Shirley describes the neighborhood she purchased her Milwaukee, WI home in 2005 as “somewhat of a rough area”. When Shirley, 60, married, she left the Milwaukee property to move in with her husband. As a certified nursing assistant who works the second shift, and with a husband who works the third shift, the couple wanted to live somewhere where they felt safe coming home from work late at night. Once she left, Shirley’s property sat vacant for a while as she sought a tenant to rent the home. Shirley’s daughter eventually moved into the home, but Shirley had fallen behind on the mortgage payments while looking for a tenant. Foreclosure was now looming over the property.
Shirley’s daughter, 42, currently lives in the property with her child. Despite being a “rough area”, Shirley believed it was very important to her daughter that she stayed in her home. “She works the first shift so she gets out of work at a decent hour, she comes home with her daughter and she does her homework. She feels safe and they are comfortable there,” Shirley said.
Knowing that she was behind on her payments, Shirley attempted to reach her original lender to find out her options. Shirley discovered that her loan had been sold and, when she attempted to reach her new lender, she continually ran into automated messages and had a hard time speaking to anyone with authority. After struggling to get to the bottom of her mortgage predicament, Shirley was contacted by AHP this September notifying her they had purchased her loan. In looking at the options AHP provided for her, Shirley immediately became skeptical.
“You never know who to believe with all these scams going on out there. You never know who actually owns your house, so I called them up to see what was going on,” said Shirley. Upon calling AHP, Shirley was told that the asset manager who would be working with her mortgage, Shawn, was currently on vacation, but that someone would be available to answer all her questions until he got back. Once Shirley began working with Shawn, her skepticism faded and she was finally able to get the service she had been seeking with other lenders.
“Shawn has been pretty good, it was nice to have one person to talk to when before I couldn’t get through to anybody or was dealing with machines,” Shirley said. “Shawn even told me where he was vacationing and that he’d be the one helping from now on.” In working with AHP, Shirley was presented several options to settle her delinquent payments. Shirley eventually chose the option that worked best for her and was able to settle nearly three years of delinquent payments for $2,000. Shirley and her daughter were then able to resume their original monthly payments and were able to avoid the foreclosure process.
“I wish ya’ll were around a lot sooner because there’s a lot of people who lost their homes. You never really know how much stuff you have until you have to get up and leave your house unexpectedly,” said Shirley. “I would definitely recommend you guys to other people. Now that I know more about you guys, I’m going to tell some people I know about what you’re doing.”