Increase income for loan modification application

Ryan Rockwood: Welcome to the show and you may be joining us on one of several places today. We’re broadcasting online – audio and video at http://60minuteloanmodification.com/october20 and also at the call-in number that you received in your email. I won’t go into that because the number is too long. Let me check on something. Why don’t you go ahead?

Mike Rockwood: Ok we always recommend that you either watch us on the Ustream video streaming live or you listen to us on the teleconference. Every week we get somebody to listen on the phone. Don’t try to do both. It’ll goof you up. It’ll mess with your mind. But hey, for you folks who do not work in loan modification, you don’t do that for a living, it’s not your entire life—although sometimes I’m sure it feels like it—you probably don’t realize but wow, have we hit a road block in the last couple of weeks. The whole business is in a little state of turmoil and in fact, California didn’t help by passing legislation or by enacting a mandate that forbade any loan mod company like us from charging any upfront fees. Now that doesn’t really mess with us because we, number one, sell a book. We sell the do-it-yourself kit but it does mess with our elite express product and it messes with 99% of the loan modification companies out there; California being the biggest foreclosure state – number one or number two. And so all the loan mod companies in the country want to work in California but now they are precluded from accepting any fees so it’s really in a state of turmoil and it’s going to be argued but in the meantime, an awful lot of do-it-yourselfers I think will have a good opportunity to get the front of the line so it’s kind of good news for those of you who are willing to put in a little bit of sweat equity in your loan modification and get things done. But you got to act fast and you have to have to have to street fight because news this week is very clearly from reports from folks all around the country, is that the surge from the Obama trial modification program—if you remember back in early July, the Obama administration challenged the banks to whom we’ve all given hundreds of billions of dollars to get going and catch up with the Making Homes Affordable Program that was announced way back in March.

Well, the result was a flurry of hundreds of thousands of accepted loan modifications between July and September and when they reached their goal about three weeks ago, they announced it and just as quickly ended the surge so we’re kind of back to an awful lot of the BS that we were in, in quarter one and quarter two of this year. That’s extremely unfortunate. We’re now starting to hear the same old delaying tactics and the same old crap from loan mod negotiators. They started asking for repayment plans once again with down payment. Those went away for about two months and a lot of us got hustled right into the trial modification which was beautiful and really, I got to argue that it was a win-win-win. Everybody won. The lender got money coming in. A lot of our defaulting clients agreed to them and started making payments. The clients were thrilled because they got their modifications fast and started right away and most of them are finding that the modifications offered are the modifications that they’re going to be able to settle on. So it was really a good program. I wish we didn’t have to abandon it. I think we’re abandoning it because the banks think they can so I hope we could raise enough hell to where they have to get back to it. We’re not also now getting any trial modification offers. We’re pressured to be no more than three months late or they just say no and most frustrating is stuff we’ve been getting particularly from Bank of America about the fact that they’re now precluded from telling us why we don’t qualify so they’ll tell you, “No, but we can’t tell you why.”

Now how ridiculous is that? Now you talk about a national waste of time. You have homeowners who are on the edge, really upset because they’re losing their home. They are threatened with losing their home. They’re talking to a [sighs] poorly trained, inexperienced person who has the power to deny their loan modification and possibly take away their home and now that negotiator, that same person can’t tell them why they don’t qualify? I tell you these are fighting words. These are the kinds of things that are really going to get people to go from being upset to being flat out angry. And then today, with the Bank of America rep, he actually divulged to us that he’s not supposed to take the time to explain the numbers to us, to explain the ratios and why or why not our client had qualified.

So again, that’s just so terribly frustrating. Ok, I got to tell all of you that for those of you who are kind of new to the Foreclosure Doctor, I always have a recommendation. When your work out option gets a no, whether it’s a no on the approval of short sale proposal, whether it’s, “No, we won’t accept your deed in lieu,” whether it’s, “No, we cannot qualify your loan mod,” I always have a recommendation that you try again five times before you elevate it to a supervisor and I always do that because the competencies of these customer service reps, collection department reps, loss mitigation reps, I mean 10% of them are really good but 90% of them are not only unqualified and untrained but they’re uninformed and inexperienced and some of them just plain can’t seem to understand what you’re even talking about. So my recommendation is going to go from trying five times to elevating it to a supervisor and you always do that with as much decorum as you can. Simply ask for a supervisor to call you back because you don’t like the answer that you’re getting and you think it’s wrong. They’ll feel bad about it. They’ll feel offended just like you think they would but just insist and they will eventually get you through to a supervisor.

Then the third step is to submit a qualified written request. Now depending on how much time you have in your loan mod application or in your short sale proposal, based on how far along you are in the foreclosure process, I’m going to recommend additional steps because it’s my general feeling that things are going to kind of get ugly. I think that the unemployment rate is going to continue to rise here in the next six months and that the sales of homes are going to take a seasonal dip. Interest rates are held artificially low right now but if they bounce back even a little bit, I think that’s going to further slow the sales so I think we’re heading into a real tense time and I’m also learning an awful lot about success people are having with what we’re starting to call legal loan mods. And so I’m going to recommend two additional levels, higher levels of appeal. Once you get to the supervisor level, then I’m recommending that you start to rattle the saber on legal issues and what I mean by that is I am very shortly, like in seven days, going to on our website have a forensic audit do-it-yourself kit. Forensic audits are ways that you look at and analyze your loan and your whole lending situation – the loan itself, the originator, how it happened, what kind of rate you’ve got, what kind of fees you were charged etc, etc, etc.

It’s kind of a canned way of looking for violations of the Truth in Lending Act, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act or various, very important state laws that protect particularly certain targeted groups like disabled people, like poor people, people with incomes below a certain point, elderly particularly and etc. So there are a lot of state laws that protect us that we’re finding the lenders were in violation of a lot of those laws and the remedies may surprise you and they may work to your benefit. So the next step in terms of elevating your loan mod application or your short sale, short payoff application or any of your work out options, even settlements is to submit a qualified written request asking specifically for the lender’s interpretation of your understanding of violations of RESPA, TILA and etc and this do-it-yourself kit will be available within a week; so that’ll help you out immensely.

Then the final level, level three, is going to actually be a legal challenge to your loan modification application or your short payoff or your deed in lieu. I think we’re heading towards a time where the legal department, they’re going to have to start staffing up their legal department just as much as they have their loss mitigation departments because it’s coming. People are not going to be put out in the street. People are not going to lose their homes and I’m sorry that this has been such an administrative nightmare banks but you’ve got all the money and we want the money. We want to get the adjustments and the settlements that we have a right to by virtue of the Making Homes Affordable Program and all the bailouts that you’ve received. All right, so my recommendation for getting past no is going to get much more intense. Stay tuned. And over the next three or four video conferences and teleconferences, I’ll outline how we’re going to do that.

So it’s coming soon and Ryan and I really don’t want to ever turn this, especially on this Monday night, into a commercial but I do want to make sure you understand. We do have some new products coming out. We have a do-it-yourself loan monitoring product coming out. That will be a product that shows for those of you who did not buy our do-it-yourself kit or who opted to have someone else do your loan modification. It’s a do-it-yourself loan monitoring kit that teaches you how to stay connected with your lender; what questions to ask to know exactly the kind of progress that your loan mod company is making. It’s extremely important because you don’t want to turn over during this critical time when you are in default. You don’t want to turn over your fate on your loan modification or your short payoff to a company that’s not working for you so you have to have a monitoring system in place where every month you get a report directly from the lender about what kind of progress is being made on your behalf.

Secondly, there is a do-it-yourself forensic audit kit coming and this one will be out by next week. It’s going to be a real popular product and I referenced it earlier. Then we are going to have, from us but this will be at least 33 days away, a legal loan mod offering where we, in conjunction with attorneys are able to take on your case, complete the forensic audit and pursue remedies and conduct a full discovery and pursue remedies on your behalf for legal loan audits and then lastly, again, this one will be 30 or 60 days but it’s coming. It’s a product and a service that helps you settle your home equity lines of credit and your second mortgages and your credit cards; that is settling debt and it’ll be a service. We will sell a do-it-yourself product but we also will help you with teleconferences and support in terms of how to get heel locks extinguished, how to get those second mortgages completely dissolved and how to do it legally and effectively and this is going to be a real homerun for the next couple of years because that’s what it’s going to be all about. It’s getting those second mortgages completely extinguished.

Ok so we’ve got four new products coming and again, I don’t want to turn this into a commercial but I do want to take time to make sure that you folks know that you can stay with us and stay tuned with us as things get even more heated and more intense in the loan modification game. They continue to be over 10,000. Now we’re told it’s as many as 12,000 loan modification applications everyday but unfortunately, only about 4% are getting approved and only about half of those are successful. So the loan mod business is still very much crowded at the top. You still have to very much get out of the line to get a good modification and we help you with street smarts to figure out how to make that happen. I want to read to you. We’ve already started performing some of the you know, what I call in terms of the level two. It’s kind of a threatening qualified written request and just a little bit, let me read you an example of one that we wrote recently in conjunction with one of our California clients and this is just this week, on Monday. It says, “Dear Countrywide Legal Department:” This is actually Countrywide B of A Legal Department and Loss Mitigation Department and this qualified written request was faxed to four different numbers and mailed to three different addresses and certified mail sent to their legal department. So it is a little bit of a hassle; easy to write, easy to investigate, a little bit of a hassle to communicate to the lender but it says, “Dear Countrywide B of A Legal Department and Loss Mitigation Department:” Listen to this now. After this customer and I used our forensics audit program, he wrote this letter. “Reading lately, makes us—“ that is the two people on the loan—“concerned about law and ethics violations by your company and the loan originators in selling us this loan. I, Jim, am disabled and Dee is over 65. So we are covered by elder abuse laws and state and federal laws protecting the disabled and we are uncomfortable with two things. Number one is you loan originator arrived at our home for me to sign docs and at that point insisted that the lawyer sign as well. This had not been arranged beforehand and was a surprise to us. Number two, the loan we were sold is at 6.25% and our payments are interest only. We should have qualified for a fully amortized loan at an even slightly lower interest rate at that time. Based on our research on http://erate.com,” it’s a place where they went to figure out what the rates were during the month that they got their loan.

So then they asked specifically like we always do in a qualified written request. It says, “Please tell us number one: must we actually hire an attorney to investigate these matters and any possible remedies? The retainer is over $2,000 so we certainly hope not. Number two: are these matters relevant to our current efforts to modify this loan? If so, how do we get them included in our file at Bank of America Loss Mitigation Department? We understand that you will respond to this qualified written request as required by RESPA section 6. Thank you,” and of course they signed it. so that gives you an example of how we have gone through a layman’s forensic audit, identified two possible violations and put the owners on the lender to respond by virtue of qualified written request to all requests and this is just the initial step that of course we will take in conjunction with an attorney if they don’t respond well. If they don’t respond well so this client really does have a serious claim. All right, are you now ready, technology wizard?

Ryan Rockwood: Yeah except we’re down to the counts on the videos tonight. I don’t know what that is but we’ll just keep rolling with the…

Mike Rockwood: Ok, very good.

Ryan Rockwood: We have some folks on the phone and you know, I wanted to just obviously welcome everyone to the call. Thank you for bearing with us and I apologize that we’ve got our video down. But also, I wanted to mention that again, we’re hearing about charge off, charge off, charge off, ok? And remember that a charge off does not mean that the lender gives up the right to that debt. It just means that they’re kind of like sick of hounding you for it. It’s kind of like you’re going to have to pay the pipe for one day. It’s just they’re tired of bothering you which is a good step but you got to realize that charge off is always going to be in terms step with mortgages. With credit cards you wait seven years and they go away possibly but not with mortgages, all right? And I just wanted to mention that really, the—

Mike Rockwood: Ryan, we have some newbies on the call this time and actually we have quite a crowd with us tonight so you want to be sure to define the terms.

Ryan Rockwood: Oh, yeah. You know, I should also say that if you’re with us for the first time, we’ve got such a great group of people that always come back. We forget that there’s going to be new people each time. Basically, my Dad Mike and myself, Ryan, what we do is we help people with loan modifications day in and day out. We’ve got the website at http://60minuteloanmodification.com and what we’ve put together is a kit that encourages people to do their own modifications; the advantages being that it’s cheap and it’s doable and that you can do it again in the future if you need to, right? So there are a lot of advantages to learning the system and putting it to good use. However, it does take some time so what we’ve tried to do is take that time and will it now to the absolute minimum that you’re going to possibly need and with a little practice, we think you could actually do the application [audio skips]. Hi, everyone! Hope you stayed with us. Apparently we’re in technology hell here so we’ll just keep cruising along with it. Basically—

Mike Rockwood: So you were just kind of giving an introduction.

Ryan Rockwood: Yeah, an overview of it. Here’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to try to take some calls and help some people especially and also email questions in if you’re more comfortable doing that – questions@60minuteloanmodification.com. All right.

Mike Rockwood: Ok so everybody what we try to do is we always at the beginning of these calls, have a little bit of a lesson about current topics having to do with loan modification or any kind of foreclosure work outs and so for about ten minutes we’ll talk on a topic and then we’ll take questions and help people and of course, the reason is generally hearing other people’s problems and issues and hearing how we help them resolve them and help everybody. So that’s the format and tonight’s topic is how to work with your income. During these difficult times, a lot of people are facing either job loss or decrease in hours and they find that in pursuing a loan modification for example, it’s kind of a Catch-22 because oh, my gosh! My income’s down. I need help! But oh, my gosh! My income’s down too much. I don’t qualify for help. So it’s kind of frustrating so an awful lot of people are asking us, “How in the world am I ever going to qualify for a loan modification?” And having helped hundreds of people around the country and having done many of my own loan mods on my own properties, I can help.

And so tonight’s topic: Income, how to adjust it. Here is what I’ve got to tell you. First of all, your application has to be absolutely bullet proof. It has to be 100% ready because it’s the beginning of your negotiation with your lender so your application has to be right. Don’t jump in. Don’t be tempted to jump in and start talking to your lender before your budget and your application is completely sharp so that you are in a good negotiating position so that you know clearly that your hardship is one that is acceptable and you know clearly that your budget is in line. Your income is enough to qualify and not too much and that your debts enable you to hit the exact target you want to on your debt to income ratio so that you qualify for a loan mod and that lastly, all your cash is eaten up and you don’t end up with an excess and you don’t end up too much of a short fall. So we’re focusing on those three areas: your income, your debts and your cash flow. Tonight we’re focusing on your income and how to adjust it and as strange as it sounds, some people actually have too much income and they ask us, “How in the world can I decrease it?” Now why would you have too much income? Well, the A-paper in loan modification, the very best loan modification you can get is a part of the Making Homes Affordable Program, the MHA. It’s the Obama program, loan modification.

It pays the bank the most money and gives them the best incentives and gives them strict guidelines as to how they should modify your mortgage and those guidelines are the very best. So anybody who can, should qualify for it and it’s not all that difficult to qualify for. Excuse me a minute.

Ryan Rockwood: We got one question coming on email. One guy, may new to the system asked if this program would actually work on jumbos? And the answer is yes. However, you have to realize that—are all jumbos out of the HAMP?

Mike Rockwood: Yeah. If they’re $729,000 or less…

Ryan Rockwood: So the jumbo’s well over 6-15 hours or something like that?

Mike Rockwood: $729,000 in California.

Ryan Rockwood: Ok.

Mike Rockwood: Or $417,000 in most other states.

Ryan Rockwood: Well, you could get a loan mod absolutely but you do have to realize that’s about a certain level. I’ve got one gal who’s got a $900,000-mortgage and there’s no way we can get her the best plan which is the President’s plan, ok?

Mike Rockwood: So in order to qualify for the Making Homes Affordable Plan, you have to have about six things and you can write these down if you want. Number one, you have to have a hardship. Your expenses must have gone up or your income gone down or else why on earth would you have the right to ask for modification, right? Secondly, it has to be your first lien, your first mortgage, that is on the property that you own and that you live in. It has to be your primary residence, right? It’s the first mortgage. It’s $729,000 or less in California; $417,000 in many other states. In other words, there’s got to be a non-jumbo. It’s got to be covered by conventional Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac rules and get a load of this: it has to have been originated before January 1^st of this year and lastly, the most complicated one is your principal, interest, tax, insurance and homeowners’ association, if any. Add all those up. That must be more than 31% of your gross household income. So some people wanting to qualify for that say, “How frustrating, my gross income is X and my primary home, my first mortgage is only 29% of that.” You can’t increase your mortgage. You can’t increase your taxes or your insurance but you can decrease your income and some people actually do and I push back a little bit with people by asking them, “Have you included in your income anybody in the household who’s not on the mortgage?” And once in a while that is the case.

In fact, they’ve included the spouse just thinking, “Well, heck, that’s household income.” But in fact, if they take the spouse out and the spouse is actually not on the loan, then they qualify. Their debt to income ratio goes up, their income went down. And a lot of customers, a lot of my clients actually leave out a second job when I push on them and I say, “Listen. Yeah, I’m glad that you agree to write Wal-Mart on weekends but that $500 a month is making you ineligible.” So they make their own choice to omit mention of that job and another thing they could do obviously is quit. But more often than not, people need to increase their income because a lot of people have a lost their jobs. A lot of people have their hours cut back; so how on earth do you increase your income in order to qualify? Now believe me, some of our clients are completely unemployed and they come to us and say, “We have no income and we have as much as $4,500 a month mortgage payment with principal, interest, tax and insurance and HOA – all that added together, 4,500 bucks. What in the world are we going to do? We’ve got to keep our home. How are we going to get this payment down? How are we going to take advantage of the modifications that are going on? We have no income.”

Well, the first thing I counsel them on is get a job – stupid. No, I don’t say stupid. I say get a stupid job. That’s what I meant. Get a stupid job. If you got a $4,500 a month mortgage payment, you’re going to have to come up with $6,500 in income at least to have a debt to income ratio that is even in the ballpark. So you need to get to 6,500. If both of you go out and get a stupid job that only pays a certain amount, at least you’re partway there. So get a stupid job, that’s number one. Number two, some people are really benefiting by the fact that lenders accept a contribution letter as income so if you have a wealthy relative, a parent, a child, a brother, a sister, significant other, friend – anything, who has a good, steady job or who has a heck of a lot in savings and they can author a letter, just four or five sentences that say, “I am helping “Johnny” during this period of time. The money will come at X number of dollars every month. I will be able to support them for X number of months,” and I always recommend more than 12, “and the money will come from here.” And then attach to it your bank account or a check stub that shows that you have a heck of an income.

And I got to tell you, you shouldn’t dismiss contribution letters. They can be for a very large amount. In fact, we recently submitted one that had a $7,500 a month payment. This guy was an unemployed, displaced worker in the entertainment business and luckily had some very well-to-do relatives who were able to produce such a letter and the bank accepted it and we routinely have parents, brothers and sisters etc that write contribution letters for $1,000 or $2,000 a month. But remember, you can group all these methods together to get your income up really significantly. Other things that people have thought to do are to rent a room in their home or to just start charging a family member who lives there, either a parent or a child. A lot of us have grown children who live in our homes. Ryan does not, by the way, you guys; although he does live next door. But many clients have like adult children, out of high school that still live at home, who have jobs, who can sign a rental agreement and there you go. You got some additional rent. Some people actually rent their entire home and move in with a relative. That’s creative. Another way of renting space, I’ve had clients who rent their garage out. Another is to get a part time job from a relative. This one I’ve done a number of times and this is where a person has a relative who either has a phone sales business or an agency business like insurance agency or a real estate agency where they can do some part time telephone work for agents and that works and they can do that in the evenings. And then of course, there’s always the trustee. Get a greeter job at Wal-Mart. Not only is there a high status to it but you also get a discount on all the electronics and it’s almost Christmas time so they’re hiring.

All right, so those are some creative ways to increase your income in order to qualify either for the HAM Program or just to qualify for a loan modification or to qualify for any other work out option. Now I have recently produced a book called The Notice of Default Handbook and it names ten different options that you have in your foreclosure work out. So any of you who are struggling with exactly, you know, “What are all my options? What could I do? How can I handle this? I just can’t afford mortgage,” that’d be a good book for you to write to us and ask for it. We’re going to have it on our website soon for you to purchase but I can ship in small quantities right now if you just send me an email at mike@60minuteloanmodification.com and ask for The Notice of Default Handbook.

Ryan Rockwood: Theresa asks by email at questions@60minuteloanmodification.com. She asks, “There’s no quote by written request on the CD, the Black Belt CD. Where did you find it?” You’re doing one, Theresa. I know you’re doing this today.”

Mike Rockwood: Yeah.

Ryan Rockwood: We’ll forward this to you and how you can forward her one.

Mike Rockwood: Yeah, Theresa, yeah I can sure forward you a copy. I did produce one for a teleconference about a month ago, Ryan.

Ryan Rockwood: Oh, really?

Mike Rockwood: Yeah, let’s dig that one up because that was a nice template. It kind of gave you the important stuff to have and you don’t want to leave anything out. So Theresa, let us get you that information. A qualified written request everybody should know is a right that we all have guaranteed by RESPA (Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act) and in Section 6 it outlines what we call a qualified written request and it is a formal request on your part in writing for specific responses from your lender and your lender is required by RESPA to respond within 20 days to acknowledge that they’ve received it and are working on it and they have up to 60 days to respond formally to your inquiry. It’s a really good way to communicate with your lender on big issues because so many times our loans have been sold and resold and resold and resold that ultimately you know, very often you never communicated with this investor before or the servicer before. So you may have started your loan with Century or you may have started it with Freemont or one of the others that are now defunct and now you find yourself being handled by OneWest or being handled by Litton or being handled by Countrywide Bank of America etc and so this is a very good but formal way to communicate with your lender, ok?

Ryan Rockwood: You know, the main thing here is if you’re doing it for the first time we just want to say that there are lots of things or reasons looking at a loan modification why you shouldn’t go forward; lots of reasons, lots of people to discourage you and tell you, “You can’t do this,” or “You can’t do that,” and you may think, “Well, I can’t increase my income.” Well, obviously you can’t in the traditional sense that we think of. However, the point of this call is just to tell you that if it’s income that is a problem, there are numerous creative strategies. We’ve outlined a bunch of them here tonight and even more in the kit and basically we just encourage you to not give up just because of income like, you know, it’s impossible to qualify. So are you ready to take some calls?

Mike Rockwood: Yes. Do you want to take calls or do you want to keep going on? The Internet’s kind of going crazy tonight.

Ryan Rockwood: We’ll just take calls.

Mike Rockwood: Ok. Hello.

Ryan Rockwood: Thanks, go ahead. Anybody else have a question? You’re online. If you got a question, don’t hesitate. Just go ahead and speak up.

Female: You just said that if we wanted to rent on our home and live in with someone else—

Ryan Rockwood: Right… continue, ma’am. I hear you. Sorry about the interruption.

Female: The income that it would qualify for the loan modification, that my lender told me that I had to be living in my home or that would be primary residence with my loan modification so I had thought about leasing my home but [inaudible 00:37:35]

Ryan Rockwood: Right, right. Let me mute the call here and I’ll answer that question for you. Thank you.

Female: All right.

Ryan Rockwood: Ok so basically, the caller asks, “Hey, wait a sec, if I rent out my house then I’m not living there and I lose the principal residence,” single, and for sure that is true. You know, not all of the plans require that principal residence so keep it in mind. If you’re blatantly not going to qualify for the President’s Plan or something else, to heck with it, you know what I mean? However, if you’re going to qualify for the President’s Plan then that’s worth fighting for a little bit. Now you make a good point. You do have the possibility, with your situation at least of losing the principal residence thing and all I can say to that is that you just got to be strategic and figure out if you can rent out room. Now whether or not you choose to live in that last room of the house or not, I guess is really your business, you know what I mean?

Mike Rockwood: Yeah, yeah. Ryan, I know you’re kind of struggling. We never want to advise people to do anything that’s unethical or illegal but we got to say that in these trying times there is such a thing as relative ethics and here’s what we can report. We know for certain that some clients have in fact rented out their house but only claimed that they have rented out many rooms in their house and that it’s still their primary residence and they can prove that by virtue of the utility bills that they pay, number one. And number two, they never ever, ever in a loan mod situation will be asked to prove that. Remember, your lender wants very badly to modify the mortgage with you and especially wants to modify it if it qualifies for the President’s Program ‘cause it’s actually a little bit profitable for them to do so. They cash in on $1,000-3,000 from the federal government and they get additional help in Year 2 and Year 3. So keep in mind they’re trying to get you to tell them to write things so I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to just submit an income that included the rental amount and if they even did ask you to present a contract, just present it and not even mention where you live and I’m telling you they won’t even ask because you get light underwriting critique or scrutiny in loan modifications.

That being said, it has absolutely got to be your decision with how you handle all these things. I know a lot of our clients would handle it. Here’s a question—

Ryan Rockwood: You know, the thing is, is that when you get into stuff like that you can often come up as kind of—definitely, we don’t want to come out sleazy in any way ‘cause here’s the thing. You know, my dad is the most upstanding, straight and narrow guy you’ve ever met.

Mike Rockwood: Oh, thank you, Ryan.

Ryan Rockwood: I mean to a fault.

Mike Rockwood: Oh, I see.

Ryan Rockwood: And the problem—

Mike Rockwood: But then I’m offended by that.

Ryan Rockwood: Yeah. Well, the problem here is that it’s kind of like Robin Hood at some point, you know what I mean? Like…relative ethics or something is—

Mike Rockwood: It’s reality. It’s reality.

Ryan Rockwood: It’s a term that I’m uncomfortable with but here’s a thing. Listen, you have been screwed so dramatically, if you’ve gotten a mortgage in the past three years, ok? You’re in deep trouble. Now that’s your trouble. That’s fine, right? –Bite the bullet, work for 30 years, work it off, die in the poor house and all that kind of thing.

Mike Rockwood: The American way.

Ryan Rockwood: Yeah. However, the problem with that is at the same time that your tax dollars have bailed out absolutely everyone who caused the problem, who caused thousands to bubble and die and your bank that lent you the money hasn’t lost a dime. Most likely they’re all making gobs of money now. So anyway, the point is that…you know—

Mike Rockwood: Ryan, I think—aren’t you struggling with being over scrupulous?

Ryan Rockwood: Yeah.

Mike Rockwood: Here’s the way I sometimes say it to people is, it is illegal and unethical really to jaywalk because you increase the likelihood that you’ll get injured and that will cause another person’s heartache if they run you over and after all, it’s illegal. But if you see a snatcher stealing your mom’s purse across the street, I recommend you jaywalk. If in fact your kid is really hungry and your neighbor’s apple tree is full of apples, I don’t really care if it’s illegal or unethical. I would steal a couple of apples. What do you think? So you can’t just argue, ethics are in fact relative. Now certainly there’s right and there’s wrong and we always have to follow our conscience but the problem is at this point is most people don’t recognize what Ryan was pointing out; is we’ve been screwed. He have been absolutely sold a bill of goods. We’ve been sold on the world market by Wall Street. First of all, we were sold. Then our tax dollars bailed us out and now many of us are willing, because of our over scrupulousness not to even get out and get our little piece of the action and our little piece of the action is a few thousand dollars a year and this is the biggest bailout in financial history. It’s the biggest market meltdown in history so I think if you look back on it 5 and 10 years from now you’ll think, “Boy, was I naïve. I was in a street fight and I had gloves on.” All right, let me take on these questions.

Ryan Rockwood: We haven’t even answered people’s calls for so long. Just make sure we’ve answered that.

Mike Rockwood: Ok.

Ryan Rockwood: Does anybody else have a question, especially the new; do you have any? Don’t be afraid to ask a question.

Male: In the loan mod process, are they going to ask for your tax return?

Ryan Rockwood: Yes, they are. They need to do that in the recent two years. The only way you can get around that is going to be a copy of your IRS.

Mike Rockwood: Keep in mind that your [inaudible 00:45:02] are used [inaudible 00:45:04] of the household income in the last 90 days so if you survived 2008 [inaudible 00:45:20] so let’s say you now are making $20,000 a month and you used to make 2 or vice versa then they may investigate a little bit further but think that 2008 taxes are going to be used to verify what your income is right now ‘cause it won’t be. [Inaudible 00:45:47] proof about [inaudible 00:45:48].

Ryan Rockwood: All right, anybody else? All right let’s go to some emails [beeping sounds]. Ok we’re having technical difficulties tonight. What we’re going to do is just wrap it up for the evening. Thank you so much for joining us at 60Minute Loan Modification Foreclosure Doctor Teleconference. We got another call on Thursday. That’s for clients only so be certain to grab a kit and join us on that call [inaudible 00:46:57] complicate stuff on that call. [Inaudible 00:47:01] schedule to have a call with Mike. Go to http://60minuteloanmodification.com/talkwithmike and also http://60minuteloanmodification.com/products and if you want to get a good kick in the butt we actually do that loan application for you at http://60minuteloanmodification.com/[inaudible 00:47:34]. With that, thank you so much for joining us.