Of the many ways that Housing Assistance Corporation helps people, foreclosure prevention counseling is the one that quietly saves families from potential disaster.
HAC Foreclosure Prevention Counselor Joan Maney recently received a letter from a client, Angelo L. Dimeglio, that eloquently expressed just how important this service can be.
Mr. DiMeglio, a self-employed carpenter who lives in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, was in danger of losing his home, which he built mostly with his own hands 25 years ago.
Mr. DiMeglio’s home, Cape Cod-style with a farmer’s porch, means a lot to him. He first came to the island in 1969 when he was 12 years old. His parents loaded him and his four siblings into their Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon and they visited Cape Cod and also Martha’s Vineyard. “I absolutely fell in love with the place,” he said of the island.
He moved to the island in 1978 and was eventually able to buy a lot and build a house.
With the recession, things slowed down for everyone, including him. “When everything dropped for everyone,” Mr. DiMeglio said, he fell behind on his mortgage, “due to simple lack of work.”
He had tried to get in touch with the bank, but was unable to secure a modified loan.
“They declined me because I did not have the information filled out properly,” he wrote in a letter to HAC. “The bank was moving forward with foreclosure proceedings on my house.”
An advertisement for an auction of the house had run in the paper, and Mr. DiMeglio thought all was lost.
“To me, it felt like a life or death situation, to be honest with you,” he said of the threat of foreclosure.
Mr. DiMeglio said a friend of his told him about HAC’s foreclosure prevention services and told him to call Ms. Maney “immediately.”
He took that advice.
From his first phone call to HAC, he noted the agency’s appreciation of the urgency of the situation. He quickly received a packet of important information and an appointment.
Mr. DiMeglio credits Ms. Maney’s “utmost knowledge” in accomplishing something that he had tried to do several times himself without success.
Once the bank received the loan modification paperwork, the bank’s customer assistant specialist was in touch with Mr. DiMeglio. Not long after, the bank representative informed Mr. DiMeglio the good news that his new loan was approved by the review board.
“I am sure that without Joan Maney and the HAC, I could not have accomplished this on my own,” he wrote.
