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. Continue reading JP Morgan Chase Stops Foreclosures for 90 Days