Thanks Pattilynn. BofA now has offered a modification. The payment is now $50 higher than the old payments. That won't work! The bank says that the owner can request a new modification but the hardship has to be different. They have the same hardship as they always have in that due to being laid off from job he has not been able to replace the salary he had. Do you know of any way to escalate with USDA? I have escalated within BofA but got the same old scripted answers.

Nice to see you on SSSS!  I see you're from Tallahassee... I'm a FSU alumnus :)

Good day Pattilynn,

Sorry for this long disertaiion, but here goes.

Our situation is this - we are located in the Central Valley of California.  We have a first mortgage that originated with Citibank but is now in the hands of Nationstar.  That first is a $283k loan at 6.65% interest only for 10 yrs then adjusts to fully amortized loan over 20 years.   Our second is a $42k viable interest HELOC with B of A.  The (Nationstar) estimated value of our home is about $125k.  This is our primary residence that we purchased in 1998 for $132k.  We are in our early 60's.

We went all the way through Nationstar's HAMP program including their APOLLO program and was denied a loan mod because our housing cost are below 31% of our gross monthly income.

We then just completed the HARP 2.0 process with Nationstar and were denied base on the LTV of our property and what they consider our inability to payback the loan (heavy credit card debit).  They said we did not get the required FMHA code 147 that was required for them to move forward on the loan.  They did say that our monthly debt to income ratio was acceptable, DTI about 30%.

The Nationstar refi rep did tell us the next step for us was to try a short sale with Nationstar.

We have never been late on any of our house payments and are not behind.  We have not been late on any of our other monthly credit card payments.  We do however have heavy credit card debt.  I did have a wage reduction of about 33%.  My wife is absolutely not able to work.  My health insurance costs and medical bills have increased substantially last year and this year.

OK now the questions - We would like to approach Nationstar about a short sale but are stuck in neutral because of our failure with the other Nationstar/gov programs that have not worked.  We do not want to just walk away from our house but definately would like to do a short sell.

Also, there are investment buyers in our area that would be interested in buying at the current market value of the home and renting back to us.

Is a short sale possible with Nationstar given our situation?

How does Bank of America deal with their HELOC and how difficult are they to work with?

Is a real estate agent required for doing a short sale if there are buyers ready to approach us with an offer now?

Or should we hire an attorney (very expensive at about $3000) to handle our situation and have the attorney contact and negogiate with Nationstar and B of A?

We feel a qualified real estate agent is the better way to go, but definately think legal advice is also required.

Thanks for any input you can give me.
Ken

Thank you for the welcome

Ken