Bank Of America Expands Mortgage Help Centers Across U.S.

Bank of America says help is on the way in the form of new customer service centers for homeowners under water.

Two days after Moody’s moved to downgrade Bank of America’s mortgage unit the bank announced the opening of 28 new customer service centers for troubled homeowners.

The 28 centers will open in metropolitan areas that were hit hard by the housing downturn. The bank will open seven of the 28 centers in California including locations in greater Los Angeles, San Diego, the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley and the northern and southern San Joaquin Valley.

Other offices will open up in Atlanta,  Baltimore/Washington, Denver, Detroit (two locations), Houston,  Kansas City, Miami, Milwaukee, Nashville, Tenn., Newark, N.J., New Orleans, Philadelphia, Raleigh, N.C., Richmond, Va., San Antonio,  St. Louis and Tucson, Ariz.

The office locations are a good indication of where BofA is seeing the most trouble.

“Our teams at the customer assistance centers are experienced loan professionals, trained to counsel customers, follow each customer file through the entire loan modification process, make on-site decisions in many cases, and assist with other foreclosure prevention solutions if a modification is not possible,” Rebecca Mairone, national mortgage outreach executive for Bank of America said in a statement today.

The 28 new offices triple BofA’s total number of mortgage assistance centers bringing the total to 40.

The move comes as mortgage lenders like Bank of America, the nation’s largest, face hefty criticism and even legal action for the way they handled foreclosures.

The pressure from regulators was so strong at one point last fall that Bank of America stalled foreclosures in order to re-examine the way it was handling the process. The trouble didn’t end there.

Since then, 50 attorneys generals have launched a an in-depth investigation into the way BofA and other lenders like Wells Fargo and  JPMorgan Chase handled foreclosures. Specifically, the AGs are investigating the lenders’ habit of speeding up the foreclosure process by hiring so-called robo-signers who barely looked at the foreclosure documents they were signing off on.

The AGs were at one point seeking a $20 billion fine. That amount was unofficially endorsed by Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who said the banks could afford to pay that amount because they saved $25 billion By under-serving delinquent mortgages before the crisis.

Meanwhile, the federal government launched its own investigation which wrapped up late last month without much of a bang. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Office of Thrift Supervision announced a separate settlement with 14  mortgage servicers  including Bank of America, Citigoup, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, PNC, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo that was little more than a slap on the wrist.

The big news from that settlement was that the lenders agreed to pay back homeowners for losses from foreclosures or loans that were mishandled.The kicker was that it would be the lenders themselves that would decide which loans were mishandled.