Dear Activerain members.

I am sure we all have seen this type of situation firsthand or have heard about it. A friend of mine and his family of 7 (one more on the way) is loosing their house in 15 days due to foreclosure. 1) Is there any way to get the bank to postpone the sale for a month or two while he gets his job in order? 2) If anyone feels like donating, I am sure they would appreciate it. The whole story is at: http://www.helpuskeepourhome.orgThey were interviewed on the local news last night as a story on lender workouts being slow and few (story is also on the website).

Arpad

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Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 16:26:06 -0800
Subject: Help Us Keep Our Home

Our Family:


Date we lose our home: January 19, 2010
Amount we need to bring loan payments current: $42,000
(on our loan with balance of $1,300,000)

Our website can be reached at: www.HelpUsKeepOurHome.org
2009 has been really tough for my family. With two job losses, medical bills, and now facing the loss of our home of 3 years, and with my wife due to deliver our 6th child by the middle of this month(January 2010), we're stressed to say the least. We're in a bad economy, and I know that I'm not alone in our house situation, as others are facing the foreclosure of their home and many, many families have already lost their homes.

Let me give you a little background into my family. We live on the peninsula in a city called San Carlos. It is a great city, family friendly, and safe, and is in the middle (distance-wise) between San Francisco and San Jose. I grew up in and near this area, and we were very excited to be able to purchase this home a little over 3 years ago.

I'm in the tech sector, and have been a Software Engineer at various capacities over my 14 years of professional experience. Everything was going just fine until the end of 2008. I was working at a startup company at that time, and supporting my family even though it has been very tight, money-wise, as long as I can remember, but I always try to do what's best for my family and work as hard as possible to keep things moving forward. Towards the end of 2008, the financial markets crashed and crumbled, and the startup I was working at started to lose their investors. By the first few months of 2009, the company I was working for stopped paying its employees. The management assured us that funding was just a few weeks away, and that we would be reimbursed for all back pay. I beleived them. Unfortunately, as time went on, we still did not get funding, and we were still told it was only a few weeks away. Then, abruptly, on March 30th, we were all notified that the company had filed for bankruptcy. And to top that off, I was told that we would no longer have health coverage starting April 1st.
Yeah, I was freaking out. I then thought, well, I'll just get COBRA coverage to continue my benefits. I was shocked to find out that COBRA only works if your company still has a health plan, and since my company was in Bankruptcy they no longer had coverage, nor were they paying the health coverage premiums!! So I was out of coverage two days later.

I ran into numerous problems trying to get coverage then, because of the multitude of federal and state health laws and requirements, we would be considered as having pre-conditions and a few of my family members were denied even basic coverage. With the job market dwindling, and the type of job I would need with the amount of pay I needed to fulfill my obligations, it took me until September to find another job. We were already falling behind in mortgage payments, car payments and almost everything with no money coming in. We wiped out what little savings we had. I did not have any 401k to speak of, as I've never had enough left over to really put away.

Everything was going fine at my new job, but we had fallen so far behind in our mortgage, that I decided to try and work with the bank to do a re-negotiation of the loan terms. I contacted an attorney specializing in re-doing mortgages, and I hired them to work for my new mortgage terms. Unfortunately, the process to do that takes A LONG TIME with the bank. I'll have to say, we have or had two family cars. One was for me to commute to work (which I did each day about 34 miles each way), and the other was a minivan for my wife to haul the kids around. My wife's car is really the only car with enough seats to drive everyone around at once. That car payment was just becoming too much for us (did I mention I took a pay cut for the new job), so I was forced to sell the car back to the dealer we bought it from (several years ago)....that afternoon, I was informed by my employer that they were restructuring the company and that I was in the group they were laying off. Oh, and did I mention it was also my birthday that day!

This just about destroyed our negotations with the bank, as they want you to of course have a job to pay for your mortgage (and rightfully so). So I started right at that moment sending resumes out and looking for a new position. Being that it was the end of the year and nearing holiday times, the odds of finding a job were nil. I've been working with two different companies that I'm interested in for employment (after having gone through interview rounds with both), but I knew nothing would really happen until we left the holidays. I should hear something from either company this week coming up (january 4th--).

Now, this brings us to our current problem. Since the negotiations have taken so long to re-do the loan, and our first attempt failed due to the November job loss, we ended up receiving on January 31st a certified letter stating the bank had set a final auction sale date of our home January 19th, 2010. That gives me only a few weeks to either re-do the loan, or pay our back due balance to bring us current and halt the foreclosure process.

We're 7 months behind now (which includes the time I initially fell behind, the job loss, and the re-negotation time), plus penalties, fees and attorney's fees, we owe approximately $42,000.

I'm both extremely embarrased and ashamed to have to ask for help from strangers, but I know there are good and generous people in the world, that don't want to see us lose our home. I will be able to get another position and be able to move forward making payments again, but I cannot do that until we stop from losing our house in a few weeks.

So, please, if you can, and I know most everyone is facing some sort of financial difficulty, please pray for us, and/or send us any donation amount you can. I have a PayPal account that you can send money to (using either your own PayPal account or a credit/debit card if you don't have a PayPal account). You can also send a check to me personally at a P.O Box I have. If you send a check, please make it payable to:

Steve Doss
751 Laurel St. #801, San Carlos, CA 94070

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To send us a donation through PayPal  you can go to our webpage at: www.HelpUsKeepOurHome.org and click on the PayPal button.  

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I have nothing to give anyone in return right away except for our thanks and gratitude. I will never forget those that will help us and will give back somehow, when I can. If you do donate, please include your address so we can send you a thank you personally.

I will make updates to this page as often as possible to let everyone know our status. I will also post First name and last initial of anyone who sends us a donation (unless you want to remain anonymous) to this page to show others your generosity.

Thank you for taking the time to read about us. You can reach me by email with any questions (please, no solicitations) at steved67fb@hotmail.com

- The Doss Family

 
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