Foreclosures and Debt

In spite of all the good intentions that the Banks and the Obama Administration had in mind when they initiated the Making Home Affordable loan modification program to stop foreclosure for home borrowers that were facing foreclosures, there were many borrowers unable to qualify for the program. Due to the inability of the “Making Home Affordable” program to help stop foreclosure for a large number of ineligible, willing applicants, foreclosures continued to spiral out of control. Many families despite their efforts to keep their homes, were unqualified for  foreclosure avoidance programs offered and had to give up their American Dream of home ownership that they worked so hard for.

Not so fast! Fannie Mae have come up with another option for slowing foreclosures, “Deed for Lease™ Program”. The Deed for Lease program announced by Fannie Mae in November, is a program designed to offer up another option for borrowers facing foreclosure who do not qualify for other stop foreclosure programs like loan modifications. The way it works is that qualifying homeowners facing foreclosure may be able to stay in their homes if they sign a lease and at the same time, voluntarily transfer the deed of the property back to the lender, also called “deed in lieu of foreclosure”. The primary aim of the Deed for Lease program is to help alleviate the problems associated with foreclosure, such as uprooting families, decaying neighborhoods and other harddships caused by foreclosures. According to the Vice President of Fannie Mae, Jay Ryan, Deed for Lease is another option for troubled borrowers facing foreclosures; [Read more →]

Tags: Foreclosure News, Stop Foreclosure by Jacky
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Foreclosure found this interesting article Ralph Roberts is a Realtor who has written many books about the real estate market and flipping homes, such as Foreclosure Investing for Dummies. U.S. News talked with Roberts about some of the first things a potential investor should know before getting into the foreclosure market. Read More Here.

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One of the many curiosities to accompany the mortgage crisis is the growing number of struggling borrowers who have elected to simply walk away from their homes instead of launching an all-out effort to prevent foreclosure. The sharp drop in home prices—which has put millions of Americans "underwater," meaning they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth—is one factor behind the trend. Meanwhile, since most mortgages are packaged and sold to investors, rather than held by a local banker, it may be easier for homeowners to justify walking away and sending their house keys to the lender—so-called jingle mail. In addition, a number of companies have emerged on the Web that present foreclosure as an attractive alternative for cash-strapped borrowers. Read More Here

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With all the talk about how the housing crisis has hit large urban areas—Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami—it's easy to overlook its effect on rural America. But according to the Charlotte Observer, the housing slowdown could be hurting rural communities just as much—if not more—than cities.

"The foreclosure problems in small-town America may be even more widespread than in cities. Mobile and prefab homes make up at least 15 percent of the nation's rural housing, and three-quarters of them were financed with installment or personal property loans rather than mortgage loans," the Observer reports. "When the owners default, it leads to repossession rather than foreclosure, and these defaults are not included in the foreclosure data."

Read Morehere.

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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 →]

Tags: Home Loans by Jacky
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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.

Tags: Foreclosure Process by Jacky
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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’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!

Tags: money by Jacky
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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 →]

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Will the Federal Reserve’s rate cut revive the housing market and stem foreclosures?

Don’t count on it.

The Fed’s interest rate cut is largely symbolic. It makes more funds available to depository institutions — old-fashioned banks — but old-fashioned banks aren’t where the crisis is centered. The Fed’s move will do little for what ails the U.S. economy: Falling home prices, tighter lending standards, rising foreclosures and the ever-growing number of unsold houses on the market.

Nor will President George W. Bush’s $150 billion economic stimulus plan prevent Americans from losing their dream of homeownership to foreclosure. The Fed’s move will spark an avalanche of refinancing for homeowners with good credit. But that won’t necessarily translate into lower mortgage costs for some 2 million Americans with risky subprime home loans with rates that are scheduled to adjust sharply higher over the next year. Many subprime borrowers have mortgages larger than what the properties are worth, ruling out the possibility of refinancing from an adjustable rate loan into a fixed mortgage rate.

For the economy to rebound, home values have to return to historic norms. Slowly, home prices are beginning to fall back to more reasonable levels. Over the last year, home prices in the U.S. have fallen by about 6 percent on average, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of housing prices, which measures the value of homes in 20 cities.

So, expect a rising tide of foreclosures to continue to add inventory to an already over-saturated housing market. A growing inventory of unsold houses, in turn, will pull down home values, dragging more homeowners into foreclosures as prices drop. Spooked buyers, waiting for the housing market to bottom out, will nervously wait on the sidelines — further depressing prices.

For foreclosure investors and homebuyers this year could be a great opportunity to buy at bargain prices.

More: continued here

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California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals plan for state assistance to stop foreclosures.

The Governor announced a public awareness campaign aimed at California homeowners who may be staring down the barrel of foreclosure. According to the Governor’s website, he stated,

“Our message is that lenders are willing to work with borrowers on finding a solution. But right now we are seeing homeowners who are afraid to even talk with lenders,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “In fact, loan officials have not been able to reach borrowers in more than half of all foreclosures. Some of these homes could have been saved, so seek out a solution now before it is too late.”

This 1.2 million dollar campaign is designed to educate California homeowners how and where to seek assistance with their mortgage to avoid foreclosure. California is one of the top 10 states with the highest foreclosure of homes.

Check out the Governor’s video below on his stop foreclosure plan.

[Read more →]

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