Mortgage servicers are companies that are hired by investors to "service" mortgages they own. The servicers all work under a contract called a "Pooling and Servicing Agreement," or PSA. And all PSAs require servicers to make decisions related to the loans they are servicing in the best interests of the investors for whom they work.

So, when you submit a REST Report to your lender or servicer, they don't just receive information about you, they also receive an analysis of the financial impact to investors of the alternatives to foreclosure compared with the cost of foreclosing on your property.

If the net present value analysis shows that investors would be better off modifying or short selling than foreclosing, we're seeing servicers responding to the report, and offering to modify or short sell loans in more cases than we expected.

It's not that we believe that a servicer would accept the analysis shown in the REST Report at face value, they most certainly would not. But we do know that when they verify the report's conclusions using their own internal systems, they will find the REST Report's financial analysis to be accurate.

Does that mean that submitting an application for a loan modification or short sale along with the REST Report guarantees anything? No, no one can guarantee anyone that a lender or servicer will modify a loan or allow short sale, at the end of the day, both participation in HAMP, and their willingness to modify a mortgage or allow short sale internally, is strictly voluntary. And as anyone in the banking industry will readily tell you... banks only modify loans when it's in their own best financial interest to do so.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the point of the REST Report.