Chapter/ Trick #6 - Dual Tracking
Dual tracking is a kind of trick the servicers play that combines all the other tricks together. It's a prolonged form of doublespeak combined with a shell game, a bait, and switch, and ghosting by a pretend friend that is used so often by Mortgage Servicers that the legislature gave it a name.[1] "Dual tracking" in mortgage servicing happens when a loan servicer starts or continues with a foreclosure, even though you're in the process of working out some kind of mitigation, like a forbearance or a modification.
Dual tracking starts when you default on your mortgage – something you should never do to begin with, and if you remember nothing else from this e-book, remember that. Your servicer will then send you a pretend-friend letter inviting you to apply for a loan modification, which is part of a long con to lure you into thinking they want to help you. Of course, by now, you know that you are not a client of the mortgage servicer, and they have no duty or motivation to help you. If you are reading this chapter first, you will want to go back to read the prior chapters further to understand why and how this works.
The basic trick of dual tracking is to keep you in default as long as possible with the hope of help, which in the end will be non-existent. As you get closer to a sale date, the servicer will step up their lies to make sure you are relying on them to stop the sale, which they won't. They may have been sending you letters that your sale is being postponed, but suddenly, the letters will stop, and you'll only be able to speak to someone on the phone. Then that person will ghost you, or tell you that the sale has been “suspended” or “on hold,” two terms that mean nothing and are actually lies. Then the sale will happen.
The delay tactics the servicer will use in dual tracking include endless loan modification applications that are never complete. Months will go by while they ask you for proof of income, pay stubs, bank accounts, and other financial information, which they are using to compile information on you, not to help you. Often, borrowers will still be receiving these modification letters in the month after the foreclosure occurred, wondering if the foreclosure actually happened. All this means is that they were dual tracking you.
During dual tracking, the servicer will tell you your modification is "under review" and that your sale is "on hold." They will tell you this on the phone, and even sometimes in writing, while blatantly proceeding to record a Notice of Default, a Notice of Trustee's Sale, scheduling a sale date, and conducting a foreclosure sale. The purpose of getting you to rely on these verbal promises is so that you neglect to have a Plan B in place, namely a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, to reorganize your debt and keep your home and equity. Most people don't want to file for bankruptcy and want to believe they won't have to. This is the hope they prey on to trick you.
To protect yourself from dual tracking, do whatever you can to get any promises in writing. It's great to write down the names of the people you speak to but imagine yourself in court months later telling the judge what Mitzy in the forbearance department promised you and expecting the court to treat it as a contract. Pretend you are deaf if you have to and need things in writing.
[1] 12 C.F.R. § 1024.41 – prohibits a servicer from starting a foreclosing on a borrower while they are in the application for a loan modification or other alternative to foreclosure. Non-judicial foreclosure states have laws that forbid dual tracking – California, Colorado, Minnesota and Nevada.