Protest Takes Backseat To Water Heater Trouble

I really wanted to attend the protest, but my water heater decided that it just had to break the day before, and I had to forgo attending in order to deal with that troublesome appliance.

 

I did check  on the Internet and I checked on TV, but I did not see any media coverage of a large protest outside of IndyMac/OneWest’s  Pasadena office, so I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if anyone actually showed up. If it was only a few people, or if there wasn’t anyone there, then it would not have gotten any coverage, and that would be a shame.

 

I did receive a mass-mail out from IndyMac/OneWest inviting me to apply for a HAMP mod. This is a good thing, right? It shows IndyMac/OneWest is reaching out to its troubled borrowers, you might think.

 

Well, yes, except for the fact that when you read the list of documents that is required, there are two blatant lies right in the modification application. Two lies that would discourage certain people from applying and that make it exceedingly hard to meet the purported documentation requirements, almost impossible, you might say. The first is a requirement for self employed persons to submit an audited profit and loss statement or one signed by a CPA and the second is that if you’re using unemployment of disability income, that it must be expected to last for at least three years to be considered as income.

 

First of all, there is no requirement in HAMP for an audited profit and loss statement. Initially, this was unclear, but since then, the HAMP documentation makes it clear that while profit and loss statements are required of self employed persons, it is not required that they be audited. Such a requirement would make applying for a modification prohibitively expensive, and since people who need modifications are already in financial difficulty, it makes NO sense to require them to spend even more money that they don’t have. Lacking an audit or a compilation (where a CPA looks at your books and compiles your profit and loss statement based on your books,) no CPA will simply look at your profit and loss and sign it. There is no such thing, so IndyMac/OneWest is asking for an impossibility.

 

As for UI benefits, HAMP provisions are clear that if there are 9 or more months remaining of UI benefits,  UI counts as income. This is a recent provision, and a good one, since jobs are scarce and more and more people are out of work.

 

The application is full of lies…no, not misinformation, not mistaken information, but outright lies, for IndyMac/OneWest has no interest in modifying anyone’s loans. They make too much off of foreclosures thanks to the sweetheart deal the FDIC made with them. Thanks, FDIC!

 

Think I am making this up? Out of 1711 trial modifications, there have been ZERO permanent ones offered by IndyMac/OneWest.  While they might talk a good game and pretend to “be there to help,” nothing can be further from the truth.