March 8, 2011 (Shirley Allen) What was first perceived as a Mack truck barreling down the foreclosure highway, the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has turned out to be the little train that could. Originally forecast to save between 7 and 8 million homeowners from foreclosure, later reduced to 3 to 4 million, HAMP [...]
March 7, 2011 (Jeff Alan) According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) Foreclosure Prevention and Refinance Report, the number of loan refinancings processed through the government's Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) grew by 30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. A total of 57,000 mortgages were refinanced under the government program during the [...]
March 7, 2011 (Shirley Allen) Bank of America (BofA) is piloting a program to write down mortgage principal for borrowers in three states participating in the Hardest Hit Fund. To date, Arizona, Nevada, and California are among the states that have proposed using federal aid money to have BofA lower the amount struggling borrowers owe [...]
March 7, 2011 (Chris Moore) The nation’s largest mortgage lenders received a 27 page proposal from state attorneys general and several federal agencies that could require them to reduce loan balances of troubled mortgage borrowers. The proposal reportedly does not specify penalties or fines at this time, but instead represents a detailed code of conduct [...]
March 7, 2011 (Jeff Alan) Recent research by credit rating agency Standard & Poor reveals that states that use a non-judicial foreclosure process do so in half the time than states that use a judicial foreclosure process. On average, lenders need 13 months to foreclose in a judicial state, more than twice the six months [...]
March 4, 2011 (Chris Moore) The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has issued new regulations regarding loan modifications to existing VA home loans. The new rules are designed to add more flexibility and encourage loan holders to modify more loans. Read more...
March 4, 2011 (Jeff Alan) ZipRealty reports that in more than half the markets they surveyed, sellers are averaging at least two reductions in price in an attempt to entice buyers to purchase their homes. The Monthly Price Reduction Index Report shows that inventory is up a modest 2.81 percent from January 2010 but the [...]
March 4, 2011 (Shirley Allen) Someone forgot to tell government mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae that they are suppose to be going out of business because the latest monthly figures show that both GSE’s continued to back new mortgages in January at about the same rate as last year. Freddie Mac reported that [...]
March 4, 2011 (Chris Moore) The House Financial Services Committee voted Thursday to end two new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs that would provide assistance to troubled homeowners citing the need to stop funding government programs that spend more to save a single borrower than it costs to buy a home. Read [...]
