Seniors Face Foreclosure After Making Mortgage Payment Too Early

A senior couple in Pasco County, Florida is facing the prospect of foreclosure. But the reason doesn't have to do with missed mortgage payments. This time, it's reportedly because they paid too early one month, and used the wrong routing number the next.

Only three months after Sharon Bullington, 70, negotiated a mortgage modification under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), Bank of America informed her and her husband that they had been ejected from the trial plan for improper payments, St. Petersburg Times reports. (h/t The Daily What.)

The problem was that Sharon has made her January payment in December, instead of the required "month in which it [was] due." She then allegedly incorrectly wrote her routing number on her February payment, leading the bank to cancel the modification. The Bullington's explanations and pleas for help have reportedly been to no avail.

The episode is only the latest in a series of oddball foreclosure stories that have included a homeowner being asked to pay $0.00 in order to avoid foreclosure and JPMorgan repurchasing a soldier's home on the same day he returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. But in many ways, the Bullington's story goes against the typical narrative of a post-recession American homeowner's struggle.

Instead of paying too early, most of those threatened with foreclosure are struggling to make payments on time. Indeed, the number of mortgages which are overdue by a month rose to the highest level in a year in the second quarter of this year, according to Bloomberg. Consequently, the jobs crisis is largely being blamed for the percentage of home loans overdue by 30 days, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington.

Also a rarity is the Bullington's ability to successfully negotiate a mortgage modification in the first place. Despite the continued existence of the Obama administration's anti-foreclosure initiative HAMP, the number of preliminary mortgage modifications approved in June was the lowest since April 2009, at 15,000, according to government data reported by The Huffington Post.

Read the entire story here

Comments

[mgroteii]

11:01 PM on 10/10/2011

BoA is scum. I would never bank with them or finance through them. I will soon be cutting up my BoA credit cards.

[Di Gray]

07:40 PM on 10/10/2011

And the fleecing of America just keeps getting worse.

[Lindarm]

07:01 PM on 10/10/2011

The mortage companies and banks are goign nuts!!! I have read numerous stories of lame reasons that banks or mortgage companies have forclosed or attempted to. One I read showed that a family had to fight foreclosure on a home that they had paid off, another was a family who had never had a mortage with the company that tried to forclose!!!! This is NUTS people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lookos to me like these lenders are looking for any reason they can so they can reap government money being paid out to lenders who do forclose. Did any of you know they can make more by taking this government subsidy than they can by being honest????? It's crazy but that is what has happened in many cases. Watch your backs. Do you think I trust my lender to whom I have paid my mortage payments one month early for the duration of my mortage for the past 17 years.... NO I DO NOT. One of my reasons is that our mortgage was sold 4 times in 17 years, from the original lender to Old Kent, then WaMU, and now Wells Fargo. Who knows who has the actualy title,and how all this will come out in the end. TRUST NO ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[pooonshu]

06:11 PM on 10/10/2011

"Money talks." Send the message to BoA loud and clear.

[janri]

12:57 PM on 08/25/2011

Until these banks realize that their customers are the reason for their success or failure, people will continue to have negative feelings toward banks...and the bigger the bank is, the more negativity has grown. It's a boom for the credit unions around the country. Customers want to have good experiences with banks and they want banks to divulge everything to them and counsel them on their accounts so they don't make mistakes out of ignorance. Bankers have the expertise.Customers want to feel connected to their financial institutions. It shouldn't be buyer beware with banks since they answer to the federal govt.

[Mile End]

10:28 AM on 08/24/2011

The main problem with the mortgage relief program was its good faith reliance on banks and finance companies to deal with the public with integrity, something they had already proven they did not have.

[LesR22]

08:37 AM on 08/24/2011

the story that should be investigated is not about the monolithic big bad banks vs. the innocent consumer, because that does not really give a complete picture. there is an entire cottage industry associated with the foreclosure process, from the law firms that specialize in them, to the appraisers, to the loan-servicing companies, to the brokers that market distressed properties and the title companies that benefit from the sales, each of whom has a business relationship, of some sort, with the foreclosing bank, takes their fees and/or percentage of a home's value at the end of the line, and accordingly has a vested interest in the process going through from start to finish, with as many properties as possible, so they can get paid. looking at the banks themselves will do very little to remedy the inequities associated with this process, unless there is a complete reorganization of the entire industry, because everyone involved in the process basically puts their head in the sand and points their fingers at 'the other guy' when bad-foreclosure stories go public.

[giwel7]

10:45 PM on 08/23/2011

after reading this report and then reading how the 50 state AG investigation wants to "hurry" and reach some sort of settlement with no admission of guilt- there seems to be no government agency that is not bought and sold by the banks

[Teri67]

08:58 PM on 08/23/2011

No wonder why people stash money under their mattresses. Banks are robbers! The difference between them and a thief is that Banks dont need a mask to steal your money.. Now they have a right to steal your home, when your a good person doing the right thing. Thats messed UP!!!!!!!

[mpusairsret]

07:20 PM on 08/23/2011

My friend had his mortgage with a local credit union and was laid off of his job and couldn't make payments. He went and spoke with the credit union about his options. They agreed to accept payments that covered insurance, taxes, and only part of the interest and none of the principal. They are allowing him two years to either catch up or sell the house. He has agreed that if he can't sell or catch up in the two years, he will sign over the house and agree to signing a separate loan for the unpaid interest. Try getting that sort of a deal from a bank.

[KC45]

07:15 PM on 08/23/2011

No Congress, no President has been strong enough to stand up to the foreign-controlled Federal Reserve Bank. Yet there is a catch - one that President Kennedy recognized before he was slain - the original deal in 1913 creating the Federal Reserve Bank had a simple backout clause. The investors loaned the United States Government $1 billion. And the backout clause allows the United States to buy out the system for that $1 billion. If the Federal Reserve Bank were demolished and the Congress of the United States took control of the currency, as required in the Constitution, the National Debt would virtually end overnight, and the need for more taxes and even the income tax, itself. Thomas Jefferson was concise in his early warning to the American nation, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

[Apple Baek]

07:12 PM on 08/23/2011

The banks are just too much! What a bunch of crooks! Send someone to assist them get set up on automatic payment's, how ridiculous!

[gblank1603]

07:10 PM on 08/23/2011

Why was any of this the banks fault????

[Apple Baek]

07:15 PM on 08/23/2011

Why, well for one banks are a service industry and they should customize their service to meet the needs of the populations that they serve. Secondly, we the tax payers by way of the government just gave the banks Billion's of dollars to help mortage holders. The banks are not only holding onto the money, not helping people, but they are willing to sit back and take homes from old people who pay to early or use the wrong rounting number! If you can not see what's wrong with that, then my friend something is wrong with you!

[KC45]

07:17 PM on 08/23/2011

If you are employed, which I doubt.....I certainly hope it is not in a service oriented industry. The future would not bode well for you.

[cats530]

10:29 PM on 08/23/2011

haha, I think its one of the call center employees, trying to defend his company's reprehensible behavior.

[katiekatt551]

07:03 PM on 08/23/2011

BoA are vulchures. I'm closing out m y accoun asap.

[pooonshu]

06:10 PM on 10/10/2011

Same here. It was nice to see the rep, whatever he was, scramble to keep me when he saw what my balances were and tried telling me what other perks might be available, but nothing could have stopped me from taking my money and running.

[hackitoff]

06:31 PM on 08/23/2011

I think the BOA officers that did this are brain dead. It costs the bank money to foreclose. It costs the bank money for taxes, etc until the property can be sold. Even if the bank sells the property for the $133,000 its worth, they will wnd up with less than that because of the sale costs they'll incur. So they incur substantail costs on property on which the mortgage is being paid. Like I said brain dead officers.

[usmcqtco]

07:10 PM on 08/23/2011

Yeah, they must have taken lessons from a lot of liberal government officials.

[Apple Baek]

07:16 PM on 08/23/2011

Okay, you just ran off the road with that nothing statement!

[cats530]

10:22 PM on 08/23/2011

Actually, the servicer (B of A) profits from the foreclosure. They rack up all kinds of junk fees and bill the investor for it. Sheer profit. The investor is the one who suffers.