Another New Hampshire Homeowner Alleges Being Screwed Over By A Mortgage Servicing Company

In New Hampshire, The Union Leader reports:

• The first sign of trouble was the notice from a company they'd never heard of, informing Greg and Andrea Hunt of Northwood that their monthly mortgage payment had not been received. Just three months later came a foreclosure notice. That was in 2005. The Hunts have been fighting to save their home, and restore their damaged credit, ever since. [...] Over the ensuing months -- now years -- HomEq has assessed late fees, increased escrow payments without notice, and charged the Hunts for an insurance policy they didn't need, according to the couple. Their payment amount seemed to change constantly, and their loan was nearly always in default.

***

• "There are just too many people out there who are complaining about the same basic pattern of facts, and that pattern of facts doesn't happen just by accident, that often, and that commonly," said attorney Walter Maroney. Formerly chief of the consumer protection bureau at the state Attorney General's Office, Maroney is now in private practice. He represents a Manchester man who has sued his mortgage servicer and related companies for $13 million; the case is pending in U.S. District Court in Concord.

• Katherine Porter, an associate professor of law at the University of Iowa, is the author of a recent study, "Misbehavior and Mistake in Bankruptcy Mortgage Claims." She looked at 1,700 Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases, including some from New Hampshire, and found that mortgage servicers often could not produce the documents required to support fees they had charged homeowners. The data, she wrote, "raise the specter of poor record-keeping, failure to comply with consumer-protection laws, and massive, consistent overcharging. All families who are trying to pay off a home loan are put at risk if subject to poor or predatory mortgage servicing," she wrote. "... (T)he frightening prospect is that servicing problems among non-bankruptcy families who are behind on their mortgages may be even worse than the bankruptcy data reveal."

• Some say one problem is that mortgage servicers make their money from late fees and other penalties charged to borrowers. "There's a built-in incentive for the servicing industry to really rip people off," contends Richard Gaudreau, a Salem attorney who specializes in consumer bankruptcy law. "If they can throw your payment into a suspense account because it's a dollar short, then they can impose a late fee."

For more, see Fighting mortgage disservice.

Go here , go here , and go here for posts on questionable mortgage servicing practices. questionable mortgage servicing practices tactics xero