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""Wells Fargo & Co."":https://www.wellsfargo.com/ announced Wednesday that as of January 31, 2010, it had 137,128 active trial and completed modifications in place under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). Of these, 17,652 were permanent modifications--double the number of permanent modifications reported as of the end of December, and 7,554 were permanent modifications pending completion.
[IMAGE]More than 92,000 Wells Fargo customers with HAMP modifications had made three trial payments as of January 31, 2010. Based on its experience with HAMP modifications, Wells Fargo expects completed modifications for about half of these customers.
According to the San Francisco-based company, it is likely that 30 percent of the remaining customers will be ineligible for a permanent modification after documents have been reviewed. Wells Fargo anticipates 10 percent will be missing some of the required documents, and the another 10 percent will fail to provide any of the required documents.
Beginning March 1, ahead of the Treasury's June 1 deadline, Wells Fargo will require income verification
[COLUMN_BREAK]from customers before placing them into a trial HAMP modification. The company, which was one of few that promoted this practice when HAMP first began, believes it better enables customers to understand if they qualify for the program and what their final payment relief will likely be.
According to Mike Heid, co-president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, the company continues to contact customers facing hardships through a combination of telephone, overnight mail packages, door-to-door outreach, and other methods. For customers who prefer face-to-face assistance, the company is working to bring its modification efforts out into the communities it serves with customer-contact initiatives. In order to help as many customers as possible, Wells Fargo has more than doubled its home preservation staff and now has more than 15,000 U.S.-based staff working on home retention.
As part of Wells Fargo's efforts to prevent foreclosure in communities across the nation, the company has also done more than 350,000 non-HAMP modifications, including active trials in place as of the end of January and modifications completed since the beginning of 2009.
From October 2009 through January 2010, the company initiated or completed three modifications for every one foreclosure sale on owner-occupied properties, and in the past 12 months, less than 2 percent of the loans secured by owner-occupied homes and serviced by Wells Fargo proceeded to a foreclosure sale.
""We continue to use a range of options to help customers facing home ownership hardships whenever possible,"" Heid said. ""Our customers, communities, and investors all benefit whenever a reasonable alternative to home foreclosure can be found.""
