Discharged Mortgage Reporting

[dspii]

Hi Friends, long time since I have posted. I was discharged 12/2009 and included my mortgage. In 2011 I sold my house my house in a short sale, due to a job transfer across the country. Word to the wise, a severe case poison ivy is by far, more enjoyable and less painful, anyways, lessons learned, its history now.

Fast forward....I was forced by Skank of America to stop making payments before they would allow a short sale, good business decision on their part. Up to the short sale, my credit report showed correctly, $0, IIB and no history of activity. After the short sale, a mysterious and harmful date showed up.......Date Of Last Activity: 10/2011.

With the various opinions and reviews of when you can qualify for a mortgage after BK, I decided to talk to a broker to test the waters. They pulled my report and said since I included my mortgages in BK, there is a two year seasoning period. Then......they said well wait, the Date of Last Activity is 10/2011, meaning I have to wait 3 years from this date. They went on to say that Skank of America should not report anything after discharge. So I went to an attorney....wasted $150 he was useless. So before I invest more money in our legal system, I wanted to get your thoughts on this situation.

Can they report "Date of Last Activity" after discharge? I thought FCRA helped protect BKer's from this kind of stuff.

If I do get it fixed, are their any success stories out there of obtaining a mortgage 2 years post-BK that included a short sale? Recently there has been a stir on these boards about this topic, and I was wondering if there are any successes.

I'm perfectly happy renting and have a 4-year lease option I can exercise anytime.

[tobee43]

i really think you can challenge the reporting agency and let THEM do the work to get the reporting of the mortgage corrected. i would simply contact them and send a copy of the discharge if need be. remember they have 30 days to fix it or they have to remove it. so the first thing i would do is contact them and tell them they are reporting incorrect information.

these dates have been thrown around all over 2 years from this...3 years for that. but it changes daily. actually, i want to mention, right before all this happened will the foreclosure crisis, i knew someone who got foreclosed on, actually fought it in court so she stayed another year, but eventually was removed. now this was about 5 years ago well, within a YEAR she had another home with a mortgage completed buying another house. go figure.

of course now the banks have closed their doors to so many, and i know people with excellent credit that can't get a mortgage or even refi today. somethings got to give!!! i don't know when we will begin to see it, but it does. frankly, i know of NO one that has gotten a mortgage other than a very few that have been on this board with the USDA etc. but only, if not 1 or 2 people.

frankly, we did what you are thinking about and exercised a lease option to buy, but we were able to get owner financing 100%, i know, a RARE case, but i suppose just as rare as the 1 or 2 people that have gotten a mortgage after bk.

also, think about the logic about this fact that it has to be three years from the time of the deed exchange, when in fact there are many states that have a 20 year statue of limitations to remove old owners names. a title search would reveal one's name of some old property, i can't see if one had a credit score of 800 for 5 years what significance that would even mean to a bank if you had a excellent credit score and a large down payment. but that is something that i guess we will all be seeing down the road. i understand these are the suppose to be the provisions under the guidelines of FHA or VA etc., but i have had at least 10 mortgages in my lifetime and only one was an FHA, so there are other options.

best of luck to you! i know we are very happy with our decision of buying this house, was it our dream house...NO, but it's a house we will always be able to afford without worry or concern and that's peace of mind is worth it all.

[Flamingo]

This is not mortgage related but after we were discharged, over the course of a year following our discharge many former discharged accounts started to reappear that used to appear correctly as discharged in BK but now the infamous "date of last activity" and other items showing up which re-aged the accounts. On our own we cleared all this up but it took us at least another year to get it done in full and last summer one reverted back to doing the same thing and we again had it removed. How this all happens and what causes it, I don't know, but it is imperative to contact the CRA via snail mail with copies of discharge papers, etc. to get it removed. Don't waste time or money on any credit repair place - they just do the same thing but charge you.

I would get that fixed before you do anything further - it will disappear from your credit reports while it is being investigated but will reappear corrected if the initial information is indeed incorrect after a few months.

[pinkpeanut01]

I'd like to see if anybody has info on this as well. I have two mortgages that were IIB, and both are still reporting my monthly payments while showing them as IIB. I was thinking that it would help me in the future to see that I've been paying on time every month but that the countdown clock would still be from my date of discharge, not date of last activity. I just started fixing up my credit report since my discharge, and the reporting of mortgages was one of the things that I have had to dispute. Anyway, I read somewhere (isn't that helpful?) that you need to find a lawyer that specializes in credit reports. I asked my BK atty about some things on my CR, and he said he isn't involved in that stuff, so I found an atty near here that I've bookmarked in case it gets to the point of needing one. Anyway, all that to say that it doesn't sound fair to me at ALL, though I'm not sure of the legality of it, and I'd find a lawyer that specializes in FCRA and see if you can get a free consultation. I'd love if you would update this. Good luck; sorry I couldn't be helpful.