At the center of the President Barack Obama’s ambitious plan to rescue the housing market is the concept that restructuring distressed mortgages will keep struggling borrower’s in their homes and help insert a floor beneath plummeting property values. With $75 billion dedicated to reworking troubled loans, that’s a big bet—especially considering that a top banking regulator said last December that almost 53 percent of loans modified in the first quarter of 2008 went bad again within six months. But supporters argue that notes modifications need to be properly engineered to work—and many early ones weren’t. To that end, the Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled fresh details on its plan to restructure at-risk loans and help as many as four million home owners avoid foreclosure. Here are seven things you need to know about Obama’s washington loan modification program.
1. Payments, not prices: The plan centers on the belief that struggling individual's will stay in their homes—even as values decline sharply—as long as they can make their monthly payments. Although not everyone agrees with this, billionaire investor Warren Buffett endorsed the philosophy in his most recent letter to shareholders. “Commentary about the current housing crisis often ignores the crucial fact that most foreclosures do not occur because a house is worth less than its notes (so-called “upside-down” loans),” Buffett wrote. “Rather, foreclosures take place because homeowner's can’t pay the monthly payment that they agreed to pay.”
2. Thirty-one percent: To that end, the administration’s plan requires participating loan loan company to reduce monthly payments to no more than 38 percent of the individual's gross monthly income. The government would then chip in to bring payments down further, to no more than 31 percent of the borrower’s monthly income. In lowering the payment, the servicer would first reduce the interest rate to as low as 2 percent. If that’s not enough to hit the 31 percent threshold, they would then extend the terms of the loan to up to 40 years. If that’s still not enough, the financial institution would forebear loan principal at no interest. The plan does not, however, require servicer to reduce loans principal, which Richard Green, the director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at USC, considers a shortcoming. “For underwater loans, if you don’t write down the balance to be less than the value of the house, people still have an incentive to default,” Green says. “Writing down the principal first instead of last—which is what [the Obama administration is] proposing—makes sense to me.”
3. Cash incentives: To encourage participation, servicer will be paid $1,000 for each modification and will get an additional $1,000 payout each year for as many as three years, as long as the borrower’s continues making payments. individual's, meanwhile, can get up to $1,000 knocked off the principal of their loan each year for as many as five years if they make their payments on time. Neither party can receive the cash incentives until the modified loan payments have been made for at least three months.
4. Financial hardship: The Obama administration is pitching its plan as an effort to help responsible homeowners ensnared in the historic housing slump and painful recession—not speculators. As such, only owner-occupied, primary residences with outstanding principal balances of up to $729,750 are eligible. Occupancy status will be verified through documents, such as the borrower’s credit report. In addition, the program is designed to target homeowners who are undergoing “serious hardships”—such as a loss of income—which have put them at risk of default. To participate, person's will have to sign an affidavit of financial hardship and verify their income with documents. “If we would have had such stringent verification over the last four or five years, we probably wouldn’t be in as bad a position as we are in,” says Richard Moody, the chief economist at Mission Residential. But while Moody has no objection to such verification, obtaining documents from so many homeowners could be an onerous effort. “It’s going to be a very time-consuming process,” he says. Only loans originated on or before Jan. 1, 2009, are eligible, and modified payments will remain in place for five years. Now that the administration’s plan is out, lenders are free to begin modifying loans.
5. Net present value: To determine if a particular loans will be modified, the financial institution will perform a so-called net present value test. The test compares the expected cash flow that the loan would generate if it is modified with the expected cash flow it would generate if it isn’t. If the attorney loan modification loan is expected to produce more cash flow for the mortgages holder, the servicer is to restructure the loan. Howard Glaser, a loans industry consultant and a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development official during the Clinton administration, called this component of the plan “clever,” arguing that it would work to ensure broad participation. “When you apply the formula, the loans that are modified are the ones that are in the best economic interest of the investors to modify,” Glaser says. “The federal subsidy for the payment on the modification…tips the scale toward modification as a better deal for the investor.”
6. Second liens: The Obama plan also addresses the issue of second liens—such as home equity loans or home equity lines of credit—by offering incentives to extinguish them. But key details on this component of the plan remained unclear. “Distinguishing the second lien is really important,” Green says. “[But] exactly how they are going to convince the second lien holder to do this is not clear to me at all.”
Friday, November 20, 2009
New Program Affect Note Modifications Credit Scores
Starting Nov, 2009, individuals can have a little more assurance when it comes to loan modification company and how they impact credit reports negatively.
In the past, the effects of a loan modification company on one’s credit figures was somewhat of a mystery. Some financial institutions would not report late or partial payments to the credit bureaus during the trial alteration process while others would. This led to confusion among home owners, leaving many afraid of further damaging their credit with a home mortgage workout.
Thanks to new guidelines set forth by the Consumer Data Industry Association, home mortgage adjustments under federal programs Making Homes Affordable and the Home Affordable change Program are to be listed on credit reports as, “note modified under a federal plan”. This notification on the credit report will not have the same negative impact previous entries such as “partial payment” have had. In many instances, a report of a partial payment during the trial home mortgage change period could drop a people credit score as much as 100 points.
For the time being, FICO has agreed to take no action on these new entries… yet. Instead the credit reporting agency plans on studying the long term outcome of these loan s and then making an appropriate score assessment based on the success rate of modified loan s. As it stands now, note holders are supposed to report the loan as current if the people is current on their normal mortgage payment and is current through their trial. However, if a homeowner is behind on their payments as they begin the trial process, their late entries on their credit report will not be expunged. When the permanent home mortgage alteration is approved and implemented that is when their loan will be brought current, but the late that are currently on the credit report will continue to report on the credit report.
It is important to note that these new guidelines only apply to mortgage modifications under the umbrellas of the federal note adjustment programs MHA and HAMP. Individual lenders home mortgage changes do not qualify and the note holders will report to the credit agencies based on their specific policies. In addition, even if the people credit score is not affected by the “attorney modified under a federal plan” entry will still be visible on a individuals credit report, which may affect a lender’s decision somewhere down the line.
Ultimately, the decision still rests with the homeowner on how to proceed with their specific situation. While a home loan alteration may or may not have an impact on credit reports, the impact of a foreclosure or short sale on credit scores will most likely be far more severe.
Finally, FICO will wait one year in order to gather data on this new ruling to see if they will retroactively decide to report negatively on the home owners credit report. This of course will be an across the board decision. And yes, they will retroactively ding your credit if they decide that is the appropriate course of action. However, any creditor that pulls your credit will still see some type of term listed on the credit referencing a attorney alteration. This means the new creditor will be aware of the modification, which may impact their decision.
If you would like more information on home mortgage workouts, short sales, or refinancing, feel free to visit our website at www.CallALMS.com. We have live chat, informative blogs and pages of information designed to help you with your specific financial situation.
In the past, the effects of a loan modification company on one’s credit figures was somewhat of a mystery. Some financial institutions would not report late or partial payments to the credit bureaus during the trial alteration process while others would. This led to confusion among home owners, leaving many afraid of further damaging their credit with a home mortgage workout.
Thanks to new guidelines set forth by the Consumer Data Industry Association, home mortgage adjustments under federal programs Making Homes Affordable and the Home Affordable change Program are to be listed on credit reports as, “note modified under a federal plan”. This notification on the credit report will not have the same negative impact previous entries such as “partial payment” have had. In many instances, a report of a partial payment during the trial home mortgage change period could drop a people credit score as much as 100 points.
For the time being, FICO has agreed to take no action on these new entries… yet. Instead the credit reporting agency plans on studying the long term outcome of these loan s and then making an appropriate score assessment based on the success rate of modified loan s. As it stands now, note holders are supposed to report the loan as current if the people is current on their normal mortgage payment and is current through their trial. However, if a homeowner is behind on their payments as they begin the trial process, their late entries on their credit report will not be expunged. When the permanent home mortgage alteration is approved and implemented that is when their loan will be brought current, but the late that are currently on the credit report will continue to report on the credit report.
It is important to note that these new guidelines only apply to mortgage modifications under the umbrellas of the federal note adjustment programs MHA and HAMP. Individual lenders home mortgage changes do not qualify and the note holders will report to the credit agencies based on their specific policies. In addition, even if the people credit score is not affected by the “attorney modified under a federal plan” entry will still be visible on a individuals credit report, which may affect a lender’s decision somewhere down the line.
Ultimately, the decision still rests with the homeowner on how to proceed with their specific situation. While a home loan alteration may or may not have an impact on credit reports, the impact of a foreclosure or short sale on credit scores will most likely be far more severe.
Finally, FICO will wait one year in order to gather data on this new ruling to see if they will retroactively decide to report negatively on the home owners credit report. This of course will be an across the board decision. And yes, they will retroactively ding your credit if they decide that is the appropriate course of action. However, any creditor that pulls your credit will still see some type of term listed on the credit referencing a attorney alteration. This means the new creditor will be aware of the modification, which may impact their decision.
If you would like more information on home mortgage workouts, short sales, or refinancing, feel free to visit our website at www.CallALMS.com. We have live chat, informative blogs and pages of information designed to help you with your specific financial situation.
Where Are All The Mortgage Adjustments
Ever since the introduction of the Making Home Affordable and (HAMP) were implemented it became thought that the amount of modify my mortgage approved by servicers would balloon and that foreclosures would gradually decrease. In fact, exactly the converse has happened. Foreclosures are rising at a record pace while servicers continue to deny individuals adjustments on loans that should never have been approved. How did this happen and what can be done to fix it? The blame is shared by both the government and the banks themselves.
When the MHA and HAMP programs were revealed there was widespread relief among homeowner's. Sure there had been panic about the rapidly falling value of homes and adjustable rate noteswere getting out of hand, but now the government had stepped in and offered a solution. What was not known at the time was that the MHA and HAMP programs were only available to those with loans under Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. Immediately, many borrowers were turned away by their loan company and simply told, “Sorry, you don’t qualify under these terms”. As a result, letters went out to governors, representatives, senators and anyone else who would listen in a position to change these programs. The response? Nothing. In its mind, Congress had done its part. There are obama loan modification programs out there, people should use them.
The only problem with this is that the guidelines and subsequent red tape that ensued proved to be an almost insurmountable barrier for individual homeowners to surmount. Countless stories in blogs, interviews and news reports all tell the same tale: a homeowner contacting their mortgage companies to try a loan modifications, being yanked around from different agents and offices and being told conflicting updates on the process, all while time ticks down on their property being foreclosed. mortgage companies are not required to tell homeowners why their notes modification has been turned down, and there are few set guidelines or criteria that the government requires lenders to conform to. After meeting a few basic guidelines, it is entirely up to the individual lenders on whether to approve a loan modificationsor not. All this has done is increase the confusion of the process by introducing conflicting accounts of what situations qualify for a loan adjustments.
It is little known that mortgage companies receive subsidies from the government under these programs for setting a borrower in a “trial loan modification”. This is a program in which the banks lowers the payment due on the loans while they review placing the borrower into a permanent modifications. There is no guarantee of a permanent settlement on the debt, and yet the lenders still receives money from the government merely for thinking about helping someone.
When the MHA and HAMP programs were revealed there was widespread relief among homeowner's. Sure there had been panic about the rapidly falling value of homes and adjustable rate noteswere getting out of hand, but now the government had stepped in and offered a solution. What was not known at the time was that the MHA and HAMP programs were only available to those with loans under Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. Immediately, many borrowers were turned away by their loan company and simply told, “Sorry, you don’t qualify under these terms”. As a result, letters went out to governors, representatives, senators and anyone else who would listen in a position to change these programs. The response? Nothing. In its mind, Congress had done its part. There are obama loan modification programs out there, people should use them.
The only problem with this is that the guidelines and subsequent red tape that ensued proved to be an almost insurmountable barrier for individual homeowners to surmount. Countless stories in blogs, interviews and news reports all tell the same tale: a homeowner contacting their mortgage companies to try a loan modifications, being yanked around from different agents and offices and being told conflicting updates on the process, all while time ticks down on their property being foreclosed. mortgage companies are not required to tell homeowners why their notes modification has been turned down, and there are few set guidelines or criteria that the government requires lenders to conform to. After meeting a few basic guidelines, it is entirely up to the individual lenders on whether to approve a loan modificationsor not. All this has done is increase the confusion of the process by introducing conflicting accounts of what situations qualify for a loan adjustments.
It is little known that mortgage companies receive subsidies from the government under these programs for setting a borrower in a “trial loan modification”. This is a program in which the banks lowers the payment due on the loans while they review placing the borrower into a permanent modifications. There is no guarantee of a permanent settlement on the debt, and yet the lenders still receives money from the government merely for thinking about helping someone.
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