Despite a storm of negative press about reverse mortgages yesterday, look hard and there is some positive news as well. There was lots of discussion regarding 72 year old Lorraine Zickefoose, whose home was scheduled to go up for auction after falling behind on her payments with Wells Fargo.
AAXA Mortgage’s John Smaldone had been working with the woman to try and save her home using a reverse mortgage and earlier this week, Ms. Zickefoose was able to close on her reverse mortgage and save her home.
Smaldone was able to generate a lot of awareness from the public and it ended up reaching the right people at Wells Fargo. See his statement below.
In May, we were able to get a 30-day extension. Wells Fargo assigned to me one of their top loss mitigation managers, Afsheen Alam in Milwaukee. This took place at the end of May. I need to make mention that though all these months, Wells Fargo has NOT been cooperative, did not return calls and made this ordeal an almost impossibility to resolve, it was obviously done on purpose.
Afsheen Alam, is the only one that has shown compassion and the willingness to work with me. She has worked with Village Capital & investment LLC as well as with our title company very closely. We were able to switch the type Reverse Mortgage into a fixed rate program, which got us a more funds to work with toward a settlement.
Afsheen Alam was the only person within Wells Fargo that cared enough to resolve the problem.
This past Friday, June 5, 2009. Wells Fargo through Afsheen Alam approved a settlement for a payoff in the amount of money we had available from the Reverse Mortgage. On Saturday the 6th, Afsheen and I worked over five hours getting everything ready for a closing.
I want to add that our entire community with the help of the press, Lorraine’s Church, Our lady of Fatima Catholic Church, our Police Department, Sheriffs department and so many citizens that held fund raising car washes, and other fund raising events and you name it. Americans do unite; the news media came to our aid. The associated Press through Adrian Sainz got the press campaign rolling toward victory.
Lorraine’s loan with Wells Fargo is being paid off. We are closing on the Reverse Mortgage with Village Capital & investment LLC, today, June 8, 2009 at 4:30 PM EST.
Smaldone is also working on a proposed appropriation program called the Senior Citizen Housing Supplement Program. The document below goes into more detail:
