Battling the Banks: Abandoned By Flagstar

My friend is about to watch her home go up for auction. Because the bank her mortgage is through has been negligent in responding. She is a fellow blogger and my friend. My heart is breaking for her because this COULD BE FIXED and NO ONE IS DOING A GOD DAMN THING TO HELP THEM.
Her name is Candice. Facebook
Fashionably Organized
Twitter
PLEASE HELP ME TO HELP HER SAVE HER HOME. THERE IS NO WAY TO REACH FLAGSTAR VIA SOCIAL MEDIA BECAUSE…THEY ARE MISSING THE BOAT BUT…SHE NEEDS HELP NOW!!

HERE IS HER STORY:

I know you have all heard this 1,000,000 times, but here’s 1,000,001…
“I never thought it would be me.”
I met my husband when he was in law school, and I thought with hard work on both of our parts, we would have a nice life. I never expected to have a lavish life, but NOT being able to pay my mortgage was the last thing I thought would happen.
It has been 15 months since Rob, my husband, got his 30 day notice that the company he was doing contract work for (beginning in late 2006) was terminating his contract. The minute we found out, we came to terms with the fact that paying our mortgage, was going to be practically impossible. He was earning 75% of our family income. One of my paychecks barely came to ⅔ of our mortgage payment.
As soon as his 30 days were up we filed with Flagstar Bank, our mortgage holder, for loss mitigation. At the time we thought Rob would get a job fairly quickly, and we’d be able to work something out with Flagstar Bank.
They asked for every paper we could possibly send them short of the birth certificates of our 3 children. We gave them authorization to speak to my father, because he had been traversing the system for years when he was practicing law.
Several times over the next year we got letters from Flagstar Bank’s Loss Mitigation Department, to send the SAME EXACT PAPERWORK we had sent before. We sent them my paystubs, and our bank statement monthly. No human called us, we just kept getting these letters with demands for, if you didn’t get this already let me say it again, the SAME EXACT PAPERWORK. When my father called to check on our file, the person he spoke with knew nothing, but reminded him to keep sending the pay stubs and bank statements.
Around the beginning of this past October (1 year into the process mind you) I got a call at work from a woman from Flagstar Bank who introduced herself as Andrea (not her real name). She told me she had been assigned to our file and that she would have an “answer” for us in 30 days about whether or not we would be getting a loan modification. One week later you’ll never guess this, but she asked for the SAME EXACT PAPERWORK we had already been sending for the past year; at least 10 times.
This past Thanksgiving weekend we got one of those postcards that are typically sent to people in our situation. Postcard from someone who wanted to help us with a short sale, because our house was set to go to public auction December 31st. That Monday morning my father called Andrea who claimed to look through the computer system, and there was no indication our house was up for auction.
Let me interject here and say, “yeah right!”
Well, not two weeks later we got the Notice of Sale, telling us our house was set to be auctioned this January 3rd. Rob wrote an e-mail to Andrea questioning the bank’s claim they were trying to help. Her response to him was that the 2 departments (Loss Mitigation and the dept. responsible for collections/foreclosures) work independently of one another and that Loss Mitigation was still working on our file.
Here we are heading into month 16 of waiting for help from Flagstar Bank, and 7 days away from losing our house. We have 3 kids, and no where to go. We’re not even sure that filing for bankruptcy can keep a roof over our heads.
I’m really curious how Flagstar Bank thinks it is actually acting in good faith? How does a bank not have a record of an account that is being prepared for a Notice of Sale? That’s the stage just before being auctioned so the bank can recoup its losses. We get 6 or 7 copies of our Notice of Default telling us the house is scheduled to be auctioned, but the bank that supposedly holds our house as security can’t tell what the status on the account is? I have no doubt that a company such as Flagstar Bank has a way for its departments to keep talking with each other to keep tabs on what they are working on, especially if there is an overlap.
And an even bigger question is why do they claim on their own website that they have options for people in our situation? If you take a look at their website, it says:
At Flagstar Bank, we understand that unexpected financial hardships can strain even the most carefully managed household budget to the breaking point.
If you have recently experienced any of the following life events and can’t make your mortgage payment, Flagstar Bank has several financial hardship workout options available that may help you.
A FINANCIAL HARDSHIP COULD INCLUDE:
*Job loss or out-of-state transfer
*Reduction in hours or rate of pay
*Illness or disability affecting you or someone in your immediate family
*Divorce or other marital difficulties
*Being called to active duty as a member of a military reserve unit
Where is that TARP money given to banks to help people like us?
The life we lead today is worlds apart from where we were two years ago, and the hammer of the global recession and our personal job loss hit us HARD. Harder than we ever really imagined it could.
Where are Flagstar Bank’s “several financial hardship workout options,” for us? How can the bank make the claim it wants to help if it takes 16 months to give us a we’re still working on it.
There simply are not many ways for me to get my message out about Flagstar Bank’s lack of customer help.
As someone who is immersed in Social Media, it boggles my mind that a company as large as Flagstar Bank has no social media outreach. They have a Facebook Page that has no posts on it, with less than 500 followers. And even though I was able to find 2 Twitter accounts that appear to be linked to Flagstar Bank, one looks to be used strictly as a way to announce job postings, and the other has no tweets and about 75 followers. They do have an 800 number which I am sure will get you to a person who knows as much as our Andrea.
Home Loan Financial Hardship Questions/Issues
(800) 393-4887
Monday – Friday: 8:30 a.m. – 9 p.m. ET
We get asked a lot lately, “what are you guys going to do?”
My answer, “I have no idea, but I’m sure Flagstar Bank still has our file open.”

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