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Anna
Hire a lawyer to fight the loan company. Once they see you’re serious, they may back off and let you refinance. Even if it costs you something now, it will cost you less later if you get out of this. Also, check with your state to see if there is a place to file a complaint against a fraudulent lender. And go to the Better Business Bureau and file a complaint there too. Fight, fight, fight! Don’t give up!
Vanessa
It’s a BAD idea to put your house on the line for an unsecured debt. Sadly, you pay out-of-pocket for appraisals and the company does not have to accept it…
Considering that this is now a buyer’s market, you may be screwed for a while… there will be a lot of downward pressure to reduce asking prices and this may, in turn, affect property values.
A credit score of 700 isn’t the best. Yes, it’s good, but if you can manage to increase it by 20 points or so, you’d be in a better bracket APR-wise.
April
1. call the licensing agency of your state for banks. tell them this story. it’s too strange, particularly what you added after you wrote the original question, which confused me. what you wrote afterwards is what makes me highly suspicious of countrywide. i think that the licensing agency will investigate this for sure. particularly based on what you say: that countrywide issued high appraisals for everything where you live when all other appraisers did not.
2. refinances often trigger a very high appraisal. well, they would tend to, no? if your purpose is to take money out based on EQUITY, then the house has to appraise high for that to occur. it does occur. it is quite common. in sales, i can never look at an appraisal that a seller had in order to refinance in order to come up with fair market value. it’s simply way too high for the market.
3. in 2004 house prices were going up and up and up and up, until the bubble burst in 2005. it’s so amazing! in all my experience and all that of the folks that trained me when i was a greenhorn (give them at least 25 years), the cycle ALWAYS was this:
a. two years of a seller’s market
b. five years of a buyer’s market.
it just went like a circle, we always anticipated when it would become a seller’s market based on that history. it did not matter if interest rates were high or low, unemployment high or low, disposable cash high or low. nothing mattered except that at the end of a seller’s market, the prices are too dear. so it then turns into a buyer’s market due to pent up demand.
this time, THERE WERE FIVE (5) YEARS of a seller’s market!
so given my own history in this business and that of the folks that helped me get started, in 50 years, nobody saw 5 years of a seller’s market.
the reason that the houses sit for 2 years now, with for sale signs on their lawns, is because the PRICES are simply too high. when will salaries and wages get high enough to meet the prices? even the dreaded condo, forcing moderate income, hard working citizens out of the city to places unknown nowadays, are priced way too high.
2. it seems to me that you pay your bills on time. the interest rates for a fixed rate, 30 year mortgage are not high at all, and they don’t charge points to get one these days.
therefore, why don’t you shop around to refinance into a fixed rate mortgage? get rid of countryside, but get the state on them. who knows? you may be able to recover damages because they did false appraisals to get refinanced mortgages. i do not like this smell!!!
you may say, how can i do that with the mortgage that i have today and what the other appraisers said? well, just give it a whirl, try to do it.
this is the way the smartest home buyers save money, too:
3. every time you have even $25 left over at the end of the month, send your mortgagee a check for it, marked in the memo section and on the back side as “principal only for mortgage number x,” where x = your loan number.
when uncle sam sends you that refund for owning a house, paying real estate taxes and all that mortgage interest that is tax dedcuctible, don’t buy toys and new cars, and don’t pay too much on credit cards: instead, send it, again, as principal only payment to the mortgagee!
ask your realtor, or better yet, before you put the state licensing dogs on countryside, ask countryside to provide you with two amortization schedules:
one for $230,000 that is a 30 year schedule for 6.25% and
one for the same amount, same interest rate, but a 15 year schedule.
then you will know the magic of these words.
you are in a very precarious and lousy situation now. try to get out of it!
good luck!