"Mortgage servicers are the housing industry's middlemen, low-profile companies that handle the day-to-day business of collecting payments, managing paperwork, and initiating foreclosures. Some banks, such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have their own mortgage-servicing arms; others contract with companies like Ocwen. Either way, borrowers are largely at their mercy: They have no say in who services their mortgages, and they can't fire their servicer for doing a bad job. "They're set up to be dictators," says Irwin Trauss, a housing attorney at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. "They're set up to say, 'It's my way or the highway.'"
The housing bust may have revealed the shady side of the home loan industry, but unscrupulous mortgage servicers still have little incentive to change. Last year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received nearly 2,500 complaints about servicers, a 379 percent increase over 2007. In the first 10 months of 2009, consumers filed about 1,000 legal complaints against 10 of the largest servicers for illegal foreclosures and other predatory practices. A Florida widow is suing her servicer for allegedly badgering her husband with as many as nine collection calls a day, causing a fatal heart attack.
A federal class-action suit against Ocwen asserts that it has hiked mortgage payments without fair notice, forced borrowers to buy unnecessary insurance, and intentionally processed payments late. Ocwen's general counsel, Paul Koches, says the lawsuit is baseless. He wouldn't comment on Walters' case, but said the company complies with and "takes all federal, state, and local laws seriously."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... oreclosing
The housing bust may have revealed the shady side of the home loan industry, but unscrupulous mortgage servicers still have little incentive to change. Last year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received nearly 2,500 complaints about servicers, a 379 percent increase over 2007. In the first 10 months of 2009, consumers filed about 1,000 legal complaints against 10 of the largest servicers for illegal foreclosures and other predatory practices. A Florida widow is suing her servicer for allegedly badgering her husband with as many as nine collection calls a day, causing a fatal heart attack.
A federal class-action suit against Ocwen asserts that it has hiked mortgage payments without fair notice, forced borrowers to buy unnecessary insurance, and intentionally processed payments late. Ocwen's general counsel, Paul Koches, says the lawsuit is baseless. He wouldn't comment on Walters' case, but said the company complies with and "takes all federal, state, and local laws seriously."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... oreclosing
“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." --Frederick Douglass
