SANDOWN — All Victoria Gauvin wants to do is pay her mortgage and stay in her home.But since May, she has called Bank of America repeatedly. Her attorney has called Bank of America repeatedly. Mail has been received by the bank, but has gone unanswered. And though Gauvin said she was just two months behind on her payments, the bank is asking her for more than $86,000.
She doesn’t have much time left to get any answers or reach any agreements: The foreclosure date on the notice she received in May is Aug. 5.
“They give us the runaround,” she said. “Basically, they said to have my toothbrush packed, because I could be on the street.”
Gauvin, a special education case worker in the Sanborn School District, has the ability to pay her mortgage. But she certainly doesn’t have $86,000 to pay by Thursday.
She said she had never even heard of owing that much money until March, shortly after her mortgage loan was acquired by Bank of America. Before that, the mortgage was handled by Wilshire Credit Corporation.
“Why did (Bank of America) buy this and all of a sudden say, ‘This is what you owe,'” she asked. “Why am I not continuing with my normal payments?”
Her attorney, Christopher Perry, is a longtime family friend and is representing her pro bono. He said Gauvin first started to fall behind her payments in 2007, after a house fire.
Her insurance claim took time, he said, and while she waited, she had to pay both her mortgage and her rent to live elsewhere, due to smoke damage in her home. Gauvin said she was never more than two months behind, although she acknowledged she has struggled to pay since 2007, with a wage freeze at work making things worse.
Modification may be heart of matter
In 2009, Perry said, Wilshire modified Gauvin’s mortgage payments. She owed a total of $257,000, but an appraisal showed the house to be worth just $160,000. So Wilshire allowed her to make payments based on the $160,000 value, holding about $67,000 in abeyance for 12 months.
That brought her to the start of this year, when Wilshire was selling the loan to Bank of America, Perry said. He said all banks have a common strategy when they are helping to modify — or continue a modification — on a mortgage.
“They tell you, ‘Well, we can’t help you as long as you’re making your payments. So stop making your payments,'” Perry said.
So Gauvin stopped, intending to keep the modification in place.
“They tell her, ‘We’re going to modify you. Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine,'” Perry said.
Six weeks later, Gauvin got a notice from Bank of America, welcoming her to the bank — and saying she needed to send them a check for a little more than $86,000 to become current on her loan. Perry thinks that figure must come from the amount Gauvin had in abeyance for the year.
The bank also stopped paying her insurance and taxes from her escrow account, he said.
“In fairness to Bank of America, in the beginning, I think it was possible it was just a mistake,” Perry said.
But he sent letters, with evidence attached, disputing the amount.
“I was critical, but I was also trying to be fair,” he said.
Lawyer: Bank has been unresponsive
All his letters have gone unanswered: a notice of representation, a dispute of the debt, everything. The foreclosure notice came from a firm in Laconia — Haughe, Philpot and Laurent. Perry finally reached them Friday, and said Thomas Haughe said he had received Perry’s letters and attachments, which were sent within the 20 days allowed by law to dispute a foreclosure, and had forwarded them to Bank of America.
Perry said Haughe told him he thought the bank should work with Gauvin.
“It’s very frustrating, even as an attorney, when you’re trying to deal with a big institution like Bank of America,” he said. “You can never reach the same person twice.”
Perry said yesterday he has made “at least 40 calls” to Bank of America — with no success.
In a statement Friday, Bank of America said, “Due to customer privacy issues, we are unable to discuss specific details of Ms. Gauvin’s account. We have assigned an associate to work directly with Ms. Gauvin to resolve her issues.”
That made Gauvin laugh, long and hard.
“Me and my attorney, they will not give us the same person on the phone,” she said. “I have written down the dates and the different people I have spoken to.”
When she asks for something in writing, she said, they tell her no.
I’ve never heard of a place who won’t put anything in writing,” she said.
Gauvin is still two months behind on her mortgage payments. She can make her payments, but the bank told her that even if she’s up to date, they can still foreclose for the $86,000 she owes.
“I said, ‘I have the ability to pay, why won’t you let me?'” Gauvin said.
Because of the difficulty she has had getting information from Bank of America, Gauvin’s not sure if they are going forward with the foreclosure or not. But the threat of being told by someone from the sheriff’s office that she, her 13-year-old son and two dogs need to leave the home she’s owned since 1994 is haunting.
“My son is terrified,” she said. “He’s like, ‘Mama, I couldn’t go without my dogs. What’s going to happen to us?'”
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