When asked for advice on loan modifications, the best response is ‘be patient’ … and take a proactive stance …. I just spoke to a client who wrote to Diane Feinstein’s office and got a ‘you’re now on the fast track’ response … excellent … and to another homeowner who is going to the Chase loan modification workshop in Oakland at the end of this week (blogged about earlier) to move things along.

I’m hoping that your reading of this may be a life-changing moment … a time to stop, as Michael McCartney, graduate seminar teacher at the Academy of Intuition Medicine® (a Sausalito based school) would call it, treading water. If you’re planning on getting somewhere, it’s far more productive to swim than to tread water … yet there are a lot of people out in the cruel, hard world simply treading water, their lives on hold.

A little about energy medicine …. Michael’s wife, Francesca McCartney, has written two books on this work … as a graduate with a master’s in Intuitive Medicine one part of what they teach is how we as individuals can keep our energy for our own use and not get ‘stuck’ in the mire of the swirling energy of other people/loan modifications/daily life. As a UCLA trained engineer, I see their energy medicine teaching as beginning with learning to ‘ground’ oneself. This grounding can be done with meditation, yoga, tai chi and any of a number of formats.

After the grounding there’s the ‘clearing of space’ which is similar to clearing the brush from a building site or, to use the language of the Foundation for Spiritual Development (FSD), another energy medicine school (this one in San Rafael and led by Dana Duryea and Jenai Lane)’clearing the pictures’. Whatever you do, you’ve gotta do … don’t let a short sale prospect or loan modification put your life on hold … and remember, everything in the loan modification process is variable … I’ve heard of modifications taking two years with some lenders (unnamed)… and days with another (Wachovia) … the difference being the level of proactivity of the the homeowner, the representative of lender (sometimes it’s good to hang up on a loan modification person and call back to get a more cooperative one and yes, I’ve heard of Wachovia taking much longer), the investor approval process, etc.

Posted by:  Tom Verkozen