Duration: 00:42:00
Mike Rockwood: Welcome to the 60–Minute Load Modification Teleconference Series. It’s Thursday evening and so we’re here to talk with clients only, talk specifically about loan modifications and to give you up-to-the-minute information about what we are learning in terms of loan modification and give you tips and kind of inside information on the latest in loan modification.
Ryan Rockwood: Hi, everyone. I’m Ryan Rockwood. I’m here with my dad, Mike Rockwood, the creator of 60–Minute Loan Modification. Each week, we work more and more and more on loan modifications and the results are definitely always good each week but there are always definitely bummers too. So, what we’re going to try to do always, if you’re new, is try to bring you the good and the bad, the strategies as they happen and as they’re changing. We’ll listen to you a little bit and try to commensurate with you in your frustration but also…
Mike Rockwood: Just a little bit.
Ryan Rockwood: We’ll try to give a you kick on the butt, slap across the cheek and encourage you to take the next step if the step that you’re at is stalling you out, okay. So, like we always say it may be, you know, definitely you want to start on with the loan modification. However, you may have to progress beyond that. It may be a short-term solution or it may be the perfect solution but it may be a short-term solution. It may be an opportunity to buy time. But anyway, don’t feel bad if you received this email and you’re not a member yet. You don’t have to shut your eyes. I actually sent it out to everyone. I was in a little rush today. So anyway, if you’re wondering about that. Anyway …
Mike Rockwood: Now, you know the secret password.
Ryan Rockwood: Well, yes. There isn’t one. But anyway, welcome to everyone. We’re trying to get some specific questions answered today on the phone and on the video chat but it’s always better to e-mail questions@60minuteloanmodification.com to get those questions and so they’re not lost in the shuffle.
Mike Rockwood: And remember what we’re doing here, what we do on every Tuesday and every Thursday evening is Ryan and I push back from a hard day of loan modification negotiation. I’m not kidding. We just walked over here to the camera from just hanging up the phone from working lender deals and share with you information that we’re learning in helping people work on loan modifications all day. We’re either on the phone helping people think through their own loan modification situation or we’re actually on the phone with lenders on behalf of clients working their loan modifications. So, our lawyer always wants us to say that we are not lawyers. We are not CPAs. Take the advice that we give you for what it is. It is just our perception of what’s going on in the loan modification game.
Now, he likes – he just wants to be sure that we’re not making you think that this is legal advice and this is not tax advice. This is just passing along information about what all of our clients and everybody that we’re in touch with all day long about loan modification are telling us. You know, there actually is a lot of good news. There’s a ton of bad news and, of course, economically and job wise, there’s a lot of bad news out there. But there is some good news with regards to loan modifications and short sales.
Actually in the last 60 days there have been – there’s been quite a push to turn off a lot of those trial modifications into permanent and they have almost doubled the number that are permanent but the number is really pathetic. And honestly, we do – we are running into an awful lot of kind of feel like we’re running into a headwind and we do get a lot of push back and a lot of resistance and a lot of silly, silly mistakes. Why, just today I – we got rejection on a loan mod and I never submit a loan modification application unless I’m just absolutely 100% certain it’s going to get approved.
So when I submitted and got a rejection this morning, I got on the phone right away and said let’s go through this because I think there’s been a mistake and we went through it and went through it and they couldn’t explain what the problem was so they had to transfer me to a person they said was a specialist and an expert. Well, that person ran through the analysis that the negotiator had done on our application and I mean, this is just so gross. What had happened is they double entered all the expenses. So, this client got rejected because he had almost $30,000 worth of expenses every month and only $15,000 worth of income. And it took him two months to reject that kind of an application. So, my point in telling you about that one is that sometimes the errors that are made are just simply like typos or computer errors where every number got double entered.
Ryan Rockwood: It’s amazing the – I think you shared this a couple of months ago. The amount of power and being wrapped to these often confident people have …
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: In their hands. It’s grossly out of whacked with their expertise in pay grade, you know.
Mike Rockwood: No kidding. And the real tragedy is for everyone that we run into and we help to, you know, this person, of course, we reapplied already today and we help him get right back in the fight and we know we’ll get a good mod for them but it will take another month. But for everyone of those, you got to believe there’s a thousand people who just accept the rejection and, you know, explain to their family.
Ryan Rockwood: Well yes, their resources are tapped out and they say I don’t have I guess I got rejected. The emotional …
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: Fortitude.
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: And maybe the finances.
Mike Rockwood: And they just don’t understand the language and see here, I understood when the language came back that it was wrong. In other words, the rejection actually – this is a good point – the rejection actually was for some bogus thing that I knew didn’t make sense. A lot of the reasons that you get rejected, a lot of the reasons that the computer generates in your rejection letter, makes no sense at all and aren’t actually related to your problem. So, I knew right away when I saw the reason for rejection that it wasn’t there. So, I knew that there was something funny. But any other person might have just, you know, accepted that and move on without a modification and this is particularly pathetic because this particular client is dealing with a negative amortizing loan. They’ve been paying below the interest rate now for three years. They’ve amassed a whopping $60,000 in additional amount owed over that period of time.
So, every month that they make their payments, they’re going deeper in debt. She lost her job about five months ago and is really struggling to find another one and so, you know, here the amount owed is climbing. The amount of the value of their home is declining and her income goes away. so, this couple really needs some help and you know with the stinker loan like that and the fact that she lost her job, they are the people for whom the Making Homes Affordable program was designed and they are the people for whom congress authorized all that money to be paid to the banks to offer, you know, a helping hand during the difficult time and help to keep people like her and him from losing their home during this economic downturn.
So, it’s a particularly disturbing one. But a lot of the errors that are happening are just clerical or data entry or are misunderstandings. So, you really have to have nerves of steel, you know, to get in this game and keep in this game. But in any rate, what we want to talk about today and by way of introduction, and for those of you who are new, what we’ll do on Tuesdays and Thursdays as we give a little brief introduction or an overview on a particular topic is of interest to everybody and then we go to questions. We try to get through 15 or 20 questions during in the evening. And we usually wrap up after about 45 minutes.
But today, what we want to talk about is the hardship letter and from the beginning of this whole downturn, we’ve been really preaching that hardship letters need to be concise, precise, succinct, and need to use keywords. And Ryan has been a master in teaching all of you guys what good keywords are. And then, you know, about six months ago or nine months ago, most of the banks, the volume got so heavy that they really did want people to cut back on their hardship letters because after all, the hardship letter is one of the first things that is evaluated. And honestly, it’s evaluated by a frontline administrative person who very likely has, you know, very little experience in anything financial or anything related to foreclosure.
They’re just probably just off the street entry level kinds of person given a couple of hours of training and told to review these documents and check off on this form what kind of hardship they have or if they don’t have any hardship, you check this little box here if they don’t have any of the qualifying hardships. So honestly, I don’t mean to belittle the job but it really does seem to be that simple. So, really, what they’re looking for is keywords and of course you know what those keywords are. They are things like reduction and income, lost of job, death, divorce, illness, increased expenses due to any of those factors, reduced income due to any of those factors, okay.
So, what they’re looking for is, and that the guidelines for the making homes affordable program are very clear, but they’re looking for is some extenuating circumstance that makes it difficult for you to make your mortgage payment now as opposed to a year ago or, you know, some time ago. So, you have to identify what changed and financially how that impacted you and then you have to give a prognosis. You have to be a little bit careful with that because they always ask you, well now, do you expect this hardship to go away. You know what I mean? Have you now recovered from your sickness and you’re back at work or whatever?
And you want to be careful about that because, of course, if you think about it, it’s a two-edged sword. And, so what I always advise to people is to say something innocuous like I do expect my income to return when the economy does. I do expect, you know, my commission rate is going to be back up or I’m going to be back up to 40 hours when the economy turns around because everybody has gotten kind of sensitized to the fact that, you know, the economy is not going to turn around this spring.
So we’re all realizing that, you know, this is going to be a prolonged downturn and so that one has become pretty standard, fair in most of our hardship letters, you know, to tie our personal economic recovery to the nation’s economic recovery. So that’s one. So, you don’t want to be too optimistic. You don’t want to say yes, I just – I feel like I’m going to get a job in the next couple of weeks and then I’ll be back. That’s why unemployment compensation is a little bit of a tricky thing. I always want to advise people not to be – not to emphasize it too much, you know, like when it started, when it’s going to be terminating, that kind of thing because if they really take time to think it through, they’ll realize your income is going to be changing pretty significantly at some time in the future.
So let’s talk for a minute about hardship. The whole idea is that in order to qualify for the government assistance, you must have encountered some kind of hardship. Otherwise, if nothing changed, then why would you expect any assistance?
Ryan Rockwood: Now, we used to have a whole lot of people who would come to us and think they didn’t have a good enough hardship.
Mike Rockwood: Oh man, all the time.
Ryan Rockwood: And I don’t know, in which you know, when we talk him through and find out oh, you got a terrible hardship.
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: But now, I don’t know what has changed. You think it’s us and our mental progression through the obstacles?
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: Or do you think it’s a whole year of bad economic …
Mike Rockwood: Are you online?
Ryan Rockwood: No.
Mike Rockwood: Isn’t that getting some volume?
Ryan Rockwood: Sorry. A whole – is it a whole year of crappy economic news everyday pounded into us.
Mike Rockwood: That everybody can think of hardship.
Ryan Rockwood: Everybody says, yes, my life is terrible even though if it’s not.
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: You know what I mean? Like we’re – I don’t know,
Mike Rockwood: I don’t know what it is but you’re so right. It used to be that we would maybe half the time get people to say, “I don’t know what might hardship is.” And then we talk to them a little bit about it. We find it because people were hesitant to claim anything as a hardship, right? Because we always – we have this attitude that I don’t have hardships. I have, you know, just opportunities to show my true grit.
So, yes, you’re right that used to be a real issue. It doesn’t seem to be anymore. Almost everybody that we get to talk to, we can identify a hardship because what we do is we just ask them to you know think about it. What it is that causing you to have trouble at the end of the month? Why do you not have enough money to make this mortgage payment? And usually it traces back to something changed. Either a parent now needs more assistance. A child that needs more higher tuition or that your income went down because of the economy or you can’t get bonuses this year or your overtime just cut back or something like that.
But what I’d like to do right now is kind of read to you the most common accepted hardships. “For income declines, it’s things like my hours were reduced because business is slow. I was laid off and unemployment benefits are too little to make ends meet. All managers and directors in my company have accepted a pay cut and I’m one of them. I received no bonus this year.” It’s a real common one. “My husband and I have separated, so I lost his income and support.” Another one, “Death of my dad who was contributing to our household income. I was so sick, I had to take a leave from work for six months and now, I’m working part time and can’t resume full time for several more months. My spouse lost her job and even though she’s not on the loan, I must now deal with a greatly reduced household income.” Pay attention there because there’s an important principle there. Even though the person who lost their job is not on the loan, it diminish the household income. It’s a real important point. Another one is, “My business is so slow that I have to reduce my own monthly draw from the company by 20%.”
Now, some of the most common increases in expenses are things like, mom lost her job and now needs my help for almost a $1,000 per month. I had a medical emergency that cost me $10,000 that I’m paying off at a thousand a month. My son lost his scholarship so I have to spend almost $1,200 per month additionally to support him for two more years. Asbestos removal in my home cost over $1,200 and increased my credit card payment by $800 a month. My sister had a legal judgment against her, I had to pay it. Now, I have an added $900 a month expenses for two years. My adjustable rate mortgage increased in the monthly amount due. Here’s another one. I can no longer, in good conscience, just make the minimum payment due on my mortgage. Interest only payment on an asset worth less than ode [phonetic] is crazy. An increase to the 30–year fixed amount is a big monthly increase.
Now, that one is kind of subtle and you have to really argue that one with the bank but I’ve done so successfully. In other words, a person who’s got an interest only payment and has the option, of course, to be making more, can argue that it is in fact a hardship to now be paying an interest only a home that has depreciated now below what you owe and that now, in good conscience, they, you know, must start making higher payments and that is a hardship. And I mean we were successful in arguing that with Bank of America.
Now, any hardship can be accepted. You got to use common terminology. Try to use those keywords. Ryan will, for those of you who are clients, Ryan will, you know, audit your hardship letter and give you tips in terms of trimming it down and using the keywords.
Ryan Rockwood: Yes. And here’s the thing I recommend on that, the thing to do there is just to barf it all down on paper anything you can, everything you can, as a matter of fact no matter how silly it sounds and send it to me and I’ll send it back, okay. And I’ll try to add whatever I can, whatever, you know, and then when I – well, if I add stuff to your letter though, do give it a read through to make sure it’s true. Well, a lot of times …
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: I will add stuff because you’ll say something that makes me think that you had a divorce or an operation or something like that, right.
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: And I’ll say well you know …
Mike Rockwood: Let’s just say.
Ryan Rockwood: Let’s just say …
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: It costs 30 grand, you know, or whatever. So, run through there and just – you don’t have to write me back and tell me no. I am not reporting it to you, right? You are so just go ahead and make those changes in there, okay. And, you know, specific changes like that but that’s a good tip. Don’t get all in a bad shape about that if I change it. And if you get back and you say I really wanted to tell the bank about my this or that, you know, fine. Go ahead and do it. Maybe put in a P.S. or put it at the bottom of the stuff that I did for you typically because, you know, at some point hopefully they’ll just stop reading and at least if they got through the parts to qualify, you know, you can go on and list your high school yearbook if you want and – but the main points have been covered.
Mike Rockwood: Yes. Okay. All right, so really the hardship has become much less of an issue for the reason that it has become so clear just so many Americans that we are experiencing some hardships financially. So, it has become pretty easy for people to identify hardships. Plus, also, I think now we’ve been in the recession long enough, people are starting to feel that it’s okay to have a problem, to have a hardship. Its OK, you know what I mean, to admit reality. We’re not always going to be climbing, climbing, climbing, building, building, building, okay.
All right. And then, with regards to writing, we’ve always recommended that you handwrite your hardship letter and early on, I think that was extremely important because we were, in fact, getting some personal attention and really, I think making a case for a loan modification. But these days, it is pretty much an automated and a high-velocity process. So, I still recommend that people handwrite their hardship letter but honestly, I have to agree that a lot of people just refuse because they either have lousy handwriting or they don’t like to handwrite so I don’t press it anymore.
But certainly when you do use those affidavits that a lot of the banks get you to use, I recommend that you know check off the hardships and then handwrite your explanation. They always give you plenty of room to handwrite and use a whole another page. Nice and dark and it’s good handwriting as you can because remember it gets faxed and faxed and transcribed.
Ryan Rockwood: Hey, someone says we’re doing a good job. That was nice.
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: Scott.
Mike Rockwood: Thanks, Scott.
Ryan Rockwood: Yes. And anyway, he says what if you state your income when you got that loan two years and his income was rounded and this income was rounded up some [phonetic].
Mike Rockwood: Significantly.
Ryan Rockwood: Are you going to pull out your old app [phonetic] for comparison? Well, yes, the good news is they have never ever heard …
Mike Rockwood: No.
Ryan Rockwood: Of a single case of this happening. It’s like the past is the past, which is extraordinary because even if, you know, in your case when you’re little worried, isn’t it, I got to tell you, [indiscernible] your stuff on the radio and stuff about someone looking at their loan documents years later, one janitor looked at it and discovered that he had a medical degree …
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: According to his loan broker and is earning 20 grand a month and whatever.
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: So you know the …
Mike Rockwood: There’s to blame all over the place.
Ryan Rockwood: Blame to go around and someone should maybe go around that if they wanted to go around, they never even get to you.
Mike Rockwood: Right.
Ryan Rockwood: You know you’re low on the list.
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: So anyway, that’s it.
Mike Rockwood: They aren’t enough jails on the planet to hold all of us.
Ryan Rockwood: Yes. And well, yes, I guess they just make you stay in your home. That’s our jail now, the homeowners.
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: See, that’s your punishment. Your punishment is now you’re on the [indiscernible].
Mike Rockwood: Yes, that’s your punishment.
Ryan Rockwood: Yes. Now, I’m going to – anyway, OK, so thanks a lot for that Scott. And other questions send them to questions@60minuteloanmodification.com.
Mike Rockwood: Okay.
Ryan Rockwood: To make sure it’s [indiscernible]
Mike Rockwood: I got one. Are you ready?
Ryan Rockwood: Yes, go ahead.
Mike Rockwood: Okay, I got one here from Tom says, “The value of this home is nearly 200,000 less than we owe. Is that a hardship that will get us a loan modification?” Not in and of itself Tom. It’s kind of a common question. Just because the home has decreased in value, doesn’t mean that you have a hardship making the mortgage payment, right. But honestly, think about it. Rub your temples for a little bit and think about – if you’re having trouble paying all your bills, what is the source. And is the source recently – has the source recently come up on you? I’ll just bet you, I mean so many, many Americans are making less this year than they made last year. So many elderly people are relying on kids. So many kids are, you know, needing so much more medical and other support from parents longer so there’s really usually no difficulty finding a hardship but that one that you named Tom is not a good one. It’s not acceptable just because the value of the home — the value of the home and your FICO score are two things that people will often think matter in a loan mod and they don’t.
Mina writes, “I submitted my application and received a rejection letter stating that I had insufficient income to qualify.” By the way Mina that is one of those default rejection letters when it says you have insufficient income. I have gotten that as a rejection notice at times when the income was way, way sufficient so it’s just kind of one of those default ones. “Then, following up with Wachovia, the rep went through it with me and they had not entered my taxes and insurance so my payment was way low. She couldn’t clarify whether I got rejected for too low of payment or insufficient income which would be, you know, to exact opposite, rejection.” So, Mina says, “What do I do now?”
Unfortunately Mina, you have to start right over again. And who cares though really. You got it all done. You just need to update a couple of things. Number one, update your hardship letter and all I usually do there is just update the dates. I include the old hardship letter and I just write a little cover letter that says nothing has changed. All this stuff still applies and I am so upset about having gotten rejected. This prolongs this angst for another 60 days. Please, please, please expedite the review of this mod application.
The other thing you have to update is your pay stubs, you know, the proof of income has to be very current. The other thing is update the bank accounts if you know and you have given them two months bank statements, give them two more recent ones. And then, the last thing is you know that 4506-T that IRS form that allows them to get confirmation from the IRS of your taxes paid. That expires every 60 days. So, I always recommend that people just, you know, go to their website, get a new one and that’s important to do is to get there it’s because it’s filled out exactly the way they want their name listed on it and include that.
So. it’s really not more than, you know, 20 minutes worth of work of putting together a new application. So, get right back on it Mina and very often once you’ve been rejected like that, if the second time doesn’t take nearly as long and maybe half as long.
All right, Tuan says, “We followed up on our loan mod just like you recommend in the kit but it still took eight weeks before we were reviewed and we were rejected.” Tuan, I just – I got to say I bet you were not late on your mortgage but you made that. “We called the agent and the agent explained reasoning to me but I cannot understand it. Please give advice.” Okay, so eight weeks in the mill and then, they get rejected. Here’s the thing Tuan, you were actually rejected for a specific reason and I always recommend to people that you go to great lengths to figure out exactly what that reason is. And honestly, I can usually tell just by looking at it. So, Tuan, why don’t you send me your, you know, the budget that you used. That’s the first – that’s the most important document. Send me that budget and I’ll give you – I’ll give a look at it and give you my opinion but you have to, between what I tell you and I mean that’s – that won’t get you anything. It won’t event get you a cup of coffee.
What you really need to get is the bank to admit as to why they rejected and you can’t get a straight answer out of them for a couple of reasons. First of all, there is a reason but the negotiator, when he rejects the application, he makes a note on it, closes the file and puts into rejection – rejected file. And it actually sits there for up to two weeks sometimes before the next person, the reject person picks it up, reads the negotiator’s note. Enters it into the computer and then, the letter is generated to you. Now, that person may misinterpret what the negotiator wrote or they may just use some default rejection knowing full well that you’re going to get a rejection letter and that then you’re going to have to take action. So, don’t take the rejection reasons too seriously. Just get right back in the fight. But Tuan, I would invite you to send me your budget and let me take a look at it and then I could help you figure it out.
Ryan Rockwood: Now, Michiko has a question here. She’s saying that the bank wants to know if she – the bank wants to know her house mate’s last three months of income statement.
Mike Rockwood: Okay.
Ryan Rockwood: So, I said to her well, I mean what do you think is going on there. Do you think that that’s …
Mike Rockwood: Well, she must have claimed that person as household income.
Ryan Rockwood: Well, yes, but you can’t expect your renter to provide to the bank.
Mike Rockwood: Well, see, if it’s renter then she could have provided a rental agreement …
Ryan Rockwood: Okay.
Mike Rockwood: .And check.
Ryan Rockwood: So that seems cleaner to me.
Mike Rockwood: Yes. Yes. Yes, it definitely is.
Ryan Rockwood: Okay.
Mike Rockwood: But see, if she just has the other person on as three – let’s say, you know, let’s say $700 a month from John. Well then, they want to see some substantiation to that.
Ryan Rockwood: Yes. Okay.
Mike Rockwood: But when she should do that is if she hasn’t got a rental agreement, create one. You know, they don’t mind because they know that a lot of people rent out rooms and rent houses, in fact, without agreement so they don’t mind that it’s a recently, you know, consummated contract.
Ryan Rockwood: So, I think the thing with that is, yes, she doesn’t know if she wants to reopen a can or worms [phonetic] or – you know what I mean? Maybe she should just wait until that fails.
Mike Rockwood: Wait until the loan mod fails?
Ryan Rockwood: Yes.
Mike Rockwood: You know I don’t recommend that. Honestly, you don’t want to think these people are too sophisticated and they really put two into together. A lot of times you just go back and you put a Band Aid on it and a hairpin and some bubblegum and a little bit of scotch tape over here and the thing works just as beautifully as an elegantly proposed loan mod application from the start. So, I wouldn’t. I would just keep fighting. Let it be messy. Let it be dirty.
A lot of good mods get done that way. Because a lot of times, the mistakes are made in your favor actually. And we take advantage of that all the time. Sometimes the typos are definitely in your favor and people get mods that you didn’t think they were going to get or they get a much better, much better mod. That happens actually kind of frequently. You get a much better mod that you had anticipated.
Ryan Rockwood: Okay, so the thing that I recommend with Michiko and everyone should know that as a client is that they have free 20-minute conference with us. Hold on, one sec, okay. I’ll go turn it back on for you in one second. The thing that every client should know is that you do have that free 20- or 30-minute, we usually go 30 minutes at least and that doesn’t cost you anything. You can schedule that by clicking the button just below the video here, it says Schedule an Appointment. Then there’s a drop down menu to select the appointment and you don’t have to – you could do the one that’s free or if you’re a current client. If not, just pay for it. And we’ll try to go over some of the stuff with you.
Mike Rockwood: All right, the next question came in from Jeff. Jeff says, “My lender just asked a hardship affidavit. Does that replace the hardship letter completely?” And the answer is yes and no. Jeff, check off very carefully the hardships that you qualify for and then go to the place where, you know, they’ll give you a little box on the first page to explain your hardship. I recommend that you explain it there and go to the second page as well and, you know, spill over in as clear handwriting as you can and explain your hardship and use those keywords. You know what I mean? So if they say reduction in the income, you want to say job loss, reduction in hours, stuff like that. So, yes and no. It does replace. It seem to work just fine. I haven’t had no problems with them, but do take plenty of time, you know, to write in your personal hardship statement.
Tim says, “We have another home that we rent to my parents at a rate that is very much below the regular rent in that neighborhood. Should we just show that rent or show market rent on our application for a loan mod?” This is really kind of interesting one, isn’t it? Because, Tim, what you’re doing by subsidizing your parent’s rent could really be qualified as elder care, couldn’t it?
So let’s just make up a number. Let’s say it’s $400 below market rent. It seems to me that, in fact, you’re subsidizing them to the tune of $400. So here’s my answer, the answer is I would include this or exclude it based on whether or not you needed extra expenses. So, you kind of have flexibility here like you do on a lot of items on your budget. So, I would use that deduction. I would use that as an elder care expense. That’s how I would show it on your budget. Show it as a $400 elder care expense or show it, you know ,show market rate rent coming in and you could show proof of that. But I think it would be cleaner just to show it as elder care.
So that’s, you know, I’ve had other questions like this where – well, in fact here’s one from Jodie that says, “My dad needs help every Monday – every Friday afternoon. Isn’t there some way that I could really consider that as a contribution to his care?” And absolutely you can, Jodie. And I was just going to say that I have other clients who, you know, when we’re talking about expenses and we’re talking about reduction in their income, you know, take time off work to help their parents, you know, on a regular basis, you know, go for medical care or whatever just to get here and there. And they don’t realize that you know the hours away from work that they don’t get paid for and the fact that they would normally have had to hire somebody to help their parent, those are all expenses that it seems to me very fair to be putting on your budget if you need those expenses.
So, to both Tim and to Jodie, I would say, you know, you got to recognize those costs because a lot of those are kind of silently subtly kind of eating away at all of us that are caught in this middle generation, you know, kind of helping for elders who are living a heck a lot longer and helping with kids like some of Ryan’s brothers and sisters who still, you know, are staying close to home longer than they used to. All right, you got another one or you got me to take one?
Ryan Rockwood: No. we got pretty quite group today.
Mike Rockwood: Okay.
Ryan Rockwood: Unless – I’m sorry if I lost you on chat there. I got a really angry gramp [phonetic] for someone last time. I didn’t answered their chat and then he gave me a fake e-mail address. They said like I don’t know. I’m not good at customer service and those stuff doesn’t [indiscernible], but they sent me this terrible thing on how terrible I was because I didn’t ,,,
Mike Rockwood: We’re not answering.
Ryan Rockwood: Their e-mail address – their message – for ignoring it because apparently, whatever. Then, I emailed them back this nice apology letter and everything, you know.
Mike Rockwood: And they bounced us [phonetic].
Ryan Rockwood: Their phone number, they gave us fake. She’s like – do kill me now, you know.
Mike Rockwood: Yes. Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: I was like, oh, my gosh.
Mike Rockwood: So, they were kind of angry because the free seminar that they attended, they didn’t get their question selected.
Ryan Rockwood: That’s what I said. I said I’m sorry. But ultimately, the free seminar was no value to them.
Mike Rockwood: Yes. It was like three. Okay, so Jill says – here’s one last question we’ll take. Jill says, “My realtor is telling me that it’s okay for me to agree,” you’ll love this “to buy a car from the person we are – whose home we are making an offer on and pay him much more for the car than it’s worth in return for his choosing my short sale offer. It’s creative, Jill. It’s patently illegal and blatantly illegal but it’s not uncommon. I’m really surprised that your realtor would recommend it though.
Ryan Rockwood: Are you kidding? Realtors are all bunch of whackos.
Mike Rockwood: Oh, man.
Ryan Rockwood: They recommend anything.
Mike Rockwood: Wow, that’s a pretty – it’s risky. I mean …
Ryan Rockwood: Well, here’s the thing.
Mike Rockwood: It’s risky and it’s illegal.
Ryan Rockwood: I mean, yes. I mean if you want to do stuff like that …
Mike Rockwood: Yes.
Ryan Rockwood: You know, I mean basic, common sense applies right. I mean, I’ve heard nothing can be in writing. It all has to be in cash and you want to do it after the fact, obviously. You can’t do anything. You can’t, you know, so …
Mike Rockwood: Yes. If the judge says in investigating this matter, show me the document that you use to come to this agreement and show him a document that’s dated three weeks before closing in which you agreed to an exorbitant amount of money to pay for a car. I mean, duh. But anyways, the answer is no. Your realtor is wrong. It’s not okay. Make sure that you know what you’re doing because your realtor apparently doesn’t. All right, you got any last …
Ryan Rockwood: No.
Mike Rockwood: Anything from the blogosphere?
Ryan Rockwood: Let’s see. I hope we have some new one. We have a new client today. I know he got a lot of questions but …
Mike Rockwood: All right, well everybody well then before we sign off, as usual we will just ask you please, if you appreciate the work that we do for you and help that we offer, we try to disseminate a lot of information to help people get loan mods because after all it’s all our money, right. We pay for these loan mods. We should be in line. We should be at the front of the line to get good lines. But we really try – we do really try to help people, so we hope that if you think that’s true and you appreciate the work we do that you’ll mention it to someone and help us to earn a living and keep making our loan payments. All right, thank you very much. Good night and we’ll talk to you on Tuesday. Bye–bye.
