Tag Archives: HAMP

More than 5,000 Washington state homeowners have been invited by Wells Fargo to participate in a free workshop this Thursday and Friday in Bellevue. Designed for borrowers facing financial hardships, the two-day workshop targets Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Wells Fargo Financial, Wachovia Mortgage, and Wells Fargo Home Equity customers. The Washington event is Wells Fargo's 16th home preservation workshop in 2011.

Treasury has released new numbers for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). New this month is data on the program's Principal Reduction Alternative (PRA). Servicers have cut principal balances on 4,938 permanent HAMP modifications under the PRA initiative. In addition, there are currently 16,017 HAMP trials in force that have also received principal write-downs. The median amount of principal reduced for active permanent modifications exceeds $69,000.

Timothy Massad has been confirmed by the Senate as Treasury's assistant secretary for financial stability, responsible for overseeing the implementation and wind down of the Troubled Asset Relief Program including initiatives to address the housing and foreclosure crisis. While Treasury has won several Senate confirmations in recent days, the Department is at risk of losing its topmost officer. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has notified President Obama that he will resign if lawmakers don't raise the debt ceiling by the early August deadline.

Freddie Mac has issued a bulletin to servicers announcing changes to the company's default management requirements. The move is part of the Servicing Alignment Initiative announced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in late April to bring both Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's procedures for handling past-due mortgages in line with one another. Freddie also alerted servicers that it plans to roll out a new modification solution for borrowers who defaulted on previous modifications and who are ineligible for HAMP.

Servicers completed 1,666 short sales and deeds-in-lieu (DIL) under the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program in April. That's up 73.7 percent from the number of HAFA transactions completed the month before. HAFA has been in place since April of 2010. According to Treasury's latest report, which covers program activity through April of this year, a total of 7,113 short sales and DILs have concluded through HAFA. Treasury says a short sale typically takes 120 days to complete under the program.

Servicers using the XetusOne Loan Management System already exceed the minimum requirements for the Treasury Department's new guideline mandating a single relationship manager for Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) borrowers. Available via California-based Xetus, the system provides servicers with compliance through its Web-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.

Servicer reaction varied following Treasury's announcement that it will not pay incentives to three program participants until officials see improvements in the way they handle borrowers under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). Bank of America ""acknowledged improvements must be made,"" while Wells Fargo said it is ""formally disputing"" Treasury's assessment. Treasury insists its goal is to improve behavior, but some say the move could induce at least one of the larger banks to withdraw from the program.

The U.S. Treasury has released its regular monthly report card on the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). New this time is an assessment of how the 10 largest HAMP servicers are performing. Four servicers have been designated as needing ""substantial"" improvement: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Ocwen Loan Servicing, and Wells Fargo. Treasury says it will withhold financial incentives from three of these companies until they make identified improvements.

More than three-quarters of foreclosure counselors say the borrower experience when turning to the government's flagship modification program for relief is sub-par. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says counselors it polled cited concerns about HAMP trial denials, including long waiting periods and documentation issues. Some 39 percent said paperwork had been lost or needed to be resubmitted, while 46 percent said it typically takes seven months or more to receive a decision on a trial mod application.

HOPE LoanPort (HLP), a Web-based tool that streamlines home retention applications on behalf of borrowers at risk of foreclosure, recently welcomed nonprofit counseling agencies in Alaska and Kansas to its system. Used by housing counselors, housing finance agencies, investors, and major mortgage servicers, HLP now assists struggling homeowners in 49 states and the District of Columbia.