Foreclosure averted on Alcoa widow's home
By Joel Davisof The Daily Times Staff
Originally published: June 08. 2009 8:27PM
Last modified: June 08. 2009 8:27PM
They did it.
Community members, parishioners of Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church and a local mortgage broker have saved the home of a 72-year-old Alcoa widow from foreclosure.
“I can’t thank Blount County enough for what they’ve done,” said Lorraine Zickefoose today, just prior to signing the paperwork on a reverse mortgage that will allow her to keep her home of 32 years on Ramsay Street in Alcoa.
The house had been scheduled to go on the auction block in late May after Walls Fargo Home Mortgage foreclosed on the property. As related in a May 7 article in The Daily Times, Zickefoose had fallen behind in her mortgage payments with Wells Fargo. She applied for a reverse mortgage in hopes this would pay her loan off. Her loan application was taken by John Smaldone’s company, AAXA Mortgage, and was approved. However, due to falling property values and increased fees, the reverse mortgage came in about $30,000 short of paying her $123,000 loan off from Wells Fargo.
Smaldone, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer. “We spent eight months to get this thing resolved,” he said.
Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church also became involved, raising more than $4,000 through a benefit car wash. Churchgoer Tony Hartman said the church community had to come to the aid of Zickefoose, a long-time parishioner.
“We did what we could do,” Hartman said.
Smaldone keeps trying
Smaldone continued his negotiations with Wells Fargo.
“In May, we were able to get a 30-day extension,” he wrote in an account of the struggle. “Wells Fargo assigned to me one of their top loss mitigation managers ... I need to make mention that through all these months, Wells Fargo has not been cooperative, did not return calls and made this ordeal an almost impossibility to resolve, it was obviously done on purpose. (The manager) is the only one that has shown compassion and the willingness to work with me. She has worked with Village Capital & Investment LLC as well as with our title company very closely. We were able to switch the type of reverse mortgage into a fixed rate program, which got us a more funds to work with toward a settlement.”
On Friday, Wells Fargo approved a settlement for $106,173.
Check back here for updates or read Tuesday's edition of The Daily Times.
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