After years of floods in her Decatur home, Lois Wilson refinanced the property in 2004 to use the equity to pay for thousands in water and basement repair costs.
That decision came to haunt her 18 months ago when she was put on disability and the bills began to stack up, including a mortgage she was finding increasingly difficult to pay.
But on Tuesday the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, a group that travels the country to aid troubled homeowners in refinancing their mortgages, helped Wilson negotiate a $600 reduction in her monthly mortgage payments.
"Now I can catch up on a whole bunch of bills," said Wilson, who had been working with her lender, Bank of America, on her own without success. "The best thing that was done today was coming here in person and talking to the bank face to face to get better answers."
Hundreds lined up for help Tuesday long before the doors opened at NACA's American Dream Conference at the Georgia World Congress Center. NACA Chief Executive Officer Bruce Marks said the number of metro Atlanta homeowners coming to the meeting, now in its fourth year, has not abated. About 25,000 people are expected to seek aid at the downtown convention facility through Sunday.
Adina Gurbutwal from Fairfax, Va., drove 10 hours for the meeting, arriving at 9 p.m. Monday.
"I came for my home, to save it. I bought it at a bad time," she said, "and now it's very hard to keep up with my mortgage and now I'm behind. I've been fighting my lender for three years, and finally I made a decision this year I have to do something."
What is different this year, Marks said, is the type of trouble homeowners are in: He's seeing more people struggling with traditional loans and fewer with no-interest loans or adjustable mortgages.
And because of tightened lending rules, NACA is now helping people to get loans to buy homes.
Claudette Abel tried five different banks to buy a home to no avail. She said her credit was good and she has a healthy income. But because she did not have 10 percent to put down, she was turned away.
"I had been looking for two years now," she said, but NACA helped her get a five-bedroom home in Jonesboro.
Keita Byrant came to the meeting hoping to avoid trouble. The Fairburn resident recently lost his welding job and he and his wife, a teacher for the Atlanta Public Schools, are living paycheck to paycheck.
"I'm not necessarily behind or anything, but right now everything is so tight it could all fall apart on a dime," he said.
