Anyone have court ordered mediation in florida during foreclosure process

[ready2start]

Hi
We are in South Florida and our home is in the foreclosure process. We have a 1st mortgage of 300k and 2nd mortgage of 200k. Our home would probably sell for about 320K. My husband and I both are realtors, and my husband is a broker. We have seen a dramatic drop in our income and assets since 2006. We were served with foreclosure papers in Sept 09 and hired an attorney to help us with the process. It has always been our hope to stay in our home but we needed to buy time to see how things were going to play out. We have started a new business while my husband has been able to maintain his real estate business thru these tough years and we are hanging on.

We will eventually have to file Bankruptcy, don't know yet if it will be a 7 or 13. Our hope is that if we get the first mortgage modified we will either strip the second in a 13 (after they tack on missed payments and interest our new 1st would be more than 320k) or we would hopefully be able to settle the 2nd using retirement funds after discharge from a Ch 7.

We had our attorney file a compel to mediate with our first mortgage company and it has been ordered by the judge. We have sent in our documents and have a hearing set for August. Does anyone know what we can expect from this? Will we get an automatic modification or we will get trial payments?
I have also begun the modification process outside the court system at our attorney's suggestion. I submitted our papers about 6-8 weeks ago and have not heard anything other than "it is still in underwriting".

Our first mortgage was with Citimortgage until we were 90 days late and then it transferred to Bayside Lending (which I believe is a subsidiary of Citimortgage).

Our 2nd is with Bank of America. At our attorneys suggestion we also are making payments to them of $200 per month with the entire amount going to principal and 0% interest. He said it would look better to the 1st if we had an agreement with the 2nd. This is only a 6 month agreement.

Any helpful advice would be appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read and reply.

[mrskal]

I cant answer any of your questions, but be prepared to wait months and months on end for any modification. I have been reading stories on another board, and most involve Citi, Bank of America and Chase. They are strung along and told they are in underwriting, then approved, then they need more docs, then denied, then send in more docs.....etc.....you get the story. I cant even believe how many people this is happeneing to. I think there a couple stories like this on here as well.
If you are interested on the site I am on PM me, not sure if I can post it here. You would be shocked to read it.
Good luck.

[ryan]

You might ask your atty if he has better success with the court approach for his clients as opposed to just having the borrower apply directly to the lender for modification. ...Sounds like he is banking on the pressure of court orders to make the lender more amenable...might work - might not.

Usually, most modifications, as mentioned above from the big banks, take forever.

[BananaCabana]

We are also in S. Florida and have just had a Lis Pendens pop up on the clerk's website. We are waiting to be served a summons but still have not received one after almost 20 days. I read in our local paper that the middle district is now requiring mortgage companies to do a mediation before foreclosing in certain areas. So, like you, I am very interested in seeing how this will affect our foreclosure timeline and eventually our bankruptcy timeline. And what exactly do they mean by mediation? Just the fact that they offered us two modifications that we did not accept or do they have to re-mediate now that they are actually going through with the foreclosure? (The mods were horrible. The 1st wanted 10 years of interest only payments before anything would go to principle, the second one only took the payment down by $150/month and they would not give the details on it such as interest rate, principle amount, length of loan, etc.)

Details of this program, I do not know. I am not even sure if it is a must-do or if you have to request it first. I have read conflicting information on it. And as we are willing to surrender the house I have not asked the attorney about it yet. Still waiting for summons first.

[ready2start]

We got our summons about 10 months ago. You will need to file an answer within 20 days if you want to have time to work something out. I will keep you posted on what happens to ours on the 5th. I am hoping we can walk out of there knowing something and that we will be offered a modification.

[BananaCabana]

We got our summons about 10 months ago. You will need to file an answer within 20 days if you want to have time to work something out. I will keep you posted on what happens to ours on the 5th. I am hoping we can walk out of there knowing something and that we will be offered a modification.

ready2start,
How long after they issued the lis pendens did it take before you were served a summons? And, have you have been living in the home rent free for these 10 months after answering the summons? I am trying to get an idea of how long we have to find a rental. If there is 10 more months available, more or less, then finding a rental right now may be jumping the gun. My lawyer gave me an approximate answer of three months to three years. She also told me I would be served any day now, but another week has past without being served. We are surrendering the home but finding a rental will not be a quick and easy task for us.