Tag Archives: Foreclosure Prevention

It may be tougher to qualify for a mortgage loan to buy a home now than it was 10 years ago. But at least Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are helping borrowers who already have homes to stay in them.

The GSEs have made helping families avoid foreclosure one of their top priorities since the start of the housing crisis, and Fannie Mae just announced an update to support a policy change to assist in that initiative.

As the state of New York heads into the Thanksgiving Holiday, two local Senators are raising awareness of the ongoing foreclosure crisis in parts of the state.

Borrower outreach events include HUD-approved housing counselors and mortgage servicers in order to give distressed borrowers a face-to-face meeting to work out a solution such as a permanent loan modification that will allow borrowers to remain in their homes. If a home retention solution cannot be worked out, often a non-foreclosure home forfeiture solution is offered such as a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

With July's total of nearly 20,000 foreclosure prevention actions, the Enterprises have now completed 3.56 million such actions since the start of the conservatorship in September 2008, according to FHFA.

The latest round of funding will go to support the Homeowner Protection Program (HOPP), which is a statewide network of nearly 90 housing counseling and legal services agencies that provide free, high quality assistance to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.

REO inventory for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae dropped by 14 percent during Q2, down to 86,515 for the two GSEs combined, as property dispositions continued to outpace property acquisitions. It was the first time the REO inventory for the GSEs has been below 100,000 since 2009.

More than half of the total foreclosure prevention actions completed by the FHFA in nearly seven years (1.82 million) have come in the form of permanent loan modifications, according to FHFA.

CFPB said the company put consumers in "loan modification purgatory," confusing them about the status of their loan mods and making it difficult to take appropriate action.

In an article for the newsletter titled "Hardest Hit Fund Provides Locally Tailored Solutions for Struggling Homeowners," U.S. Department of Treasury Director of the Hardest Hit Fund Program Erin Quinn said that as of March 2015, almost 230,000 homeowners had received a combined $4.7 billion worth of assistance from the HHF Program.