Loan Modifications

The U.S. Treasury Department released guidelines and forms for its new Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program on Nov. 30, 2009.
It was designed with good intentions — to simplify and streamline use of short sales and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure. However, HAFA is a complex 43-page program that may be difficult for most real estate agents to fully understand.
To be perfectly hone ...

I've excerpted below from a paper by New York Fed Researchers Andrew Haughwout, Ebiere Okah, and Joseph Tracy: Second Chances: Subprime Mortgage Modification and Re-Default with additional preface comments from Calculated Risk a Finance and Economics Blog.

Although the paper uses subprime data, the general results are applicable to all mortgages. The researchers point out that principal reduct ...

Housing economist Tom Lawler emailed the HAMP administrative website to obtain a list of servicers who had signed up for the Second Lien Modification Program. Here is the response he received: “That program is currently on hold and there is no list of servicers that registered before it was placed on hold.” The Second Lien program was announced by Treasury: Parallel Second Lien Program to Help Hom ...

A California Superior Court Judge has ruled that President Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Plan, widely known as HAMP, has “no teeth”. The case involved Ana Rosa Morales and Aurora Loan Services, and attorney Ms. Zshonette Reed, of the law firm Lorden Reed, was representing Ms. Morales who had retained her to help her obtain a loan modification from her mortgage servicer, Aurora. Reed had h ...

The California Senate Bill 94 has passed. The bill that seeks to protect homeowners from loan modification scammers, but could end up having the unintended consequence of eliminating a homeowner’s ability to retain an attorney to help them save their home from foreclosure. The bill, which has an “urgency clause” attached to it, passed the State Assembly, Senate and has been signed by the Governor ...