A few other things

I feel like the sporadic nature of my posting has left some things dangling that maybe I should wrap up here. Or at least clarify.

For instance, the issue of short selling our house. I think I went over the reasoning pretty thoroughly, but previously mentioned that we were "for sure" being processed for a modification with the Bank. Hah! They told me that I should receive FedEx-ed documents outlining the modification process and what our new trial mortgage would be within 45 days of that phone call. The 45th day was Dec. 9 - the day we signed our short sale papers with the realtor. You may notice it is now January 9, a full MONTH past that 45 day window closed. Have we received papers? No. Have we received any information at ALL regarding that modification? No, we have not.

We have received 3 copies of our new mortgage payment books for 2010. THREE. Nicely done Bank. Nicely done.

We received numerous messages on our machine that were waiting for us upon our return from Rome. You see, we stopped paying the mortgage in December. That's what was recommended to us for the short sale process by the HUD counselor. For a lot of reasons that made sense. The stunning, stunning, thing to me, was that after all this time. All this effort. After waiting 45 days for word on a supposed modification that still has not materialized...after having to send our paperwork for said modification 3 times, after answering the same questions on the phone, also, at least 3 times...and still NOTHING comes of the modification...we can miss one payment and starting the DAY that it is late, we receive phone calls from their debt collection call center. THE DAY. Stunning.

And we continued to receive numerous calls a day for approximately 3 weeks until I'd had enough and finally called them back to inform them that no, I would not like to make my payment, and in fact, no further payments would be made on this account because we are in the process of a short sale. The kindly person on the phone (I worked phones too, I know it's not her fault) didn't argue...she just said she'd make a note. And for a week the calls stopped. We got another one last night.

Here's my thinking on the matter. Maybe, just maybe, if instead of being all over the people that are delinquent, they put SOME of their resources towards helping folks with modifications and the like...THEY WOULDN'T HAVE TO STAFF SO MANY PEOPLE TO DEAL WITH DELINQUENT MORTGAGES!!! For crying out loud! We tried for a year. A YEAR. to get some kind of help. And still, NOTHING. We miss one payment and suddenly they're filling our answering machine (we're old school) with messages demanding their money.

Well, I'm very sorry Bank. We don't have it. Like I told you countless times over the last 6 months. We had a serious loss of income. We are seriously underwater. We have actually exhausted our savings trying to pay you. We have taken out a serious amount of student loans to continue paying you. We're done. We've done what we could. Now please stop calling me, unless you're willing to offer me something that can make it feasible to stay in my house, or want to grant me this short sale unconditionally upon finding a buyer.