Truesee's Daily Wonder

Joanne Kirby, a nurse for more than 20 years, was financially fine until late 2008, when she missed a $1,020 mortgage payment on her house in Monongahela.

Fearing a foreclosure down the road, she got National City Bank to modify her loan down to $600 a month, which she paid for six months. But after the bank sold the $85,000 mortgage, Kirby got a letter from the buyer in St. Paul demanding thousands in back payments and late fees.

"They didn't have the paperwork on the loan, the agreement on the modification or anything," she said.

Kirby's tale is typical of homeowners struggling to modify troubled mortgages these days. It's especially tough because the loans are frequently flipped to unreachable, out-of-state companies that may not even have all the paperwork.

"I probably average four to five e-mails a day from homeowners saying they had to wait forever to get hold of someone at the bank," said Dan Sullivan, a foreclosure prevention specialist at Action Housing, a nonprofit agency Downtown.

"Then, after they send in a stack of paper, it gets old, and the homeowner has to send in the same things over and over again," Sullivan said.

Kirby, 51, was left to redo her mortgage modification — this time with Green Tree Servicing LLC, based in St. Paul. But she had to resubmit reams of financial paperwork three times earlier this year because her file got "stale" after the company repeatedly failed to process the information.

Finally, at the end of August, Kirby was able to modify her mortgage again. But with back payments, private-mortgage insurance and several fees tacked on, her new loan ballooned to $109,000, and monthly payments jumped to $970.

Green Tree could not be reached for comment.

"Green Tree has a 30-year commitment to helping families maintain their dreams," states the company's website. "Using a unique and personalized service model, we focus on building strong relationships with borrowers and a deeper understanding of their financial situation."

Said Kirby: "Where is the help from the mortgage modification? This is insane. I'm right back to paying $1,000 all over again."

Her plight comes amidst revelations that mounting foreclosures across the country include many conducted with improper documentation. Several major mortgage companies in the last couple of weeks — including Bank of America, GMAC Mortgage and PNC Mortgage — suspended foreclosures to ensure they are done legally.

In the quarter ended Sept. 30, there were 879 foreclosures in the five-county Pittsburgh region, according to data from RealStats, a research firm on the South Side. That is up from 848 in the quarter ended June 30 and from 807 in the quarter ended September 30, 2009.

The Obama administration opposes calls for the government to impose a national foreclosure moratorium, out of concern it could disrupt the housing market. But 50 states' attorneys general — including Pennsylvania's — are investigating allegations foreclosures were legally flawed.

A Washington County sheriff showed up at Kirby's door in late July with a foreclosure notice. Kirby, a single mother of four, said Green Tree told her to just ignore such notices because it was processing a new mortgage.

About a half-million homeowners have modified their mortgages through the Treasury Department's Making Home Affordable Program. The $75 billion program, launched early last year to stem foreclosures, pays mortgage servicers $1,000 up front for every troubled loan it modifies.

About 100 financial institutions participate in the program, including Green Tree. As Kirby did not qualify for the program, Green Tree modified her mortgage through its own program, which is not uncommon in the industry.

Other mortgage servicers participating in Making Home Affordable are PNC Mortgage, part of PNC Financial Services Group of Pittsburgh, and Home Loan Services, a subsidiary of Bank of America based on the North Side.

PNC declined to discuss mortgage modifications. But according to a Treasury report, PNC Mortgage had modified 3,768 home mortgages through the government program as of Aug. 31. PNC services about $137 billion worth of home mortgages from its two sites, in Miamisburg, Ohio, and Jacksonville, Fla., securities documents show.

Home Loan Services officials declined to be interviewed.

Loan servicers collect mortgage payments and apply them to the loan and to tax authorities, as well as keep the records. That includes payments to investors holding securities backed by such mortgages.

Servicers' contracts with investment banks that marketed those securities dictate whether and how a mortgage may be modified. Such contracts typically limit how many mortgages a servicer may modify and contain formulas to determine if it's more profitable to foreclose or modify a mortgage.

"Banks don't want to talk about this," said Sullivan, a former banker at National City, which was acquired by PNC. "Even the good banks are fairly tight-lipped because they don't want the community hearing that their first priority has to be toward the investment banks, rather than the borrowers."

Loan servicers are often not the bank or mortgage company that originally wrote the mortgage because loans and servicing rights often change hands.

Of the home mortgages written in Western Pennsylvania in the last five years — such as Kirby's — less than 15 percent are being serviced in this region, said Richard Reithmiller, immediate past president of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Reithmiller, a mortgage broker at Keystone Financial Services, Ross, estimates that at least 80 percent of the loans originated in this market get sold to and serviced by an out-of-state company.

Not so with many community banks, such as Charleroi Federal Savings Bank. The nine-branch institution, about five miles from Kirby's house, has about $213 million in mortgages on its books and services them all.

"We know our customers and try to work with every troubled loan we have," said President Neil Bassi. "Communication is the key."