No Foreclosure Hope For Countrywide Clients

July 21st, 2008 | Tags: Foreclosure

Countrywide claims to have a department named ‘Hope’ to help those struggling to stay in their homes. But in reality there is no hope of escape from foreclosures for countrywide clients.

Jason and Teresa Olive are two of the many victims. The gloomy economy claimed their business and took away their cars. Finally a foreclosure cloud hung over their house. Their lender was Countrywide Financial Corporation. Despite knocking on the door of their much-flaunted ‘Hope’ department, within six months of useless parleying they reached the dead end. Their house was foreclosed upon in June 2008. Teresa Olive did not mince words when she said that ‘The Hope people were hopeless.’ There are many like the Olives as the foreclosure crisis continues to rise.

The government has sponsored another relief campaign named Hope Now. Doubts are being cast about its effectiveness. It has its centres right across the country and offers direct help to the foreclosure victims in the way of opening communication line with lenders like Countrywide. Banks have promised Hope Now to provide trained counseling to the distressed house owners. The programme is voluntary and if the lenders do not respond there is nothing that Hope Now can do.

Hope Now claims to have helped over 1.7 million house owners in foreclosure trouble since it debuted in July 2007. But critics are doubtful about the quality of help. The Olives are sinking. Hope Now claims to have helped one fourth of those who have knocked at their doors for help. Kathleen Day of Centre of Responsible Lending argues that the sheer number of foreclosures is too much to cope with.. The mortgage industry does not have the infrastructure to attend to 2 million foreclosures.

Bank of America has taken over Countrywide and was stung by the comments leveled against Hope Now. Although facts and figures are being presented in support of Hope Now, it seems that help is either too late or too little considering the magnitude of the problem. Hope has been able to work out 28% loan workouts. Thus even if the numbers given by Hope Now are accepted, the numbers are far below the expected level.

Countrywide has recently been sued by four states for fraudulent lending practices. One of the states is Florida. Nevertheless it continues to offer platitudes that do little to soothe the pains of the many Olives.