ESOP War Against Foreclosure Crisis Bears Fruits

Julie Parker

Julie Parker was born in March 19, 1983, in Lancaster – Los Angeles County, California. Her father is an experienced economist and businessman, who motivate her taste for the real estate market. Recently, graduated in Economics and now focus her studies in a PhD. Now she’s a consultant and webwritter of ForeclosureListings.com

ESOP (Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People) is distinct from other government plans as well as that of mortgage counselors in that it makes the lenders accountable. It has managed to make many mega esop logo financial entities (Bank of America, CitiMortgage, Ocwen Financial Corporation Litton Loan Servicing) to ink “fair lending agreements” that outline clearly the working relationship. Byit ESOP expects the lenders to provide one single contact point – one single person who can take the decision. Without this the house owners are thrown around like a ball in the bureaucratic maze. The files disappear. These are the most common complaints of borrowers trying to avail of the government programmes.

ESOP also lays stress on well defined process of escalation for the cases it thinks has been wrongly handled. Some of the agreements empower it to appeal the level of the CEO of the lender.

The measures initiated by ESOP are not without the touch of the human factor. They take the bank executives and servicers of loans on tours to interact directly with the troubled borrowers and see for themselves first hand the impact of their policies.

Countrywide (presently absorbed by Bank of America) inked a contract after its senior officials were taken to Slavic Village. The aim was to show the genuine efforts of ESOP in helping also the lenders – the latter bills not having the proper framework to communicate in an effective manner with the growing number of troubled house owners. Paul A. Koches of Ocwen said that ESOP has “been instrumental in completing the last link of communication chain without which we’re dead in the water”. Ocwen handling about half a million home mortgages was one of the first entities to forge a partnership with ESOP.

One of the most important unsolved issues is the lack of communication between the borrowers and the lenders. Ohio State’s most touted foreclosure prevention plan is “Save the Dream”. The applications from homeowners are forwarded to the servicers and lenders. The response from Chase, Wells Fargo and US Bank was below 2%. But that of Countrywide and Ocwen (they have teamed up with ESOP) were 72% and 85% respectively.

While tackling borrowers ESOP has two important plus points over the lenders. While the interests of the lenders are conflicting and competing, ESOP has only one aim – saving the homes. Secondly the borrowers are more trustful of ESOP whose services are free since they proved information that is relatively more comprehensive and is not false.

Thus from all angles ESOP’s ware against foreclosures is bearing fruits.