July 10, 2011
To: Whom It May Concern,
Re: Short Sale
I would highly recommend that anyone facing possible foreclosure to contact American Dream Homes as soon as possible. Dont wait and go through what we did!
Because of job losses, our home had been on the market for several years. Our lack of income prevented us from making mortgage payments. In desperation we used our savings and 401Ks in order to continue trying to make the payments. We tried to work with the banks direct on a loan modification program. Unfortunately, the banks lied to us about the loan modification and strung is out for over a year before finally telling us that we were declined for the program, after our savings were depleted.
In desperation we sought help from 3 different attorneys and could not find two that offered the same advice. In hopes to sell our home and move on, we moved the listing of our home to a local top notch real estate broker, Blaine Tarnecki, of Real-Vest Properties. We kept looking for help with the mortgage payments and finally stumbled across American Dream Homes and Demetre Booker. He listened to our story and told us within minutes that we could not possibly qualify for a loan modification based on our income to debt ratio. Something the bank should have told us over a year ago before we depleted our savings and retirement! Since our property was in Georgia and Demetre was based in San Diego, CA, Demetre called our agent and offered partner with our local agent to sale our home. The following is the email that I sent to Demetre on September 24, 2010 at 12:10 am:
I just faxed you 22 pages of the information requested. It is almost midnight here so I am going to bed. Please call our Real estate agent as soon as you can. He has concerns about fees and also how to find a buyer in this horrible market. This house took $1,020,000 just to build. It appraised for $1,200,000.00 before it was even finished. We have been continually dropping the advertised price hoping to attract a buyer and we are currently at $740,000.00 and have only shown it twice in the past year. As information Real-Vest is the 5th agent to list this house since it was placed on the market in October 2004.
I am now at the bottom of my financial barrel and can no longer make the full payments to either bank. As you can see from their statements we are considerably behind on our payments.
Chase is considering us for loan modification and as of tonight they are still waiting on their review board for a decision. Wells Fargo, formerly Wachovia also considered us for loan modification but they declined to approve it and advised me to request a reason for their decline in writing. I wrote to them 4 times requesting a reason for their decline and they have yet to answer me. But yet, they still call me every single day with the same questions that I had answered for them several hundred times already.
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You were the first person to advise us that based on our income there is no possible way to work out a loan modification on a mortgage as large as ours and that a short sale is our only option.
Now that we are finally on board the reality train, what can be done to find a buyer in this recession/depression market?
Demetre advised that our only option was a short sale. We turned everything over to him. He contacted the banks and they stopped the daily harassing collection calls. Blaine found a buyer and Demetre negotiated a settlement with our banks and we were done! Though I owed $1,027,031.09 on my home, I was able to sell my home for $400,000.
When all is said and done and if the banks decide not to sue, we will have been able to walk away from $282,489.43 from my first lender Chase Bank and, $355,935.78 from my 2nd lender Wells Fargo. Chase forgave the debt in writing, but Wells Fargo called the day after we closed to announce that Georgia is not a right to forgive state and they may still file law suit.
The stress, the fear and the depression were all lifted from us and we are truly grateful to American Dream Homes and Demetre Booker for giving us our lives back.
Sincerely,
John Q. Adams 111
John Q. Adams III
Georgia.
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