SUBMITTED: Friday, May 23, 2003
POSTED: Friday, May 23, 2003
I owned my last house for 14 years. I never was late or missed a payment in the first 12 years. In fact I had prepaid the principal down to less than half of the purchase price. In the 12th year I had a setback and called the bank AHEAD of time to let them know I would miss the NEXT payment. I would make it up over the next three or four months. I was told the would start foreclosure the day after the payment was due. Well, wouldn't you know it? Day one past the payment due date I received a notice and threat of foreclosure. I continued to make my other payments on time. So what did they do? They refused any partial payment of the missed payment and on top of that every month that payment became another 3o days past due. By the time it was done, even though I kept payments up, I was 120 days late. That gave them the excuse to attempt to foreclose. At the eleventh hour I came up with the total missed payment, PLUS late fees, to stop the foreclosure!
The first moral to this story is MOST bankers are pariahs and have NO conscience. The second moral is the more equity they can steal the faster they will try to foreclose.