We live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX metro area. My wife and I both lost our jobs in April, 2004, so that was over $5,000.00 a month gone. Our home went into foreclosure process in early June, 2004. My wife and I started receiving several letters every day stuffed in our mailbox from local attorneys, foreclosure specialists and etc.

I had been working with my mortgage company on a workout pkg. for hardship cases for almost a month, but was needing to come up with about $3,000-$3,500 for a workout remedy with them. I could only get about $2,000 dollars together though, because I had just finished paying for my real estate schooling, and exam and license fees, and local real estate board fees, totaling approx. $1,500.00 so I could get back to work to pay my mortgage payments.

We received a flyer in the mail from Premier Choice Properties in Atlanta, GA, about 2 1/2 weeks before the sherriff's sale was scheduled on our home. They were promising to get the foreclosure stopped and the employee my wife and I spoke with, a Ms. Ebony Sutherland, took all of mine and my wife's info and then mailed out a pkg for us to sign off on. She told me to send in the amount equal to one month's payment of $1,770.90 which included principal, interest, taxes, and insurance.

She assured my wife and I four times in a row that we asked her, that the money we were sending into the company was going into a trust ******* and that all of it would go to our mortgage company as a sign of good faith on our part to set up a repayment of the past due amount.

We asked Ms Sutherland also four times what their company charged for their service, and she skated around the question three times by saying, not to worry about their charges, that they just wanted to get the foreclosure stopped and help us to save our home. The fourth time asked she said they normally charge $200.00 for that type of service, but was waiving that fee, and that if the attorney had to get involved, that would be at $125.00 per hour of work performed.

When we received the paper work to sign off on the next day and overnight back to their company with the cashier's check, I noticed in the working agreement that it said in #2 Charges: Client shall pay to Loss Mitigation the sum of $1777.90 as compensation for services performed in connection with Client's delinquent mortgage. This was what Ms. Sutherland stated to my wife and I was going into a trust ******* and being paid to our mortgage company. So we called her back, (my wife was on the phone with me on all calls), and asked her about the charges listed in #2 heading and she told us again that it was going into a trust and would all go to the lender as a good faith payment if they got something satisfactory worked out, and if they didn't, we would get it back minus the actual workout time spent at $125.00 an hour. Only after her assuring us of the payment amount did we go ahead and sign and send back to them with the cashier's check with a note on the check that it was for, 'Homecomings Financial Trust'.

Ms. Sutherland also promised to have the foreclosure stopped by that following Monday or Tuesday June 28th or 29th. We called her back on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 and she said they hadn't gotten anything worked out yet, to check back in a couple of days. We let her know again as before that the sherriff's sale was scheduled in 6 days. She assured us that they would have a remedy and the foreclosure stopped before then. I called back several times after that and never received word back from Ms Sutherland or her supervisor until the day before the sale and they said on a message that I needed an additional $2,500 to make it work and sent to Homecomings Financial.

I called them back to find out about the $1770.90 that was supposed to go to the lender and never received a call back from Ms Sutherland or her supervisor. I called every day that week with no luck, Ms Sutherland came in on late shift and never returned my calls, and her supervisor was there during the day but was always in a meeting or on the other line, but I was assured of him calling me back. But never got the call back.

I called the gentleman at my lenders that I had been working with on the morning of the scheduled sale and he told me that he spoke with Ms Sutherland's supervisor for about 45 minutes total on a proposed workout but he would need more information on my repair services pay records that I was doing in addition to getting started with real estate sales. That was the first I had heard of that. He also told me that I didn't have time to complete all that and that the sale went forward just hours earlier that morning and that it was out of my control, because the lender had bought the house back at the sherriff's sale.

So not only did we lose the $1770.90, we also lost approx. $20,000 in equity in our home. I even emailed the president of Premier Choice Properties, Mr. Myron King, and have not received a responce from him in a week's time either. Look's like they took the money and ran. If someone can help that reads this, please do! We will survive but we need to get companies that prey on others misfortunes out of business before they get to hundreds, or thousands more more.

William
Mansfield, Texas
U.S.A.