76-year-old grandmother avoids foreclosure

Forest Park resident given 60 days to reach resolution

A 76-year-old woman profiled in the Nov. 22 issue of Creative Loafing who faced foreclosure this week has received a reprieve.

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Agnes Martin, who has lived in her Forest Park home for 20 years and refinanced her home in 2003 to pay for her father’s funeral, now has 60 days to negotiate a resolution with her mortgage company.

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Martin lives on a fixed income of less than $1,000 a month. She contends that she requested a fixed-rate loan, and instead had all her debt rolled into an $85,000 adjustable-rate mortgage.

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Martin’s initial $641 monthly payment was tough enough to manage. And once the mortgage reset, her monthly payment jumped to $930. “This loan should’ve never been made to her,” says Adrienne Ashby, an Atlanta Legal Aid Society lawyer who represents Martin. “She could never pay for it on her fixed income.”

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Ashby says Fremont Investment & Loan, Martin’s lender, ignored her requests to work out an alternative payment plan with Martin. With nowhere to turn, Martin and Atlanta Legal Aid turned to Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, who has experience helping constituents avoid foreclosure in the past. “We had to call in the big guns,” Ashby says.

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Fort called Fremont and demanded that they stop the foreclosure. “She got ripped off,” Fort says. “I asked Fremont to be a good corporate citizen.”

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Fremont didn’t return CL’s calls.






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