Chase Loan Mod Success! How We Turned A Champ Into a Hamp

A client came to me a few months ago after Chase denied him for a loan modification under HAMP and offered him one under Champ, which is Chase’s own internal loan mod program. Apparently, the Champ loan mod had more liberal guidelines which would allow the client to qualify for a modification but also had less favorable terms. The proposed Champ loan mod still had a high interest rate and the client was not satisfied with it.

I reviewed the history of the submissions and all of the financials and discovered an error. The error was that the client was self-employed and had submitted bank statements which included both personal and business expenses. Chase had included the personal expenses in its analysis and concluded that the client’s expenses were too high and that the client’s business had a low net income. Chase believed that the client had overstated his business net income (and, in turn, his own personal gross income) on his financial statement.

I asked the client to review all of the bank statements for the past 6 months and to mark them up line by line to indicate whether each debit and credit was “personal” or “business.” I then asked him to prepare a chart showing the totals for each category. In the end, the chart and statements matched up nearly perfectly with the income amounts that the client had initially told Chase he was earning. At my request, Chase reconsidered the application and financials. This week, Chase agreed with our analysis and issued a HAMP loan modification agreement that included a revised interest rate of 2% for years 1 to 5, 3% for year 6, 4% for year 7 and 4.25% for years 8 to 26. Basically, Chase gave the client a new 26 year loan. Chase also put the arrears back into the loan and took nearly half of the total principal and deferred interest payments on that portion. The client was extremely satisfied with this excellent result. He gets to keep his home and he avoided foreclosure or bankruptcy.