In this week’s Which Way Home? section, I wrote about an East Palo Alto, Calif., woman who struggled for two years to obtain a modification of her mortgage, after she began to have difficulty making her monthly loan payments.

She first tried a for-profit “loss mitigation” company, ultimately to no avail. She next attended a large, group modification event hosted by her lender, Chase, and filed another application — but had no luck with that one either. She had to file so many documents over such a long period of time that she took to carrying them with her to work in a canvas bag.

Finally, fearing she would lose the home she had owned for more than 30 years, she tried one more time for a loan modification, with the support of a nonprofit credit counseling agency. That effort ultimately was successful, and she is now making lower monthly payments that she is confident she can afford.

The downside is that to get the lower payments, the term of her loan was extended for 10 years, meaning that she’ll be in debt for much longer than she would have been under the terms of her original mortgage. She accepts the tradeoff, though, because it allows her to stay in her home.

Have you tried to obtain a loan modification? Were you successful?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=972c8f54fded809b58b46224090cd99b