The sweet smell of rejection

So, as you may have gleaned from previous posts, the past few months have been rough. Since February 1^st, I have been out from work approximately two months. All of February and intermittent days in March, April, and May. This has had a financial effects, which I am still trying to dig myself out of. I can do it, but not as timely as creditors would like. I would have preferred never to have fallen behind on bills, but thems the breaks. (when someone calls to inform you to discontinue an automatic payment from a bank account because there are no funds in that account, please take this person seriously and don’t give the spiel of “ceasing the automatic payment will take two months to process. Please ensure you have funds in your account until that time.”

I’m a fairly frugal person and I don’t have a lot of debt, and literally 99% of the debt I have is the so-called “good debt”—mortgage, student loan, home improvement loan. I guess it’s called “good debt” because these are seen as investments. However, it’s still a good chunk of my paycheck every month that I would like to apply towards other things. And all debt is "bad" if you can't make a payment.

Anyway, I was eligible for disability pay for the days off in March as mandated by my doctor. It was 60% of seven days gross pay and it was such a freaking hassle to get it, and it took so freaking long that it almost wasn’t worth it. But in mid-May, I finally get the check and the first thing that I did was apply it to my primary mortgage. Of course, the clerk had to point out that I was past due in making a payment. Yes, I know. I’ve been out of work because of illness and I am trying to catch up. So the clerk did a quick check and said “hey, you are eligible for automatic loan rate adjustment. This is really quick and easy and there are no closing costs to you. It will lower your monthly payment because the interest rate will be reduced.”

I figure it would be worth investigating, and I swear that program is a will-o-wisp to get you to talk to a mortgage broker because once you are face to face, he will find a refi plan that You Are Eligible For, even if it turns out that you are actually not eligible for the quick and easy refi that your mortgage holder said you were eligible for. But “there are other plans and this one will lower [your] interest rate but only the primary mortgage is eligible” and not both, like I was originally told. So to cut a long and convoluted story short, I signed the refi papers on Thursday but after thinking about it, I realized that I wasn’t really coming out ahead. I wasn’t screwed but pretty much left in the same position so I wanted to cancel it. The net effect is that my payment on my primary mortgage would be lowered by about $90 a month, but the term would be reset to 30 years. To pay it off in 25 years (keeping with the timeframe of the original mortgage), I’d have to add an extra $100 a month. Which is pretty much where I am now, financially. $90 a month isn’t going to make or break my budget.

I sent a message to mortgage broker, requesting that he cancel the loan process and he called me back to say he had been trying to get in touch with me that day but I’d left my mobile phone at home this morning. His news? I had been rejected for refi through the Home Assistance Refinancing Program because I had been late on a mortgage payment over the past 12 months. Please remember that the only reason I even started down this road was at the mortgage holder’s suggestion BECAUSE I was behind on my payments. However, I’ve never been so happy to have been rejected.

adventures in refinancing

Oscar and I are trying to refinance our mortgage. We have two, actually. 75% primary mortgage and 25% second balloon mortgage. When we bought our house, this was the best deal (I thought) because I could make the payments under these terms and not have to depend on either getting a 20% raise or having the house value increase dramatically. Also the other mortgage types we were offers were either interest only or variable rate, neither of which I wanted. (Now I think I would have been better off with a variable interest rate mortgage and refinancing because I can only refinance the primary mortgage and at least the variable rate loan would have been the "primary" and only mortgage loan. Oh well, live and learn.)

(Still, given the housing and mortgage loan disaster, I think my choice was prudent at the time. I didn't want to enter into any deal that I knew I couldn't handle given my current situation.)

So anyway...I spoke with a mortgage consultant at our credit union and I took today off work to meet her in her office, since the office that specialized in Pierce county was located in Lakewood, which is south of Tacoma. (Going into work would have involved a 3 hour commute for four hours of work, so I decided to use some of that hard-earned exchange time that the agency gives me since they won't pay me overtime.) So Oscar and I drove down to Lakewood, which is the most confusing town I have ever been in. There's no real center and the main streets just kind of wander around and criss-cross each other and I always get lost when I go there. I swear it's just a random collection of strip malls, clusters of cheap hotels ($155 weekly rates!), and rundown houses that have just kind of grown together. 

We did finally find the credit union office, waited for our mortgage counsellor who told us a few things: 

1. The last two comparable homes that sold in our neighborhood (based on square footage of the house) sold for $168,000 and $55,000, which she said "tells her absolutely nothing about the market value of your home". 

2. we qualify for the government's Home Affordable Refinance program but we need to talk to the holder of our primary mortgage to find out (in our case, it's Wells Fargo Bank). From what I understand, if we qualify and WF agrees, they can lower our interest rate without going through the hassle of refinancing and having to pay those associated costs. So she suggested that before trying to refinance through the credit union. (That is good advice, but I still wonder why I had to take a day off work to meet with someone face to face for some basic information that could have been done over the phone.)

3. On the way home, I called WF to get some more information about this program and as soon as I entered my mortgage loan number, a pre-recorded pleasant female voice said "your loan qualifies for the Home Affordable Refinance program. Please check our website for more information."

4. Now, this is one of my biggest frakkin' peeves. If I could easily access your frakkin' website for information, why the frak would I bother calling you?

5. Upon arriving at said abode, I typed in www.mywellsfargomortgage.com for information and after poking around, I found the section on this program which informed me "For more information about your eligibility for the Home Affordable Refinance Program, speak with a local Home Mortgage Consultant."

6. Of course, this is what I was trying to do when I called the damn customer service number.

7. Irritated, I try to figure out the closest Wells Fargo branch to my house and then I realize that I probably don't need to meet with someone in Tacoma to adjust my loan rates. So I decide to find one close to the office so at least I don't have to miss too much work. I type in my work zipcode and as soon as the results come up, I literally smack my head with my hand. 

8. Why? In my irritation, I forgot that I work in the building in downtown Seattle called "The Wells Fargo Building" and the closest branch to my office is in the lobby of the building. Which I walk past at least four times a day.