San Jose Real Estate * Santa Clara County * Richard Gonzalez * Real Estate Broker * Realty World Powerhouse Brokers

A huge step was taken by our legislators last week by passing Sb 94 authored by Senator Calderon. A law that makes it illegal to charge up front fees on a loan modification. This law applies to everyone including attorneys and real estate brokers.

10 day approval? Yes that’s what I said and for those homeowners lucky enough to have a Wachovia loan( aka World Savings) a short sale approval is possible within a few weeks time. Wachovia is able to do this mainly because they own the loans vs having to service them for investors.

What makes this more incredible is that each county has a short sale negotiator who is proactive in the approval process.  Wachovia makes its decisions on a case by case hardship a homeowner is facing. The goal is to offer a fast track process to the homeowner once it has been determined that all other options have been exhausted including the possibility of a loan modification.

Requirements for a Wachovia Short Sale Approval

1. Homeowner must have a true hardship (loss of income, job loss, medical, family, etc….). Provide required documentation to support your hardship. Taxes, bank statements, and pay stubs must be submitted to the negotiator.
2. Communication  is key! Most homeowners in this situation are embarrassed at the possibility of facing foreclosure that they stop answering the phone or opening mail. You must be willing to communicate with the lender to help yourself with this situation.
3. Work with a REALTOR who knows how the Wachovia process works. This will help the homeowner reach a timely agreement with Wachovia and help facilitate an open channel of communication with the short sale negotiator.

Wachovia’s short sale fast track is incredibly fast in comparison to the other banks and servicers who can take up to 90 days to approve a short sale. Talk to a Loss Mitigation Representative  to find out more and to explore your options.

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At the San Jose Foreclosure Prevention Fair people showed up with the look of hope in their eyes. Hope that for them would eventually lead to a modification of their overwhelming mortgage problems. I had a first hand look at this event from a lead volunteer and it was nothing short of a miracle for some people who taken time out of their busy lives to take a leap of faith in coming to this event.

An event put on by the City of San Jose, Department of Real Estate, Santa Clara County Association of REALTORS, and Don’t Borrow Trouble. I was asked as the President of NAHREP SCC to assist in this event and gladly took on the task, Although most of the planning had been done by the organizations mentioned there were HUD Certified counselors, attorneys, and the San Jose tax assessor on hand.

3:15
I arrived shortly after 3pm and with 45 minutes before the event officially began. I quickly realized that magnitude of this undertaking, you could see it in the faces of the volunteers, they were ready to assist in any way they could and they did. Unfortunately we quickly realized that as much as we wanted to help the true help would not come from us but from the lenders who has committed to sending a team of representative to this event. The bank representatives apparently had the authority to make a loan modification on the spot(whoa!). On the spot modification? Unheard of to all the people attending this event. Just ask any of the attendees who had spent hundreds of hours calling and visiting their bank asking for help only to have the door slammed on their request for help.

4:15
A few lender representatives had arrived and began setting up classrooms into makeshift modification centers. A few key lenders who had confirmed participation were still not on the school grounds. People were getting nervous while they waited in front of the assigned lenders class rooms. Slowly lender representatives began to arrive and in the case of my assigned class room chaos had ensued, not because the lenders had arrived late but because the amount of people had grown to over 40 people in the first hour alone. Elsewhere other classroom and the lenders located in them had very light attendance while in my classroom it was apparent that Washington Mutual had the biggest attendees.

4:45
After a mix up in our volunteer procedures and with the ever mounting crowd of attendees we finally began bringing people into the classroom. One by one they entered and one by one they exited with hope. An unbelievable and refreshing response to their request. The response for the most part was “YES!”.  Lender representatives were actually listening and acting on the request for a modification to these peoples needs. I was fortunate enough to act as interpreter for some of these folks who spoke Spanish. I quickly saw their despair turn into relief. I had to ask questions while I was their and found that these representatives had been given more flexibility in the last 30 days alone to help these people.

6:30
A steady flow of people entering the event had dwindled down to a few stragglers. I had hoped that more people would have attended  but for a first of its kind event it was a success in the minds of the volunteers.

11:pm
After sitting outside the Washington Mutual classroom for seven hours and feet hurting, I along with my buddy Karl lee helped WAMU clean up, turn off the lights and walk them to their car. On my way home I realized that we did something good today and knew that the volunteers who participated in this event must have felt as equally satisfied. I don’t know what the changing motivation of the lenders had been over the last 30 days but I will tell you that most of the lender representatives at this event had been on the job less  than 6 months,  only in the last 30 days has their ability to truly help the consumer been given to them. My only hope is that its not too late.