subject: No Good Options - Denver Real Estate Weekly Market Update [print this page] Dan Polimino: I'm Dan Polimino with ColoradoDreamHouse.com in this week's market update for the week of October 4th. Alright, as many of you know, I'm a columnist for the Denver Post. I write a real estate column that appears each week. And I decided to do a little research for an upcoming column I've got and it tells a subject that a lot of us have heard an awful lot about in the news, and that is people who are underwater with their home. That means they owe more that it's actually worth.
Other people have tried to refinance their home and I hear horror story after horror story from people that say, "You know, there's just no help out there for us. There's just no help." So I decided my lender Wells Fargo and see if I could find out what these people are talking about. I first went out to their website to get my payoff statement and they ask you right on there if you'd like someone from Wells Fargo to contact you about refinancing. I checked 'yes'. I didn't hear anything from them. I did that three times over two weeks and of course, no one ever contacted me. I finally called the refinancing department and they said I was eligible for an FHA streamline, refinance, no appraisal. I said, "Great! Sign me up." One problem; they charged 2.25% on the value of your home.
So two and a quarter points to refinance, better yet, they will not allow you to roll those fees into the loan. You've got to bring that cash to closing. Well, if you've got a high value home, that's going to be a lot of money. So I said to the guy, "Well, why in heavens name would I possible do that?" And he just paused and said, "I guess you wouldn't. It doesn't make a lot of sense to do that." So refinancing wasn't an option for me through my own lender, which again, I thought would be the best option. So then I said, "Can you kick me to the loan modification department?"
Now, I don't need to modify my loan and I'm not in distress, but I wanted to find out what people were going through. So he put me in the loan modification department, which by the way just puts you into a loop of music. And you listen to the music and listen and listen and listen and after a while, it automatically hangs up on you. Well, it automatically hung up on me five times. And since I was doing research for a column, I kept persisting and I finally got somebody to connect me direct into the loan mod department. They had a short term loan mod and a long term loan mod and the end of the story is like this, they weren't much help. I don't know anyone that could potentially qualify for the short term or the long term, even myself. Proving distress in either situation is going to be difficult. And to be honest with you, even if they did accept you, it wasn't much relief at all or any help.
Now, I'm not advocating that anyone be irresponsible and just surely walk away from their home because they have no good options. But I can tell you after going through this little exercise, I know now why people do walk away from their homes, because the truth to the matter is there are no good options out there for people to help them stay in their homes. And if you listen to the propaganda from the government, if there are plenty of programs in place, they're full of it.
Alright, thats today's post. If you have a comment, I'd like to hear it. If you need help buying or selling a home, I'd love to hear from you as well at ColoradoDreamHouse.com. Have a great week!
No Good Options - Denver Real Estate Weekly Market Update
