Talk to your lender: Who ya gonna call?

By Jan Lindsey 
 

It sounds like it ought to be a slam dunk: Call your lender

if you miss a mortgage payment, or think you are about to.

But it is not always simple to figure out who that lender is. To a lender, a mortgage loan is an asset to be bought and sold. Sometimes they even are split apart to be packaged as investments. So the company from which you borrowed the money may not be the company to which you owe your payments.

“You don’t really know for sure who the owner of the loan is, you just know where you send the payment,” said Jim Eberle, vice president of communications for the American Bankers Association.  So begin there.

You will be calling the loan servicer, the company administering the mortgage. That may be your original lender or it may be a third-party company.  No matter. There should be a phone number on the account statement you get each month. It may lead to a customer service representative, but if you call and explain what you want to do, they will be able to put you in touch with the person you need to speak to, Eberle said.  Make sure you have your name and loan number in front of you before you call. And be patient – they are busy folks.

If you are anxious or embarrassed about calling your lender, you may prefer to make a free call to the Hope Now hotline at 888-995-HOPE (4673).  Hope Now is a private alliance made up of counselors, large mortgage companies and servicers, investors and others involved in the mortgage market.  Its hotline is staffed by HUD-approved, non-profit credit counselors who can discuss your options with you and can act as intermediaries between you and your lender or servicer.

Their goal is to help you avoid foreclosure and they will ask for information from your bank statements, pay stubs, first and second mortgage documents, car loan statements and household budget.  There is no charge for Hope Now services. For more information, visit HopeNow.com.