I HOPE COUNTRYWIDE IS SUED AND HAS TO PAY BACK FEES, LATE CHARGES, AND INTEREST BACK TO ALL WHO HAD A LOAN THROUGH THEIR MORTGAGE COMPANY. I AM ONE OF THE FEW WHO FELL TO THEIR PREDATORY PRACTICES.

They are no better than "Nationwide" Collection Agency. With their "important legal matters" phone calls; and other FDCPA violations. I hope they all get their day in court like I did.

I do not work for Countrywide and don't know their day to day operations, but I do work in lending.  When are people going to realize it isn't just the lenders fault, but the borrowers as well?  If you don't read what you sign or are not educated on your choices, that is YOUR fault.  I am tired of hearing people say, they took my home - All these people chose to wrap there thousands of dollars up into a new adjustable rate mortgage and then they go out and rack the credit card bills back up.  How is this the lenders fault that you and the rest of the people whining can't manage your own finances???

I am amazed that nobody seems to see what is really going on here. In my neighborhood in South Riverside County, CA nearly all of the foreclosed homes all share one thing in common. They were not foreclosed on because the owners did not want to pay their mortgage, or because they are deadbeats, or lazy unemployed people. Virtually everyone in this area paid over-inflated prices to the builders and were lied to by the sales people about the terms of the loans they were agreeing to.

The facts are simple in this case, people are being forced out of their homes and property values are plummeting because nobody will refinance their mortgage. We were all fed a bunch of bull about how great these option arm mortgages were. Virtually every homeowner had to refinance their home in 1-5 years. At the end of that term you had to refinance no matter what. The problem is that property values started falling before the mortgages were due and when it came time for the homeowners to refinance, no company would do it unless the homeowner had the difference in cash to cover the missing equity.

It seems a fairly simple solution is available, and the fact that nobody is doing it says to me that there must be a profit in not following logic. As an example, one of my neighbors had a mortgage of $735,000 and was willing and able to make the payments, but his time was up and he had to refinance as stated in his loan. The mortgage company had a simple decision to make. Refinance the home and extend the loan and let the homeowner continue to make payments despite the lack of equity. They would continue to get regularly scheduled payments and the property would not be vandalized, gutted or simply deteriorate due to neglect. OR the mortgage company could foreclose on all these homes, flood the market with repos, drive property values down even more, and eventually sell the home for hundreds of thousands of dollars less than they would have received if they had simply extended the mortgages.

People can make all the excuses in the world for why that would not work, but the math is simple. You can lose money for sure, or let your money ride and maybe you will lose, maybe you will break even, or maybe you will win big.

Now with this particular neighbor, the house is now listed at $335,000. That's right! They are eating 400 thousand dollars not including realtor fees on that house. Not to mention they have not received a payment on that vacant home for 8 months. Roughly $40,000 in landscape plants are now dead making our neighborhood look even worse. This is only one example, and everyone in my neighborhood left for the same reason. The mortgage company called the note due as they are legally allowed to do. But just because the contract says it is so doesn't mean the mortgage company and homeowner cannot come to an agreement.

Every week more and more people are leaving their homes by force and property values are continuing to decline as a result. I was smart enough not to buy into all the crap we are told on the news and by supposed "experts" in the field. I saw what was coming and refinanced a year into my 5 year contract because I knew in 5 years I would not be able to refinance because I believed I knew where things were headed.

And to all those experts who told me I was wrong about where things were heading and where they would end up...HA! You should all feel really foolish that the guy with no industry experience proved you all wrong by correctly predicting what would  happen in the real estate/mortgage industry and to the economy as a result. And I never even went to college.

If the mortgage companies were willing to work with homeowners the nation would not be in this situation. I don't know one single homeowner who left because they could not afford to make their payments. Not that those people don't exist, but I believe people are being misled. Not having a few hundred thousand dollars in cash to pay down your existing mortgage to a level where you can get refinanced is not the same as not being able to afford your monthly payments.

Most of the homes in our area are currently valued around $250-$350 thousand, but most people paid $450-$700 thousand to the builder for their homes.

Maybe companies like Centex, KB homes, William Lyon, Lennar, etc should be required to bail out some of these people. They were selling homes at a profit in the $200,000 range when rates fell. Suddenly they were selling those same homes for hundreds of thousands of dollars more with no real increase in the cost of building those homes.

Supposedly the rates were dropped to stimulate the economy and make it so more Americans could afford to own a home as it was explained to me. But it seems it only served to make the people who already had a lot of money richer, and those who only had a little or even less are no better off or even worse as a result.

I have been told that the government could not prohibit the builders from charging more for their homes because of free enterprise. They are allowed to charge whatever the market would allow. But the government is notorious for making rules. They could have created a program that would allow borrowers to qualify for that lower rate but builders would have to agree to certain terms. There could have been a cap on how much they could charge or whatever. Those details could all be worked out by the same people in the government doing it now.

I believe the builders are just as guilty as the lending institutions. All the builders had sales people who knew exactly what they were doing and pushing people into. Yes the lenders are wrong, but the builders were in bed with them too.

The short of it is that the mortgage companies are guaranteed to lose big money if the foreclose, but if they give the homeowners a chance they have an opportunity not to lose and maybe even to come out on top. How hard is it to decide that? Guaranteed loss on one hand, or a possible loss down the road on the other hand? If my mortgage company told me they were willing to lose $400,000 on my home plus realtor fees, I would be more than happy to continue making payments continually to them if they were willing to subtract that amount from my mortgage.

If you can pay all the fees to foreclose on a home, pay the realtor fees and all the other costs, including a lack of continuous payments, and ultimately eat tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, than you should be willing to discount a mortgage, or  be willing to continue the mortgage despite negative equity if the homeowner is willing to keep paying you. Why are they so eager to foreclose and lose money but not willing to work with homeowners who are begging to work with them to keep their homes?

Val KTS that must not have read her papers...IT'S TIME YOU AND ALL OF THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO, YES, REGRETTABLY, GOT INJURED, LOST THEIR JOB, WENT THROUGH A DIVORCE, HAD THEIR CAR BREAK DOWN OR WHATEVER - STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND ACCEPT RESPONSABILITY (Or blame bad luck if you must) AND STOP BLAMING OTHERS. Predatory??? I'll go out on a limb ... you haven't had your job for at least two years, right?? (Or you can't prove you make what you like to say you make!) And you really needed to payoff all of your debt to save money, right?? And you'll probably blame some of that debt on some one else, right??? And your credit wasn't all that either, right?? Probably sucked actually, like 560 mid??? Oh...and thank goodness for rising home values at the time  'cause now you have a way out of your bad decissions...so you get a loan at probably 90% of your appraised value..WHICH YOU WANTED... and to make the interest rate reasonable is a 2 or 3 year arm....well now you can complain to the masses and the government that you should've been better informed that your house value wouldn't keep going up or that you didn't "REALIZE" that your loan would actually adjust since you thought you'd be out of that loan before that happened because your BS friend at the broker shop you went to told you so. Maybe you should have taken the 14% rate you actually qualified for?? Oh no...that's too much...give me the arm and we'll get this done before it adjusts...

You all are so typical...Yes, people lose jobs, get hurt, get sick...and get overextended by running up credit card debt after they have paid it off in a refinance...But it's time to start taking responsability for your actions. Who held your hand and signed the papers??????????? I would almost guarantee that you got the best loan product for your situation at the time. No one is predatory. Money hungry - yes - but unless you delt with a complete moron they wanted you to be happy to obtain your repeat business and referrals. Time to stop blaming others for the bad decissions you make.

I dont agree with the way this customer was treated, however its not the banks fualt this person didnt know how the loan worked.  This may sound cold ... but the people who are loosing their homes should have known better than to get a variable interest loan ... even if AT THE TIME they signed it was lower.  This was part of the risk they ACCEPTED when they SIGNED the loan papers.

Banks screw people too much. I am tired of bailing out big business with my tax dollars. Time for big business (read lenders) to pay for their consistant lying and gouging.

no one willing to help you . they would not be happend if company would give people fixed rate,but no they want to let you lose your home than help people kept there home . they matters could have been a win for them and the home own people likes me would still be in are home with a little help from them. to me both party are at fualt so not saying the home owner is to blame.

I agree with Jon Doe, if we can figure this out why can't they high paying smart people in the goverment see what would resolve this issue, if they don't do something then peoples credit is going to be so low they won't be able to qualify for mortgage because of there credit scores, and then were will that lead the economy

I have accounts with Countrywide and B of A.  I've never had any trouble with either of them.  Of course, I don't overextend myself either.