Lender
The lender or the Investor actually owns the loan and will make the final decision as to your approval or denial of your Loan Modification or Short Sale.
Most homeowners don’t even realize the difference and because a typical loan is sold several times it’s no wonder. Most homeowner’s receive their statement every month and write a check out to the name of the company at the top of the page.
Lenders are often more responsive than servicers since they have the final word or say as to approval or denial of the deal.
We will generally close a loss mitigation or short sale case faster with the lender than we will with the servicer; however there are advantages and techniques that we use to get a quick response from the servicer that most companies are not familiar with and that gives us the advantage over most companies.
Servicer
At the time the loan is originated chances are that it will be sold off to a third party. Without the proper infrastructure, employees and budget most lenders will make their money originating the loan and pay out a small fee to a third party company to service the loan with collection calls, billing and customer service.
It is not uncommon for a third party servicer to service loans from more than one lender. What you may not know is that servicer is required by law to provide full contact information for all lenders upon request and since few homeowners even know to ask it’s not surprising they have never been in contact with their lender.
Also true is the fact that most servicers will initiate the loan modification or short sale by sending out the required documents to be complete by the homeowner. We have these documents on file which gives us the advantage because we send these documents out to the homeowner at the time of our consultation and acceptance of our terms.
Over the years we have found that most homeowners will not even try to negotiate a workout plan with the lender.
My initial thought was that homeowners were in denial and that they were hoping something would change allowing them to avoid facing financial ruin and get out of this nightmare they were in.
Then one day after doing a three-way call with my client and the lender I realized it could also be the fear of intimidation and it’s not the lender who is the problem, it’s the collections department. Once you enter you account number into the system and you are behind in your payment, you are routed to the collections department. These people are ruthless and unless you know what to say and how to say it they will threaten you with foreclosure proceedings.
There is a secret to dealing with the collections department and we have the talent and the skill which has allowed us to master the art of negotiations.
