MEDIA

Tiffany R. Norman and Her Client were Featured in an Article on the Cover of the New York Times in 2009: “As Banks Retreat, Private Equity Rushes to Buy Troubled Home Mortgages” see an excerpt

Short-Term Relief

Phillip Harris, 62, who has black lung disease, has lived for more than 40 years in a three-story building in San Francisco that doubles as his home and a boardinghouse. Caliber threatened to foreclose on the mortgage a few months after Lone Star bought the loan from Bank of America and scheduled a sale of the property by March 19th.

Mr. Harris sent in an application for a loan modification – a move that under California law would stop the foreclosure process. But because the documents were not yet in Caliber’s computer system, the firm said it intended to go ahead with the foreclosure and sale of the house.

About a week before the trustee sale, Mr. Harris and his lawyer, Tiffany Norman, said they called Caliber and spoke with an employee who identified herself only as Katrina. On the recorded call, Mr. Harris and his lawyer repeatedly told the Caliber employee that the application had been submitted.

THE FULL ARTICLE, CLICK HERE

https://trnlaw.com/new-york-times-excerptas-banks-retreat-private-equity-rushes-to-buy-troubled-home-mortgages/

“We definitely don’t doubt you guys sent that in,” the Caliber employee said during the pone call, a recording of which was produced in litigation. But the employee said there was nothing she could do to stop the sale because it took five to seven days for an application to be “uploaded into” Caliber’s system.

Ms. Norman went to court and got a temporary restraining order against Caliber. A few weeks ago, a Caliber lawyer approached Ms. Norman about a potential settlement.

Formerly known as Vericrest Financial, Caliber has grown rapidly. Today it manages more than 327,465 mortgages with a combined value of just over $71 billion. Some of Caliber’s growth has come from Lone Star’s steering, of standard mortgage origination business to the firm by requiring prospective buyers of the foreclosed homes it puts up for sale to be prequalified for a mortgage from Caliber.

As Caliber has grown, so as the customer complaints More that 1,000 complaints have bee lodged with the feral Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with complaints running 54 percent higher than a year ago, the agency reports. Caliber said in an email that the modifications it had made had reduced the average borrower’s monthly payments by more than 20 percent.