Struggling IndyMac borrowers may be in the dark about offer to lower their mortgage payments – Los Angeles Times

The FDIC’s experience has implications beyond IndyMac because the loan-modification program there is being looked at as one of the templates for an emerging government plan to help stem foreclosures. That plan would offer loan guarantees to encourage loan companies to alter as much as $500 billion in mortgages to make them more affordable to struggling homeowners.

But you can’t help borrowers if you can’t reach them. Despite the difficulties it has encountered, the FDIC appears at IndyMac to have been more successful at reaching them than most mortgage companies have been. Horror stories about elusive homeowners abound in the mortgage industry.

Bank of America’s Countrywide unit tried to contact one delinquent borrower 150 times before the homeowner called — in response not to the deluge of letters and phone calls but to news accounts of a new Bank of America plan to modify loans, said Steve Bailey, a mortgage executive at the bank.