Home Affordable Refinance Program Announcement
March 4, 2009
The Treasury Department today released guidelines for loan modifications in an attempt to help homeowners at risk of losing their houses to foreclosure.
What does that all really mean? Reactions from people I trust (I’m sure there’ll be a few more here by the end of the day). Each has much more information on the full post - click on their names to read the full posts:
From Dan Green, of The Mortgage Reports:
Rest assured, my friends, you’re not getting a 2 percent rate on your mortgage.
Here’s the bullet points from today’s announcement:
- Loan modification guidelines for "at-risk" homeowners are defined
- Refinancing guidelines for "underwater", on-time homeowners are not defined
I’m not going to rehash the loan modification stuff. I’ll leave that to guys that do loan modifications for a living. In a nutshell, if you’ve already fallen behind on your mortgage and can verify income using W-2 and tax returns, the government offers powerful incentives to both you and your lender to get you current on your home loan and keep you current.
From Rhonda Porter, of The Mortgage Porter:
The Home Affordable Modification program does not involve a refinance (which is a new mortgage replacing the existing mortgage). With a loan modification, the terms of the existing mortgage are modified. You can read the borrower qualifications by clicking here. This applies to borrowers who are dealing with "financial hardship" and this is a "full document" transaction including providing income documentation and verification that the home is owner occupied. Families with high debt levels may be required to complete financial counseling through a HUD approved counselor.
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