@ScottL wrote:
I was approved for a HAMP modification with Midland Mortgage and have yet to sign the documents and return because I was wary of how this would effect my credit score. This modification will save me about $200/mo, so Im really interested in accepting it. However I was under the impression that during my 3-4 month trial period, I am making my new lower modified payment, that they would report me as late since I am not technically making a full payment and only a partial payment.
So I sent an email to the VP of the company and received a call back today. The lady I spoke to guarnteed me that during this 3-4 months of making lower payments, they will NOT report me as making late payments. Since i am current at the time of accepting, I would still be reported as current even thogh Im making partial payments for 3-4 months. However, it would have a comment stating something like, in process of a modification or something like that. Then once its finalized after 3-4 months, it would then say something like, modified under a government modfication.
She is even going to go through the legal department and have them put this in writing for me and send to me.
So my question is, will the comment of "under a modification" and then the "modified under governemnt program" comments reflect badly on my credit score at all?
Hey ScottL. I have been poking around this site for just a few weeks now when i came across your post regarding a mortgage modification. I went through this same process about 3 years ago. It all looked great, saved me about $900 a month on my mortgage. All I had to do was make the "trial" payments for 90 days and it would be settled. Imagine my surprise when my wife and I went to lease a new vehicle approximately 10 months after starting this process which wasn't complete, when the car dealer says to us " I am sorry folks, I can't do anything for you, you are over 180 days in arrears on your motgage". I almost got sick right there. Despite not having the process finalized with the bank in the claimed 90 days, I made contact with them every week to ensure that this would not adversly affect my credit, or anything, I would not be forclosed on the whole bit. The kept re-assuring me everything would be fine, nothing would happen to your credit. I had no idea how the program worked, when i went through it it was to new a process and the paperwork was very unclear, even checked by lawyers. I hope I caught you before you got into it just as a warning, as we used to say, "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" be careful. If you can afford to keep making the extra payments until it is finalized do it, that is the ONLY way to not go in default. The other thing i was told I should have done, had i known, was keep the extra money in my account, when the process finally did close, a year after it started, I was given the opportunity to pay the difference, the amount i was put into arrears. Well, I had lost my job, and as soon as they told me I could save $900 a month i jumped on it. I didn't have it to pay. Anyways, because I didn't have the money, they added the arrears amount to my principal of the loan. So i now owe $20,000 more than the loan was originaly for. I thought i had done my due diligence having people look over everything, but i still ended up get shafted. Anyways, just be careful and good luck!
