Bank Pockets Five Payments On Trial Loan Mod, Then Hammers Homeowner With Foreclosure Threat; Lender To Take 2nd Look After Media Reporter's Inquiry

In Tucson, Arizona, the Arizona Daily Star reports on the recent experience of Lori Ann Mitchell, a local homeowner who, while battling ovarian cancer, applied for a home loan modification from Wells Fargo to help her get back on her feet. Wells Fargo reportedly accepted her for a trial modification this summer under the federal Making Home Affordable plan, which reduced her monthly payments from $1,457.23 to $941.83.

• She was supposed to make three trial payments under the program, but instead she said she made five as she waited and waited to hear from the bank. She'd call for updates, but could never get a set answer. She could never speak to the same person twice. And then ... "They just dropped me. Boom," Mitchell said. "It's devastating. First of all I had put a lot of hope in this. I don't find hope a lot with cancer. ... But when I hit the third month, and they hadn't rejected me; and I hit my fourth month, and they hadn't rejected me, I started getting high hopes."

• Those hopes were dashed a few days ago with the ring of a phone. The voice on the other end of the line said Mitchell needed to pay the difference between her previous payments and the modification payments she had been making for the past five months. And that difference, about $2,500, was due by the start of the year. "I didn't expect them to call me and start harassing me for money, telling me 'in two weeks it's going into foreclosure,' " she said.

• When Mitchell was pursuing her modification, she said she struggled to reach a human being at Wells Fargo. Now that she was being threatened with a potential foreclosure, she had no problem connecting with the bank. [...] Now that a reporter has called about Mitchell's loan, though, Wells Fargo is taking a second look. [...] That's good of the bank, but it shouldn't be this way.

For more, see Foreclosure threat comes out of blue.