Can Anyone Stop the Predatory Lenders?
From Mother Jones:
No one told Deanna Walters she was about to lose her home. Not when her mortgage servicing company foreclosed on it, nor when it landed on the county auction block and sold to the highest bidder. She realized what was happening only when a man taped a note to the front door of her well-kept house in a leafy corner of Stockton, California, last January. “My son went out and took it down,” recalls the 43-year-old single mother of two, “and that’s when he told me it was a ‘three-day or quit’ notice.”
Walters’ discovery that her home had been sold out from under her marked the low point of a four-year fiasco that began when Ocwen Loan Servicing became her mortgage servicer in late 2004. Through no fault of her own, Ocwen incorrectly processed or lost dozens of Walters’ payments and charged her more than $2,000 in late fees and thousands more in additional charges—all without notifying her. The Florida-based company tried to foreclose on her three times. After she paid more than $10,000, Walters figured things were settled. But Ocwen had other ideas.
Sitting in the storefront office where she runs a tax preparation business next door to the local congressman’s office, Walters recounts her ordeal. She riffles through stacks of account statements and correspondence with the state and federal regulators she’s complained to. She has managed to stay in her home for now, but with little help from those agencies. “No one will deal with these people,” she laments. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything?”
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