Tag Archives: Housing Counseling

In a partnership with the city of Detroit, Bank of America will open two customer assistance centers in the area to provide homeowners at risk of default or foreclosure with counseling and on-site decision making for mortgage modification programs or other payment assistance. The bank also plans to donate and refurbish 10 vacant homes for the city's ""Project 14"" program, and will work with the city to identify up to 100 low-value and vacant properties for demolition.

Fannie Mae and Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida (NHSSF) celebrated the one-year anniversary of Fannie Mae's South Florida Mortgage Help Center on Thursday. Since opening its doors in March 2010, the South Florida Mortgage Help Center has worked with more than 1,000 struggling families with loans owned by Fannie Mae. Of these, more than 64 percent received a retention solution that allowed them to remain in their homes.

Ohioans undergoing foreclosure mediation who can't afford to hire an attorney now have another option. Capital University Law School recently developed a program to connect law students with people going through foreclosure. Upperclass law students volunteer their time for the pro bono program to help homeowners understand the mediation process.

HomeFree-USA recently revealed its success in assisting struggling homeowners by using HOPE LoanPort, a Web-based system to submit home retention applications to mortgage servicers. HomeFree-USA, which oversees a network of 65 housing counseling agencies, endorses the HOPE LoanPort system for eliminating lost paperwork and reducing decision times on loan modification applications.

Bank of America said Tuesday that it is stepping up efforts to help distressed homeowners before they fall into foreclosure, with plans to double its borrower outreach staff in 2011, open new regional homeowner assistance centers, and increase collaboration with nonprofit housing counselors. But company officials warned shareholders that same morning that BofA's $1 trillion portfolio of problem assets -- loans that are already delinquent and those risky home lending products that the company has taken off the shelf -- will take three years to work through.

The Homeownership Preservation Foundation (HPF), which administers the Homeowner's HOPE Hotline (1-888-995-HOPE) to provide free, financial education and confidential foreclosure prevention counseling, has named Bruce Gottschall to its board of directors. Gottschall is one of the original founders of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of Chicago. Under his leadership, NHS of Chicago partnered with the city to establish the Home Ownership Preservation Initiative to prevent foreclosures.

According to Empowering and Strengthening Ohio's People, a non-profit foreclosure prevention counseling agency, the Ohio Housing Finance Agency's failure to distribute funding - in addition to federal budget cuts - means turning away some homeowners. Starting Tuesday, the agency says it will be forced to stop taking in homeowners referred from the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling program.

Dr. Christopher Herbert, research director at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, has been named to the board of directors of the Homeownership Preservation Foundation (HPF). Herbert spent the last two decades conducting research related to housing policy, housing markets, housing finance, and urban development. He also promotes and maintains homeownership for low-income and minority families.

A rise in stock prices has helped to grow consumers' net worth, but financial duress related to housing and a weak job market are weighing heavy on U.S. households and overshadowing any assurances that an economic recovery is underway. The nonprofit credit counseling agency CredAbility has released its Consumer Distress Index results for the fourth quarter of 2010. The organization found that the health of household budgets has fallen to its lowest level since the first quarter of 2009, causing many homeowners to miss mortgage payments.

The Homeownership Preservation Foundation (HPF) is the sole recipient of a $1 million Mortgage Modification and Mortgage Scam Assistance (MMSA) grant from HUD. The grant will enable HPF to continue as the primary ""call to action"" for HUD's anti-scam campaign to assist victims as well as educate and warn distressed homeowners about foreclosure prevention and loan modification scammers.