Panel: Obama Loan-Mod Effort Ill-Suited To Avert Foreclosures

by Moe Bedard on October 9, 2009 · 0 commentsin Government WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Obama administration’s loan modification effort is ill-suited to tackle the current causes of the foreclosure crisis, financial rescue watchdogs concluded in a new report.Meanwhile, the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, wasn’t designed to address these problems, nor is it geared towards averting a looming wave of foreclosures caused by resetting option adjustable-rate mortgages, they wrote.Read m

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Jesse Jackson on Mich. foreclosures: You cannot resolve this crisis house by house

Rev. Jesse Jackson this week called for mass action to address the state's foreclosure crisis and said that his civil rights non-profit organization, the Rainbow Push Coalition , is pressuring major mortgage lenders including Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America to restructure homeowner's loans to help avert foreclosures. Jackson said the government's efforts to curb the foreclosure crisis are poorly enforced and limited. The federal Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan

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MSC Poesia Jan. 16 Cruise Financial Makeover Tools

MSC Cruises is offering a consumer-oriented program called “Financial Makeover Tools” to help passengers survive and succeed during challenging economic times on MSC Poesia’s Jan. 16 itinerary. Joseph Hoats, a consumer advocate, loan modification attorney and founder of Home www.Stability.com, will host a “Life Modification Cruise” on the seven-night roundtrip sailing to the Western Caribbean. Consumers will depart the cruise with the skills to create a “Life Modification Plan” that will pro

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Anti-foreclosure programs are not enough: watchdog

by Moe Bedard on October 9, 2009 · 0 commentsin Government WASHINGTON (Reuters) â€" Government programs to fight the U.S. home foreclosure crisis look increasingly inadequate and should be reworked, expanded and supplemented with new ideas, a congressional watchdog said in a report on Friday.With a foreclosure filing occurring every 13 seconds, the United States is mired in a housing slump that is destroying billions of dollars in property values and threatening to choke off the economy’s recovery

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Is it Time to Modify Modifications?

Merely one day after the Treasury declared that the country has achieved a “milestone” in its loan modification program (500,000 mods have been issued since its inception), the Federal panel in charge of overseeing the program says the issuance of loan mods have actually begun to slow down : Mortgage servicers actually signed up fewer homeowners in September than they did in Augustâ€"100,216 last month, down from 133,192 the month before. That was even below the 110,397 signed up in July.

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Mortgage modification program hits initial target

Federal officials say the Making Home Affordable program reached its goal of 500,000 more than three weeks ahead of schedule. The often-criticized government program to help homeowners avoid home foreclosures has reached its initial goal for modifying mortgages â€" after the Obama administration started prodding banks in July to move more quickly in easing loan terms. But it might be too little too late to stem the tide of foreclosures. A government oversight report to be released today expr

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Customer DIS-Service: The Unspoken Reason for the Continued Collapse of the U.S. Housing Market

by Moe Bedard on October 9, 2009 · 0 commentsin American Nightmare If it’s this hard for a housing counselor, what is the poor homeowner supposed to do? “Call a nonprofit, HUD-approved housing counselor,” say all the government brochures and broadcast public service announcements. But housing counseling agencies like ours cannot possibly handle the flood of calls for help we receive on a daily basis. Thousands of low-income, seniors, many with limited English, who can’t get through to us quickly

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Is The Administration's Mortgage Modification Program Going To Be Enough?

This week, the Treasury Department announced that the administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) "which is part of the larger Making Home Affordable (MHA) program" has resulted in lower monthly mortgage payments for 500,000 homeowners . According to Treasury, the program has hit this milestone three weeks ahead of schedule . While a half-million modifications is nothing to sneer at, as Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com said, it's a help on the margin, but it's not going

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Creative Ways a Loan Modification Lowers Your Monthly Payments

Creative is probably not the first word that comes to mind when you think about loan modifications. There doesn’t seem to be many new ideas in the loan modification department. The Government is definitely doing its best to reach the borrowers that need the help, especially those that reach those that can pay affordable mortgage payments. This helps “guarantee” the government is not throwing away good money after bad with borrowers that overstretched themselves and cannot afford any reasonabl

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