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How homeowners can escape a mortgage mess
What to do if payments on your adjustable-rate mortgage are about to go up.
By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the August 27, 2007 edition
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Stress in the nation's mortgage industry is putting a financial squeeze on home buyers and homeowners alike.
Buyers are finding it harder to obtain home loans as lenders tighten their credit standards or even go out of business.
Homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) face a double-whammy. House prices are falling even as their monthly home payments adjust upward in a big way. So when ARMs reset, many may find they can neither make their payments nor sell the house for enough money to cover the loan.
With October identified as a peak month for such scheduled resets, can this group of homeowners escape from this mortgage mess?
Perhaps.
Today's credit environment certainly isn't as easy as it was a few years ago, when lenders often made loans that put themselves and home-buyers at higher risk. Back then, as home prices rose, so did the popularity of loans with "teaser" interest rates that only lasted a couple of years. Subprime lending soared, as lenders issued riskier loans, ignoring the elevated danger of default.
Now homeowners faced with the prospect of home loans resetting sharply higher are seeking solutions. Often what's needed is patience, persistence, and a willingness to seek help.
Consider the recent experience of one Germantown, Md., couple who nearly lost their home. Vaughn and Candice bought a large brick-front colonial five years ago. A couple of years later, they refinanced their mortgage, allowing them to tap their home's equity to help pay college bills for two of their children. Their monthly mortgage payment was $4,000 a month, and everything seemed to be going well.
"We were fine," says Vaughn, who asked that his family's last name not be used in this story to protect their financial privacy.
But suddenly, a cosmetics business they ran began to dry up after one of the major stores at the mall where they operated shut down. They plowed their own savings into the business to try to keep it going. Despite Candice's income as a full-time engineer, they soon fell behind on their house payments. Vaughn's efforts to renegotiate with the loan company only resulted in an offer that he couldn't meet: $20,000 in cash by July.
The last straw: The interest on their ARM was poised to reset from 6.7 percent to about 9 percent as of that month.
By May, Vaughn was desperate, believing that a foreclosure notice could come any week. "I was asking God to show me the way," he says.
Through a news article, he learned about a nonprofit organization in Chicago that had partnerships with several loan-service companies, including his own, to help prevent foreclosures.
He contacted the group, the National Information and Training Center (NTIC), which cut a deal with the lender. Vaughn and Candice won a loan modification that shifts them from an adjustable to a fixed-rate loan. They'll owe $4,200 a month, starting next week, but that should work for them now that they've closed the money-losing cosmetics business. The deal also helps their creditor avoid the costs of foreclosing and selling the house.
Not every strapped homeowner is having such good fortune. But the financial rescue of this Maryland couple can happen for others, too. "I'm living proof," Vaughn says.
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