Homeowners Rise and Get Foreclosure Help to Save Their Homes
May 26th, 2009 by 
Joseph Smith
A rising number of the more than two million American homeowners threatened with foreclosure in 2009 are actively finding foreclosure help and fighting their lenders to save their homes.
Many of them are getting foreclosure help from online sites like Livinglies and Consumer Warning Network that offer samples of motions, letters, summaries of related court rulings and glossaries of applicable legal terms. Some of them are getting foreclosure help from HUD counselors and other nonprofit foreclosure prevention agency workers.
Eighty-one year-old doctor Louis Manley is one of them. Manley’s lender Deutsche Bank has already foreclosed his condo unit, but Manley is still fighting the foreclosure in court. He has researched, applied and taken advantage of every foreclosure help that he could get to save his unit.
There are also paid seminars such as the one conducted by former banker Brad Keiser to provide foreclosure prevention information in exchange of a fee of $149. Keiser offers the seminars in partnership with lawyer Neil Garfield, the founder of the Livinglies online site. They said they initially offered their seminars only to lawyers offering foreclosure help to paying clients, but they started including lay people when they got a lot of inquiries from homeowners looking for foreclosure help.
Keiser and Garfield’s main contention is that many borrowers who took out loans from 2001 to 2008 were victims of the greed of bankers and investors who speculated in securitized mortgage loans. The financiers’ demand for mortgage loans to securitize caused the loosening of loan screening standards, pushing lenders to entice financially unqualified borrowers with initially very low monthly payments and no down payments without telling borrowers that the monthly payments would balloon into unaffordable levels in the next years.
Garfield tells distressed borrowers that they have the right to challenge every move of their lenders so that their lenders would negotiate with them and agree to loan modifications.
Vladimir Diaz is one homeowner who challenged the foreclosure action of his lender IndyMac Bank in court. He said he equipped himself with legal knowledge by studying whatever foreclosure information he can find on the web site Livinglies.
During the foreclosure hearing, Diaz told the judge that IndyMac had no right to file a foreclosure action on his house because IndyMac is not the owner of his mortgage note. Previously, he was able to trace that IndyMac no longer owns the mortgage note on his property.
In the meantime, 81-year-old Manley’s case is not yet over, but he is glad he is able to receive some foreclosure help to fight his own battle against foreclosure.
