Complaint Review: Wells Fargo Bank NA - Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

Like many other reports I am reading, we also attempted to do a loan mod. with Wells Fargo. We contacted the company in Nov. '08 because my husband works in construction and we knew that work would be slowing down. We simply were trying to plan ahead so we would not get behind. We informed WF of this and we were told to send a letter of hardship, financial forms, and many other facts of information in order to get the process started. Within 2 days, we had all the forms together and faxed. We called WF the following week only to find out that they could not locate our paperwork. We were told to call back in a couple of days to check on it -- and we did -- and still the paperwork could not be located.

We, again, put all of our facts together and faxed them in again. We waited a few days and called, and we were told at this time they did have the paperwork and the process takes apx 30-45 days to complete the loan mod. (we were also told to check in weekly to see if we had been assigned a negotiater to work on our loan). We called once a week every week. After several weeks of this, we were told some of the paperwork was now outdated and we would need to send more. Again, we gathered the needed paperwork and resent it. We continued to call weekly to check our status, and also continued to remind them that work was slowing down and we were needing to get something done or else we would fall behind. By March 2009, we were still trying to get something worked out with WF and continued to keep our payments up-to-date.

We did have an occasional late payment, but we did pay the late fee each time. By this time, my husbands work had really slowed down and this was reflected in the last set of paperwork that we had sent WF. Towards the end of March, WF informed us that our debt-to-income ratio would not allow them to work with us; this is what we had told them from the start -- this was the reason for a loan mod. We contacted a lawyer in April 2009 to file bankruptcy on our vehicles (our newer model vehicles). We filed Chapter 7 and let our vehicles go. We were willing to do whatever it took to keep our home. During the time of the bankruptcy, we still continued to keep our house payments paid. We were due to have the bankruptcy discharged in Sept 2009. 

The first week of Sept., we received a letter that we were unsure what it was pertaining to exactly; it was not from our lawyers that took care of our bankruptcy. Not being legal savy, we thought it was a part of the bankruptcy, but we were unsure why we received something about our home becuase it was not part of the bankruptcy. We contacted our lawyers only to find out that WF was starting foreclosure proceedings on our home. We had not missed a payment and we were less than 30 days behind on the current month. We had no idea why this was happening. We could not get the lawyers that sent the letter to tell us anything because our current bankruptcy had not been discharged yet.

During the time, we were working on a loan mod. with WF and they were ever-so-hard to work with. I did send out several letters to our goverment officials complaining about the way that WF was treating us. This is one of the bailed-out banks that our tax dollars were paying for. The reason for the bailout was to help the home-owners of these institutions out -- not push them into losing their homes. We contacted our lawyers and went ahead and put our home into the bankruptcy; what else could be done at this time? In order to fight such a company, hiring a lawyer that specialized in this would be key and we did not have the money to fight them. So, there you go, Wells Fargo -- another house sitting empty like so many others across this country.

 Seems to me it would be more beneficial for WF and the homeowners to be able to work together. At least we, like many others, could have kept our home and the bank would still be collecting money from us. Is the structure of the home mod. loans and bailout more beneficial to the financial institutions to foreclose on property than to work with the homeowners? If so, the financial companies should be aware that you are only running off your long-term customer base. Our goal, at this point in our life, is to research and find out the structure of these programs. Is our congress working for us? Who out there is trying to help the hard-working Amercian homeowner? We are currently looking for a place to rent and are finding it hard due to the fact that when credit checks are run, it shows that we have recently had a bankruptcy/foreclosure.

For a family of 6, it is not an easy task to find a home to keep our children in the same school district. Because this has been a stressful situation on the entire family, we are trying to keep the children's lives as stable as possible. My husband and myself live distressed on a day-to-day basis, not knowing what to expect from Wells Fargo at this time. We have not even received a timeline letting us know how long we are able to stay in this home. This is extremely stressful. We don't know what to expect; maybe coming home and finding a padlock on the door. We will continue to contact our representatives with our dissatisfaction as to the way our government uses our tax dollars to support such dysfunctional institutions. (We want a refund!)