Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Most lenders doing a good volume of home refinancings have agents who will work with you at no cost, but I would advise starting out with three or four, as they differ in the professionalism of their sales approach, in their pricing, and in their willingness to do a broad range of deals (some only want cookie-cutter deals, some will consider oddball situations).

However, my recent experience is that they will ask you for a lot of documentation. Be prepared to comply with the post mortgage-meltdown rules requiring proof of borrower worthiness.

Whether to pay someone to help you, or to do it yourself, may depend on three things: the amount of time you have, your comfort zone in dealing with the concepts and shop-talk of the mortgage-lending industry, and your degree of trust in the salespeople you'll be talking with during the pre-application (shopping and negotiation) phase of discussion with each lender.

"Charged off" I would think means "written off;" treated as probably uncollectible on the creditor's books. It does NOT mean they can't legally collect any more, nor that they won't continue trying to collect. I suppose it could also mean "paid off" if that's what you did, but usually "charged off" means the creditor has decided to treat the item as probably not collectible for its internal bookkeeping purposes.