Over the last several months there has been a lot of fanfare about do it yourself home loan modifications. The Obama Administration’s “Making Home Affordable” plan stressed that lenders would be welcoming their borrowers with open arms to help them modify their loans. Other politicians echoed the same sentiments. To sum up the message, “The government was going to fix things and homeowners were going to be alright.”

Surprising or not, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. As foreclosure filings across the country reached one million in May, the Treasury Department announced that home loan modifications executed under the guidelines of the Making Home Affordable plan totaled somewhere between 10,000 and 55,000. Pressed to narrow that range, the Department declined to put out an exact number saying that they needed to work on fine tuning their reporting system. At the same time, one of the biggest lenders in the country, Wells Fargo, was announcing that they had 3,000 homeowners in “trial” home loan modifications. With foreclosure filings at one million and growing, the reported numbers make it appear that fully executed loan modifications since the start of the new do it yourself plan are about one percent of the foreclosure total. Simply put, the plan isn’t working.

The frustration and time wasted trying to do their own negotiations now has many homeowners coming to the realization that attorney driven home loan modifications are their best option for avoiding or stopping foreclosure proceedings. Additionally, the money paid to the firms that are negotiating the modifications delivers a return on investment that is outstanding. Here’s a quick checklist on getting more than what you’re paying for in a home loan modification:

1) Make it a priority to work with an attorney to execute your home loan modification.
2) Do your due diligence. Talk to prospective attorneys and visit their offices, if possible.
3) Get your attorney’s state bar number and check it out at the appropriate state bar website.
4) Find out how long the firm has been doing home loan modifications.
5) Ask how many loan modifications the firm has executed. Look for a minimum of 250.
6) See if the law firm has expertise in debt negotiation. Synchronizing negotiations on your credit card debt and your loan modification can yield excellent results.

Get answers that satisfy your questions and accept nothing less. Instead of waiting for another government program that is unlikely to deliver help, find a law firm you’ll be comfortable partnering with and let them go to work. Getting those two steps completed will put you on your way to a successful home loan modification.