First a little history:

November 16, 2007 I had major surgery and my employer let me go on my first week home on disability. At the time I could not even drive so it was not until the first of the year that I was able to look for work. I aggressively looked for work everywhere and anywhere. Both high-end and minimum wage jobs, yet the minimum wage jobs won’t hire me because they believe I won’t stick around, and executive employment can be hard to find. I lived off credit for 9 months increasing my debt to a crisis level. I sold almost everything I had at pennies on the dollar.

In June of 08 I applied for food stamps because I was out of food and money. In July I accepted a job in Los Angeles and relocated. Unfortunately the move to LA was at reduced pay and a higher cost of living so I could not pay both rent and a mortgage. My realtor tried to sell the house and we dropped the price $5k every two weeks.

October of 08 I was laid off and right now I only have a temp job that lasts another 58 days. The gig has no benefits and only pays rent. Thanks to some loving people I’m not going hungry, and because I have now given my life to help the homeless I have some peace about my situation, but I am still in a very serious crisis.

Here is the deal:

In November of 08 we found a buyer for my house in ST Louis and started the process of a short sale with Countrywide, yet it has been nightmare after nightmare. To make a very long story short Countrywide is killing me. You can never get to a manager, or the people who are (supposedly) negotiating the short sale. It took a month to schedule an appraiser yet they assigned the data to only one of the loans causing more delay (they kept saying it was not done when my realtor was with the appraiser at the house)

I call a few times a week and they give a different story each time. “It will be 7 business days” they told us in December before the holidays. After the holidays they say that 7 days was just to assign it to a negotiator so now it will be another 10 business days. Once 10 days was up I called and they responded 10 business days is just a ballpark figure. My realtor also calls and gets the same madness.

You’d think that since we have a buyer and the offer is right in line of market value Countrywide would want to make this happen so they don’t have to sell it themselves. Not the case and my buyer is now done with this. My realtor has had other short sales competed in half this time but with different lenders.

I’ve been trying to do the right thing and I paid my mortgage with my credit cards for almost a year. Of course they are maxed but I’ve never missed a minimum payment. Yesterday that payment jumped because Bank Of America more than doubled my interest rate. Now, it’s beyond me to pay. I called B of A last night and they closed all of my accounts and slammed my credit. They said I have been a faithful customer for a long time with never even a late payment, but because my mortgage has not been paid in 150 days they have no choice.

This flat out SUCKS! 14 years ago I was homeless and I’ve worked so hard to restore my credit. If Countrywide had moved on this like they should, and kept their word, I would not be in such a bad situation, oh, I’m still in crisis but now I’m tanked.

This laptop, my car, some furniture, and a box of photos is all I have left.

Please do my a big favor – blog about this, tweet this, forward to someone, yell real loud because if Countywide is doing this to me I am sure there are many others who Countrywide is tanking.

Also, going through a foreclosure/short sale procedure is HORRIBLE. It makes you feel dirty. I feel dirty! I’ve done all I can and I work very hard to do the right thing – always! But this just makes me feel like I am less of a human. With what’s going on in the world today you know someone who also is in a similar situation. Be nice to them, take them to dinner and the movies – get them out of their problem! Chances are they don’t have money to get out much and are living in their crisis. At the very least be a good listener. Losing a house after losing a job is horrible!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 17th, 2009 at 12:06 pm and is filed under My Big Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.