Foreclosures and Debt

Exploding foreclosure rates have continued in 2009 in the U.S., especially in California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona. Under the Bush Administration there were programs initiated to help homeowners facing foreclosures starting in 2007, such as FHA Secure, Project Hope and others that did not appear to produce much fruit. Foreclosures continue to spiral out-of-control up until this day.

Now, President Obama and his Administration has rolled out what is sure to be a few of many programs to address the run away foreclosure rates and help about 9 million homeowners save and keep their homes. One such program launched this month is the “Making Home Affordable” Program. The “Making Home Affordable” program, is a two-prong approach for the foreclosure crisis that involves loan modification and refinancing programs for struggling homeowners. The loan modification approach is designed to bring lenders and borrowers together to modify the terms of their loan by lowering interest rates to as low as 2 percent for five years. After the five years, rates will rise to about five percent until the loan is repaid. For eligible borrowers, they will have to provide their most recent tax return and two pay stubs, as well as an “affidavit of financial hardship” to qualify for the loan modification program, which runs through 2012. Making Home Affordable modification program guidelines are as follows;

The home must be an owner occupied, single family 1-4 unit property (including condominium, cooperative, and manufactured home affixed to a foundation and treated as real property under state law). [Read more →]

Borrowers, foreclosures, foreclosure_help, homeowner_bailout, home_mortgage_lenders, loan_default, loan_modification, Making_Home_Affordable, Obama_foreclosure_prevention, stop_foreclosure Posted in: Home Loans // Add Comment »

Dateline’s Chris Hansen checks up on a family that was evicted from their Las Vegas Home a year ago. Look at the video and see how they are doing after the foreclosure process.

Borrowers, dateline, evictions, foreclosure, foreclosures, Las Vegas, las_vegas-foreclosures, loan-default, loan_default, msnbc, NBC Dateline, video Posted in: Foreclosure Process // Add Comment »

Best selling author of personal financial management advice, Suze Orman has teamed up with Media Queen, Oprah Winfrey to bring you a free ebook download called “Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan”!

Suze Orman

“Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan” book offers straight talking advice about various financial scenarios that may be the answer to some of your more pressing questions about your money in this financial hurricane of foreclosures, bankruptcy, loan defaults, and debt overload! Oprah Winfrey is giving away Suze’s book as a electronic download or ebook , on the Oprah.com website.

Once you click on the link above you will see two download links to Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan in English and one in Spanish. To download the ebook, right click on your preferred language and save to file to computer. I tried to simply click on the link, but the ebook did not open in my Firefox browser.

Once you have saved the file to your computer, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open and read the ebook, get Adobe Acrobat Reader here if you do not have it already installed on your computer. When you open the ebook, you may want to reduce the size of the print by using the down button next to the size indicator, my default size is 221%. See image below.

 

Hurry and do not wait to get this free book Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan, according to the Oprah Winfrey website, there will be a cut off of download on Thursday, January 15, 2009! Get the Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan Now, and jumpstart your credit and credit rebuilding for 2009!

bad_credit_loan, Borrowers, credit_counseling, foreclosures, free_ebook, loan_default, money, oprah_winfrey, personal_financial_management, suze_orman Posted in: money // Add Comment »

Religious leaders and community activists and others gathered in Washington D.C. to meet with Federal officials, Congress and members of the Barack Obama transition team for a solution, such as more loan modifications and the like, to slow down the ever-growing foreclosure crisis that is affecting millions of homeowners. The religious leaders and prayerful were also there in Washington, D.C. to pray for some relief to homeowners facing foreclosure and eviction. Their prayers may have been answered, somewhat.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the largest home loan lenders in the U.S.,  have agreed to stop foreclosure and evictions for about six weeks beginning Nov 26, 2008 through January 9, 2009, just in time for the holidays. The suspension of foreclosures and evictions during this time period is designed to allow time for loan servicers to put in a place an efficient loan modification program to assist struggling homeowners.

According to Fannie Chief Executive Officer Herb Allison,

we felt it was in the best interest of both borrowers and Fannie Mae to take this extra step to ensure that homeowners with the desire and ability to prevent foreclosure have an opportunity to stay in their homes.

[Read more →]

default_notices, delinquencies, evictions, fannie_mae, foreclosure_help, foreclosure_prevention, freddie_mac, home_foreclosures, hope_now, loan_default, loan_modification, mortgage_foreclosures, mortgage_loan, project_lifeline, stop_foreclosure, subprime_mortgage_loans Posted in: Foreclosure News // Add Comment »

In a bold move to try and slow down the foreclosure melt downs, JP Morgan Chase has put a stop to placing delinquent home loans into foreclosure for 90 days to try to help homeowners keep their homes. The Chase foreclosure plan will cease putting delinquent loans into the foreclosure process for 90 days as it puts a loan modification team together and implement their mortgage rescue plan. Their foreclosure prevention plan is intended to assist home loan borrowers at risk of foreclosure receive mortgage modifications. Loan modifications have been pretty hard to get in this mortgage crisis since many homeowners owe more on their home loans than their home is worth. A loan modification is the process by which the homeowner tries to get the terms of their loan modified to accommodate affordabilty. JP Morgan Chase plans to prevent unnecessary foreclosures with an independent review process to assist homeowners who may not need to be placed in foreclosure, and hire and train more staff for the caseload of loans.

Despite the fact that JP Morgan Chase is one of the largest banks affected by the foreclosure crisis, holding 1.5 Trillion dollars in mortgage loans, will be implement their plan on loans held by the bank which is only about 20% and the other 80% of loans are held by investors whose loans they service and are currently not figured into this plan, yet. According to Charlie Scharf, CEO of Retail Financial Services at Chase,

While Chase has helped many families already, we feel it is our responsibility to provide additional help to homeowners during these challenging times. We will work with families who want to save their homes but are struggling to make their payments.

One of the program’s first priorities, is to eliminate the negative amortization loans it services, most of which they inherited when they took over Washington Mutual Bank and EMC. This is a significant addition to its current foreclosure prevention program. [Read more →]

Borrowers, Chase, foreclosures, foreclosure_help, foreclosure_prevention, JP Morgan Chase, lenders, loan_borrowers, loan_modification, mortgage_loans, stop_foreclosure, sub-prime-home-loan, washington_mutual_bank Posted in: Foreclosure News // Add Comment »