Consumer complaint received 2020-01-08
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Struggling to pay mortgage — 
Company: Onity Group Inc. (FL)

On XX/XX/XXXX I have submitted the following statement of hardship, along with the required forms and documents to my loan servicer, PHH Mortgage Services, for assistance with a loan modification request : HARDSHIP STATEMENT Dear PHH Mortgage Home Assistance Program, This letter is to inform you of my hardship situation, which will explain why I fell behind on my mortgage for the past couple of months. I suffered an unexpected illness, which set me back for a while. I have included documentation from the U.S. Department of Labor, showing my approval under the Designation Notice ( Family and Medical Leave Act or FMLA ). I have applied for FMLA back in XXXX and was approved in XX/XX/XXXX. I have been returning to work intermittently, and trying to get on track, although my hours have been restricted. Nonetheless, my pay has suffered for the past couple of months since the unexpected illness has occurred, and I have been trying to catch up with all my bills, which include the mortgage payment ever since. My wife only works part-time ( at the moment ), and as you are aware, she was not on the original loan. If adding her income would assist in the modification process, please let me know. Thank you in advance for your assistance. XXXX Over one month later : My request for a loan modification has been denied for one of following reasons provided by the loan servicer ( PHH Mortgage ). Account has been modified either once in the last 12 months or 3 times over the life of the account ( which makes it ineligible under the guidelines set forth by the owner of the account and the account does not meet the delinquency requirements, as it is delinquent by 90 days or less as of the date of the review. However, this information is invalid, as there were only two modifications done over the life of the account, and no other loan modification has taken place within the past 12 months. According to our records, as well as upon verification with several representatives at PHH Mortgage ( namely, XXXX ID # XXXX, XXXX, ID # XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, as well as with my Relationship Manager XXXX XXXX, the only 2 ( two ) loan modifications on record are as follows : Year : XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX Government Modification ( also referred to as the Obama XXXX, by the representative ) Year : XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX -- XXXX XXXX. In the past 12 months, I have not had any loan modifications. 

Additional issues of concern as it relates to the loan servicer, as well as XXXX XXXX XXXX with regards to my loan modification request include but are not limited to the following : Loan servicer sent foreclosure notice before a response was received regarding the status of the appeal request to reconsider loan modification. Loan servicer refused to take payment ( s ) on loan when it was entering 90 days past due, unless it covered the full amount past due at the time, which was approximately {$3500.00} or more. Initially customer service representatives stated that payment arrangements could be made to bring the account current. However, it was suggested that we wait for a response to the appeal request. Appeal request was sent ( and received ) by loan servicer on XXXX XXXX, XXXX, via email. However, a response to my appeal request was not received until well over a month, in a letter dated XXXX XXXX, XXXX. This after following up with the lender on several occasions with regards to the response to the appeal request. Also, prior to receiving a response to my request for an appeal I received a foreclosure notice from the loan servicer dated XXXX XXXX, XXXX. XXXX On XX/XX/XXXX, after speaking with my attorney, it was suggested that I attempt to reach out to the Lender again to request the loan modification, as well as follow-up with research to request documentation to among other things, confirm the number of times the loan had been modified. XXXX On XX/XX/XXXX, my spouse, XXXX XXXX, who has authorization to speak on my behalf with regards to the loan, was informed by PHH Mortgage that a response for research was completed and the results were in a letter dated XXXX XXXX, XXXX. The email was forwarded to both my email address, and that of my spouse. The information ( all of a sudden ) would show 3 ( three ) loan modifications : One of which was in XXXX via AHMSI. At this time, to the best of my knowledge, the owner of the Note was XXXX, XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX. The First payment of this loan modification was said to be due on XXXX XXXX, XXXX. Meanwhile, an additional document submitted to the loan servicer showed that a HAMP Modification was also processed in XXXX. However, no information was provided ( as I requested XXXX to confirm the guidelines of the owner XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX with regards to their policy on the number of loan modifications allowed according to their guidelines, just as the stated as follows : [ QUOTE ] Account has been modified either once in the last 12 months or 3 times over the life of the account ( which makes it ineligible under the guidelines set forth by the owner of the account and the account does not meet the delinquency requirements, as it is delinquent by 90 days or less as of the date of the review. [ END QUOTE ] To make matters worse, when my wife asked about the status of the 2nd request for loan modification which was sent not only via fax, also sent to the designated email address, XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, was not received! 

Meanwhile, that email address is clearly stated on the loan modification documents provided by PHH Mortgage. Therefore, I had to resend this request on XX/XX/XXXX, to an alternate email address at XXXX, and told once again that I needed to wait several days for a response. Although being informed that the email should have been forwarded from the hat email address to the XXXX email address, no explanation was provided as to why this was not the case. Neither was there an explanation provided as to why the fax sent to both XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX was not received.