Millions of home owners whose primary home was snared in foreclosure actions handled by 14 mortgage loan servicers between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2010, will get a chance to have their cases reviewed by a panel of independent consultants set up by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and potentially receive compensation.

Loan servicers include Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo.

To qualify for the review, you don’t have to have lost your home, you just have to have been treated unfairly during the foreclosure process.

The independent consultants will review cases looking for errors, misrepresentations, or other problems with the foreclosure process. If the consultants decide a mortgage servicer’s actions were unfair or illegal, they’ll determine what compensation the borrower should get.

When the OCC says it’s looking for unfair or illegal treatment when lenders took “foreclosure action,” it’s talking about actions like these:

  • Your property was sold after a foreclosure judgment.
  • Your loan was referred into the foreclosure process but you brought your payments up to date, got on a payment plan or modification, sold your home in a short sale, or gave the lender a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure or took another action to avoid foreclosure.
  • You’re in the foreclosure process and still delinquent, but the foreclosure sale hasn’t happened yet.

The kind of errors the consultants would look for in the way those actions were taken would include situations like these:

  • What you owed on your mortgage was less than what the lender said you owed.
  • You did everything a loan modification agreement required, but the foreclosure sale still happened.
  • You were protected by bankruptcy when the foreclosure action happened.
  • You asked your lender for help or a modification, you submitted complete documents on time, and the foreclosure happened while you were waiting to hear back from the lender about your request.
  • The lender inaccurately calculated, processed, or applied fees or your mortgage payments.
  • You got a mortgage, went on active military service, and the lender took a foreclosure action against you between the time you started active duty and nine months after your finished active duty —and you didn’t waive your rights under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

The 14 mortgage servicers today started sending letters to eligible borrowers explaining how the review program will work.

You can read more about the review and claim process at IndependentForeclosureReview.com or by calling 1-888-952-9105 toll-free Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. (EST) or Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (EST).

Your request for a review of your foreclosure must be postmarked by April 30, 2012.

The OCC consultants will also be pulling sample cases from each loan servicer and doing additional reviews to identify other problems and issues. The reviews will likely take months to complete because of the number of borrowers involved, Acting Comptroller John Walsh said.

The OCC has also ordered the 14 servicers to stop the foreclosure process for borrowers who are in trial loan modifications and to improve the way they handle troubled mortgages by installing better technology and assigning a single person to each borrower’s case.

Source: OCC