Citi’s holiday treat: No foreclosures for a month
In a sign of the times, major banks like Citi are offering to “postpone” foreclosure filings for 30 days during the holiday season. But not so fast, don’t get too excited. As we have come to always find out you need to read the fine print. What Citi is actually doing is suspending the foreclosure filings on only the mortgages that are “owned” by Citi and not the loans that are “serviced” by Citi. This can get confusing for many people becuase they do not fully understand that in most cases, just because you get your monthly statement from Citi or because Citi may initiate the collections calls, it doesn’t mean that Citi is the actual holder of the mortgage note. In many cases the actual “investor” or “owner” of the mortgage could be a Pension Fund or Hedge Fund that purchased your mortgage in the Secondary Market and has simply retained Citi to service the mortgage. And unfortunately this is the situation that holds true for most Americans. So be sure to contact your lender and ask the question, “is your company the owner of my mortgage or simply the servicer” and if they are simply the “servicer” push them to tell you who is the Investor or Owner of that mortgage.
Citi’s holiday treat: No foreclosures for a month
By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporterDecember 17, 2009: 5:18 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Citigroup will suspend foreclosures and evictions for 30 days, giving 4,000 at-risk borrowers a break during the holiday season, the company said Thursday. 
The New York-based bank said distressed homeowners with first mortgage loans owned by CitiMortgage or CityFinancial North America who also meet certain other criteria will not be subject to foreclosure sales or notifications between Dec. 18 and Jan. 17.
“We hope that with this suspension we can make the holidays a little less stressful for our customers who are going through a very difficult time,” said Sanjiv Das, chief executive of CitiMortgage, in a statement.
Citi (C, Fortune 500) said the suspension affects 2,000 borrowers scheduled to have foreclosure sales and another 2,000 that were to receive foreclosure notices during the period, which amounts to approximately 20% of the company’s $746 billion mortgage servicing and lending portfolio.
Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500) also announced Thursday that it was suspending all foreclosure evictions from Dec. 19 through Jan. 3. All owners and tenants living in foreclosed properties that the mortgage financing company holds will not be subject to evictions during the holidays.
Story re-posted from Cnnmoney.com with comments by Joe Sloboda
