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NovaStar Financial Gets ProActive–Helps its Borrowers Find Jobs and Avoid Foreclosure
Nice to see a lender take such pro-active measures to help borrowers avoid going into default. I’ve been waiting to see how various lenders would respond to this market. You would have to call this the most enlightened response yet. From the Sacramento Bee this morning:
Lender counsels those in trouble
NovaStar Financial helps its borrowers find jobs, avoid mortgage foreclosure.
By Mark Davis - McClatchy Newspapers
Last Updated 7:01 am PST Monday, January 22, 2007
The payoff comes when customers find work and keep their homes. Bissett said she got a lot of thanks-filled e-mails this Christmas.
When customers accept help, the coaches try just about everything.
Lewis-Coates approved paying one borrower’s electric bill because the power was about to be shut off. LaunchPoint bought a cell phone with prepaid minutes for an unemployed customer who was losing phone service. Prospective employers needed to be able call back.
One borrower was walking to work because public buses didn’t run during the shift he had been switched to. Lewis-Coates said she mentioned it at a meeting and a NovaStar employee donated a bicycle, which worked until the borrower found transportation.
All told, LaunchPoint has spent $3 million helping customers find jobs. Miller said it was money well spent. Each foreclosure costs about a third of the value of the loan.“Do the math here. They only have to help two people over the period of a year … and they’ve paid their own salary,” Miller said of the counselors.
According to Miller, the $3 million investment has prevented $15 million in likely losses.
Jobs rarely pop up as quickly as Myers’ did.
Linda Roberson in Wichita, Kan., searched for months, even with help from Shawn Chase at LaunchPoint. At times, Roberson said, she was ready to give up.
“I’m a single person, and Shawn was my little leaning post because I would just have little fits sometimes. Little breakdowns,” Roberson said. “She would talk me through it, and I’d get back up and start all over again.”
September came and Roberson still was unemployed. The foreclosure was set. She would have to move on the 30th.
Salvation came from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Chase sent Roberson to yet another Wichita temp agency. On Sept. 15, that agency placed her with a lodging company hired to find shelter for hurricane evacuees. Last August, the lodging company hired Roberson permanently. Now she enrolls business travelers in the company’s lodging program.
NovaStar has restructured her loan so she can afford the new payments and make up the ones she had missed.
“I’m a happy person,” Roberson said. “It’s a wonderful thing to stay in your home.”
January 28th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
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