Chinchette,

Most loan mod companies have attorney affiliates, and can thereby get away with charging upfront fees. Ironically, in no states are attorneys held to the same consumer-protective fee standards as the lending industry.

Cheers,
Dave Donhoff
Leverage Planner

When DH went to a seminar put on by Florida Assoc of Mortgage Brokers, it was gone over how it is not legal for the broker to work with the attorney in that type of relationship. He gave an analogy of a pretzel. You can bend it and straighten it out and call it something else, but its still a pretzel. However, I did not attend the seminar and am not aware of what statutes he went over. We just ruled it out.

I'm curious if anyone on the board has done a mod with one of these companies. They all claim to be experts. We did mods for one bank that solicited mortgage brokers to do the mods for them, but that was different. That bank was the one who was initiating it. By the way, that bank has put all their mods on hold until 4 March, because they are now waiting to hear what the stim package will be. A lot of things are on hold due to that. Hm. I thought it was supposed to be to get things MOVING.

Most lenders will modify your existing loan when rates go down, for a fee. This is instead of refinancing, not because you can not make the payments.

Guess I'm not sure what these Loan Mod companies are claiming.

Most of the companies are claiming to do what you can do yourselves. If you can pick up a phone and call the bank, you can get the process started. These companies are preying off of the misfortune of people that can least afford to pay a hefty fee.
Just reserch the process on line, and go from there.