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For more than a year, Kim Champney, 40, and Pat Minick, 41, have been kicking in an extra $650 to their $1,048 monthly mortgage payments. "We don't like carrying a lot of debt," says Minick, who stays home with their three kids, ages 7, 8 and 10.

Obama’s Loan Modification programs have been criticized for their lack of results. But what are these results? The March Servicer Performance Report is fresh off the press, so let us have a quick look at what it has to say.

The highlights for HAMP are that more than 230,000 mortgages have been permanently modified. 108,000 loans have been approved by the lender and are simply waiting for the borrower to sign the final papers. That gives us a total 338,000 loans with permanent modifications. The other big newsbyte is that over 1.1 million trial loan modifications are active under the HAMP program. As you all know these trial loan modifications last for three months. If at the end of this period the borrower has provided all the relevant documentation and is up-to-date with his mortgage payments he is given a permanent loan modification. That is, of course, the theory.

According to MHA these loan modifications represent over $3 billion dollars in savings for monthly mortgage payments. The bad news on the report is the number of trial modifications added in the March has dropped to 57,000 from 72,000 in February. The reason for this, according to HAMP’s spin, is that servicers and lenders are requiring upfront documentation before trial modifications start. This has been a bone of contention with critics of the program that see the trial loan modification (without prequalifying the necessary documents) as a way of getting troubled borrowers to pay for three extra months and then deny them the loan modification on the basis of pending paperwork .

The flip side on the reduction of new trial modifications is there has been an increase of 15% in the number of permanent loan modifications approved in March. The story MHA is spinning is that numbers are dropping because of prequalifying filters servicers are introducing. The biggest issue with the Making Home Affordable Program is it doesn’t tackle the real issues of the housing crisis. Interest rate reductions of loans can substantially reduce the cost of a mortgage. A drop of 1% translates into savings $1,500 in most cases. The problem is that high interest mortgages are not the biggest problem any longer. Unemployment is.

MHA understands this and is providing alternatives programs to HAMP that provide specific aid to unemployed homeowners. The latest program for unemployed started this month. It provides loan modifications of mortgage payments to 31% of the unemployed worker’s income for a 3 to 6-month period. The question is will these measures provide real aid to those that need it and not just throw good money at lenders and servicers with little long term benefits for borrowers.

Related posts:

1. Loan Modifications Latest Figures, Limbo, Trial Purgatory And Other Horror Stories
2. Loan Modifications Update: The Spin and the Truth
3. Treasury Moves The Goal Posts of HAMP and Lowers Expectations for the Loan Modification Program.

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The latest federal report on loan modifications shows that loan modifications carried out from January to April 2009 had a re-default rate of 51.5%. Re-default is defined by the report as any modified mortgage that has pending payment that is 30 days or more late. The  same report highlights that re-default rates of modified loans in the last 12 months is 57.9%. This means that loan modifications are a) not doing what they are meant to; help people keep up with their monthly mortgage payments. And b) are getting worse at it.

Homeowners that have qualified for loan modifications are still struggling to make payments for a variety of reasons. Some have since lost their jobs, or their income has been reduced. Others simply do not see the sense in continuing to pay for a mortgage that is completely underwater. There are a lot people in that last category; around 24% of all homes with a mortgage on them were underwater in the last quarter of the 2009. The median price of a house in the United States has dropped by 28% since July 2006. It does not take a degree in Economics to see that loan modifications are just not working.

The question is why bother spending money on loan modifications that do not help homeowners keep their homes? A growing number of analysts are saying there is simply no rational reason to rewrite all these underwater loans. The number of homes facing a foreclosure is huge. The last quarter of 2009 had 2.39 million borrowers that were 60 days late on their mortgage payments, which is nearly a 50% rise from the previous year.

The pressure is on for the Obama administration to provide real solutions to the oncoming wave of foreclosures. Projections expect over 4.5 million foreclosure filings just this year. Some critics say the government’s current loan modification program is a disservice to the public, because it has extended the problem over years by helping homeowners, but not enough to make a real difference.

Of the 594,000 loan modifications that have started the application process from September to December process only 21,000 have received a permanent modification. In the entire lifetime of the HAMP program only 168,708 have received a loan modification, according to the Treasury’s own analysis.

Not surprisingly, owners whose mortgage monthly payments were reduced the most had the least chances of re-defaulting on their homes. The magic number of loan modifications seems to be 20%. When a loan modification reduces monthly payments by over 20% re-default rates dropped considerably.

One of the big issues that feed on this scenario is that many homeowners are underwater on their homes and are not interested in keeping their homes. They prefer to simply let them go back to the mortgage owner. Treasury has responded to this issue by creating HAFA, a mortgage aid for designed to get people to short sale their home. HAFA helps to fast track the short sale process by paying servicers, junior lien holders and borrowers to complete a short sale.

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HAMP’s loan modification program seems to be finally speeding up its conversion rate from trial loan modifications to converted modifications. However, the 4 million troubled homeowners targeted by the program are not even close to receiving the help they need.

The debate continues on exactly how much responsibility the Government has towards troubled homeowners. Should they simply shoulder their responsibility, lose their home and start from scratch?

One, obviously upset, commentator had this to say about the issue:

How many people seeking home loan modifications used their home as their own personal ATM’S? How many people who are seeking loan modifications bought homes using an interest only ARM, and purchased a home they could not afford? How many people “fudged” their mortgage apps in order to qualify? I have no sympathy for them. I do feel sorry for those who were really victims of poor mortgages, and job loss. I think more people made poor personal choices and want others to bear the responsibility for their poor financial choices.(Quoted from a comment on the RGJ.com, Reno Gazette Journal online edition 31/1/2010)

This opinion is by no means unique. Many, especially those that didn’t buy a home because they felt they couldn’t afford it, feel people are being unfairly shielded from their own bad financial decisions.

However , the distress and misery the current credit crisis has created does make most of us feel the Government has some responsibility to stabilize the situation just as it did when the banks were the ones that needed bailing out.

Sadly, even those that do receive some kind of “financial help” on their mortgage are often just taken advantage of. The media is full of cases of troubled homeowners that qualify for a loan modification just to see their monthly mortgage payments are more expensive and they are deeper in debt and deeper underwater on their mortgage.

The Government has issued some new guidelines that put more pressure on servicers and lenders to reduce monthly payments by extending the loan term to 30 years and dropping the interest rate to current low levels of 2%-3% for a fixed 30 year loan. Unfortunately, servicers were often simply picking up the months the borrowers were behind on and loading them on the mortgage, without actually modifying the loans in any useful way for the homeowner.

The lessons we can learn from these situations are important although often of little value for the homeowners that are suffering the consequences of poor financial judgment and unfair lenders.

Lesson 1.) Do not spend your life savings paying a loan modification company to manage your application. If you do decide to hire such a company check their credentials and find out their history.

Lesson 2.) Never pay for any services before they have been carried out. This is not only illegal in most states it is also rather stupid. Would you pay a day worker on a farm before he started?

Lesson 3.) Contact the HAMP free counseling services before you are committed to a loan. Even if you later decide to go a different route you will at least have one opinion you can use as a benchmark. Contact a lawyer and ask him what your options are. Is there any way to fight the legality of the loan? Do you have any leverage on your bank?

Lesson 4.) Loan Modifications are not the holy grail of mortgage woes, they are not for everyone and they don’t always improve your mortgage payments all that much. Even though it will severely affect your credit score foreclosures and short sales are often a way to have a fresh start and are sometimes more practical than hanging on to a sinking mortgage. They are, obviously, not an ideal option but sometimes they are best of two evils.

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The news is full of loan modification horror stories describing how homeowners have struggled for months with lost documents, changing standards, unreasonable loan modification agents and the slow tides of bureaucracy. Bad news does always seem to travel faster and further so you don’t hear half as much about the hundreds of thousands of loans that have been successfully modified.

However the question still remains why loan modifications are moving so slowly if the government is willing to pay the bill for the expenses mortgage servicers and investors have to incur when modifying a loan. Recent studies seem to indicate the reason is that the incentives and handouts the government is making through HAMP and TARP just don’t cover the real cost of modifying the fast increasing volume of loan modification applications.

How can this be so when TARP and HOPE have deep pockets of over 75 billion dollars? The answer seems to lay in the mortgage servicers, the companies that collect monthly mortgage payments and then distribute them to the investors that lent the money in the first place. Mortgage servicers have found it is often cheaper to foreclose on homes than to offer a loan modification even though a loan modification would benefit both the borrower and the investor.

The key is not only the rate of return when managing loans and loan modifications but the expenses related to the operations. The assumptions we generally have as consumers is that foreclosures are a bad deal for everyone. Numbers that are thrown around for example are losses of 10 to 20 percent for lenders on short sales while lenders have to face 20 to 30 cents to the dollar when dealing with foreclosures.

These figures only tell part of the story, mortgage servicers have other ways of measuring profit and often have different priorities. A recent report examined foreclosures between 1995 and 2009 and found that loan servicers made more money by offering forbearance (a period of time where the borrower does not have to make payments so he can consolidate his finances) than by cutting principal or reducing rates of interest, which is what loan modifications do.

This means that when deciding between foreclosure and loan modification loan servicers have to choose between certain loss with loan modifications and potential profit if they foreclose the loan. What would you do? Exactly. This is why loan servicers have been dragging their proverbial feet with loan modifications. Of course there are also other issues to consider like public opinion and bad publicity. The government has tried to use this weapon by publishing loan modification leagues that encourage banks to reorganize their systems to increase loan modifications.

So what is the solution? No easy fixes obviously or they would have already been implemented. However the administration could enforce stricter rules that regulate foreclosure and make loan modifications more attractive like regulating loan originations, mandate loan modifications before foreclosure or have third party loan modification mediation programs that control what mortgage providers do.
The best thing you can do now if you are at risk of foreclosure or behind in your payments is to contact the HOPE program by visiting their website or calling 1-888-995-HOPE.

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Last Thursday the big news was Obama’s Loan Modification program, Making Home Affordable. The first target the program set out for itself, reaching 500,000 trial loan modifications by November was reached nearly a month early.

Critics stated that the target was of little importance in the big picture of things with foreclosures continuing to affect more and more homeowners. Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com said the help provided by HAMP was a help on the margin. “But it is not going to end the foreclosure crisis”.
So what should we think of Obama’s HAMP? Is it a success or failure story?

The Good.
Reaching the target was no mean feat. The first months were painfully slow in reaping loan modifications and many did not think even this first target would be met. The fact that it was is proof of Obama’s administration skill at cajoling and bullying banks and providers into meeting their expectations.

Whatever we think of the “Big Picture” 500,000 families have lower monthly mortgage payments, that has to be good news, right?
According to Timothy F. Geithner mortgage payments are now being lowered faster than homes are being sold in foreclosure proceedings and 40 percent of eligible homeowners (1.2 million of them) have been helped. Here the figures vary, other put this figure at 16% of eligible homeowners, but that just represents differences on the definition of what an eligible homeowner it.

The Bad.
Economists say the program and its current success will not be enough to prevent many millions from losing their homes before the Great Recession ends.
By Mr. Zandi’s calculations from this year to the next over 4 million households will go through foreclosure or short sales.

The 500,000 loan modifications are only trial loan modifications. If the homeowners fail to pay one of the first 3 months in the trial, the modification is void. Even if the homeowner completes the trial period they then have to supply more paperwork which opens the doors for loans not being modified due to bureaucratic slips.

We don’t know how many of the loan modifications actually modified the principal balance of the loan and how many simply lengthened the loan or reduced the interest rate to reduce mortgage payments. Reducing the principle is an important factor if you want to reduce the rates of re-default on mortgage payments.

The problem HAMP was designed to attack, subprime mortgages that cannot benefit from current low interest rates because the value of the home has dropped is no longer the main type of mortgage going through foreclosure. It is not only subprime mortgage that are suffering now. Prime mortgages with 30 year fixed interest at low interest rates are also defaulting because of the increase in unemployment. Loan modifications cannot help much on good mortgages with owners that cannot afford any payment because they are out of work.

So whatever your view is, this issue is still far from being solved and playing with loans is just not going to fix it. The question is do you try to use tax dollars to bail people out of the mess or just let the economy weed itself out of bad loans?

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When HAMP started functioning just a few months ago everybody said it was working too slow that it would never come close to Its ambitious goals. Last Thursday nearly a month before the deadline self imposed by the administration HAMP has enrolled 50,000 troubled home loans for trial loan modifications. Whatever your view on the credit crisis and the angle the Government is dealing with it you have to grant that they have really given this scheme all they have.

After a slow start where few banks were even pretending to try to provide loan modifications and trial loans modifications were trickling few Obama’s Administration got tough on mortgage providers and banks. This was carried out through the friendly diplomacy Obama is becoming famous for and some good old fashioned leaking to the press the dismal figures of the worst service providers at providing loan modifications.

The question now is if the initial success at least in numbers of the loan modification is enough to allow for optimism. Let’s have a brief look at what loan modification programs have done and compare it with what is needed.

An estimated 16 percent of troubled borrowers, which is someone that is 60 days behind in his payments, have been placed into trial modifications. Trial modifications are a three month period where the homeowner is expected to keep up with his payments without a glitch. If the borrower is regular in his payments he can keep the loan modification for the term of the loan with some extra bonuses thrown in. All HAMP loan modifications must provide affordable monthly payments to homeowners. By affordable we mean monthly mortgage payments must be below 31 percent of their monthly income.

HAMP and other loan modification programs were designed to help homeowners locked into subprime mortgages with high interests they couldn’t get out of or modify because the value of their homes had fallen drastically taking away all leverage for a possible change of loan or modification.

That was the situation 6 months ago when loan modification programs were starting. According to economists the issue now is not so much that borrowers are locked in subprime mortgages and are defaulting on their payments. It is prime mortgages that are defaulting and prime borrowers that are becoming delinquent on their payments. The loan modification programs now in place provide little help for borrowers that can’t pay their mortgage payments but have excellent interest rates. The only real aid these programs can afford is if the service providers are willing to defer or forgive some of the principal. The former option leads to balloon payments, not always a great deal for the borrower and the latter is unlikely to say the least.

If this analysis is correct we would be dealing with a set of loan modification programs that might or might not be good at what they were set out to do but are no longer needed or at least the main problems cannot be addressed with them. This is unfortunate considering how many billions of dollars are being thrown at them. A lot of this cash is not even going towards the borrowers which could be seen as a way to inject cash into the economy  directly to the families that need it but is paid to corporate banks as compensation for rewiring their business to speed up loan modifications.

Obama’s administration response to this argument is that loan modifications is only one of the ways they are fighting the credit crisis and that it is doing the job is was set out for and is on target to help up to 4 million troubled loans.

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It seems Obama’s administration has a program for every issue. If you are struggling with your mortgage but are keeping up with your payments (wouldn’t that be 90% of us) you can get help with HARP. If you are delinquent (behind in your monthly mortgage payments) you can try your luck with HAMP.

HAMP stands for Home Affordable Modification Program. The program is designed to help borrowers who are struggling to keep their loans current or who are already behind. HAMP does this by providing incentives to mortgage loan servicers to modify existing first lien (primary) mortgages. The Treasure hopes this will motivate mortgage providers to move faster with loan modifications. It doesn’t seem to be working quite as planned but the effort is certainly there.

What makes HAMP any different to the other loan modification programs? To start, as mentioned above you can apply for HAMP even though you are behind in your payments. You can also apply for a HAMP loan modification even if your mortgage is not provided or guaranteed by Fannie or Freddie, a requirement most other government programs have.

So what are the requirements for a HAMP Loan Modification?

1.) You must have a home and live in it. The home must have one to four units.

2.) You must owe a principal balance (the actual amount you borrowed without interest) that is equal or less than:
1 Unit: $729,750
2 Units: $934,200
3 Units: $1,129,250
4 Units: $1,403,400;

3.) Be the primary mortgage and have been contracted before January 2009.
Your monthly payments must be greater than 31 percent of your monthly income. If it isn’t we kind of assume you don’t need a mortgage modification.

Unfortunately for many the mortgage is the least of their “loan problems”.
Have a mortgage that is not affordable due to financial hardship that can be documented (that means you can prove it).

If you answered yes to all the above questions you MAY qualify for a HAMP loan modification. The final yes will have to come from your mortgage provider. You must contact your provider in order to find that out.

But what if you aren’t behind in your payments, can you apply for a HAMP Loan Modification.

Yes, the requirements are those stipulated above, no more, no less.  This is good news for borrowers that are making payments, want a loan modification in order to take advantage of the lower interest rates but can’t do so because their home value has dropped and they don’t have a mortgage with Fannie or Freddie.

What you will need to do is prove why you are struggling to make your payments. This will have to be documented so be ready to show paperwork to back your claim.

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The Government is making all kinds of efforts to help home owners modify their loans so that monthly mortgage payments are more affordable. Forecasts predict that upto 9 million home owners will end up losing their homes when their mortgages foreclose.

For the last year I have been reporting on the different measures the government is implementing to extend loan modifications to as many people as posible. For instance, now you don´t even have to be behind in your payments to qualify.

However some feel that this is not enough. For example one of the requirements to apply for a Home Affordable Mortgage Program is that your mortgage is over 31% of your income. If your mortgage is 31% or less of your monthly income then you will not qualify for a mortgage modification. This requirement makes it imposible for home owners is trouble that have other loans besides their mortgage and cannot afford to pay their debts.

There are at least to school of thoughts on government sponsored modifications. One group, which we will call the ¨Who cares” group will say that owning a home is not a right but a privilege. The other group we could describe as the ¨Poor Borrowers” suggest that protecting home owners that have overspent or fallen in financial dificulties is the Government´s responsibility.

Last week one blogger commented on an article I wrote explaining how many borrowers cannot benefit from HAMP, the Obama Administration Loan Modification Program because their mortgage payments are too affordable to qualify, while their total debts make it imposible to get to the end of the month.

The bloggers comment was that it was bad enough we are bailing out home buyers at all and that suggesting we should bail out home owners whose mortgage payments are less than 31% of their income and that have still found a way to get in the red with other debts was a travesty. I could easily agree with him. I have made bad financial decisions in the past and nobody offered to bail me out. It is only right that we pay for our own bad decisions just as we profit from our good choices.

However the side of the store is the overall effect to the economy if 9 million people foreclose on their mortgages. What would be the effect on construction, credit and related services if such a large percentage of home owners foreclosed in one year. Viewed from this perspectiva bailing out home owners is more about helping the economy as a whole than specific individuals.

Of course many of us disagreed when massive bank corporations recieved bailouts to save them from the credit crisis. It would seem reasonable to allow the market forces to take their course whatever the consequences for a particular company is.
I couldn´t agree more, but what would have been the effect on the World economy if dozens of the world´s biggest banks had fallen into bankruptcy at once?

That is the paradox goverment policy makers have to deal with. To let market forces deal with people´s mistakes and problems or bail them out.

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The objectives of the Obama Loan Modifications program are rather ambitious, to help 7 million people (the number is also quoted as 9 million, depending who you ask) modify their loan in order to afford monthly mortgage payments. In fact the way the program is designed you can save money by modifying your loan. The government is seriously backing this program with their big guns, namely $75 billion of funding. As always with these programs there are technicalities to deal with but the gist is rather simple to understand.

The loan modification program provides incentives to banks and service providers to modify your loan to a more sustainable monthly payment if you qualify through the trial period. The three month trial period tests if you are on time with your payments.

If you are, you receive a bonus that goes towards paying the principal of your loan. After that, every year you pay your mortgage without being delinquent on any payment another bonus is paid towards your mortgage principal.

These bonuses are worth extra because they pay the actual cash you initially borrowed, on which you will not have to pay interest. Who qualifies? This is one of the prickly areas of the program. The Loan modification aid program was designed to be as open as possible. You don´t have to be behind in your payments to qualify, just struggling to meet the monthly payments with your current income.

However the issue gets a little complicated due to a clause that limits a lot of home owners that are struggling. You can only qualify if your mortgage represents more than 30% of your monthly income. If it is less you will not qualify. This clause is actually under revision due to the fact that most borrowers don´t only owe on their mortgage but on their car, their credit cards, etc… This causes some of the most desperate home owners that owe money from various lenders not to qualify for the help they need. There are two main groups that can qualify for loan modification.

Those that want a loan modification but that didn´t qualify because the value of their home dropped and those that are on the brink of foreclosure. Either of these groups can get a loan modification if they comply with the programs requirements.

 Don’t forget.

It is free to apply for a loan modifications. What is more, the government is paying banks to give you loan modifications. It is therefore a great idea to not trust companies who ask for expensive fees to get your loan modification processed. The best advice you can get is for a change free. Contact the Home Affordable Mortgage Program or any of the other government housing departments.

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