refinance, we all know that theory does not work anymore. Now I am underwater for almost $250K and counting... As far as the property taxes I just filed with Value Adjustmet Board a petition to grant me agricultural exemption (I have 1/2 acre lot) so that would lower my taxes susbtantially. Should have done that last year ! Due to the mess with the other house my good credit is gone but I am current on all my bills but EMC, so the question is before I approach EMC, should I request a QWR? Is that a red flag? Does it help? Or should I approach them directly and just send them everything I know they need (I have all my things almost ready since I have to submitt the same docs to GMAC). BTW I am self employed. The other question is, on hiring Paiva or any attorney to get a loan mod (I need the principal reduced as well) shouldn' it be contingent upon them getting the loan mod? Why pay up front when there is no way to know what would happen? Anyways, any feedback is appreciated. Thanks to all.