Making Home Affordable News

Has the Making Home Affordable Mortgage Program Failed?

It seems to us like the Making Home Affordable Program simply is not functioning like President Obama and Tim Geithner planned. Tim Geithner just does not appear to have a grasp on regular American's problem. There are just so many folks out there who are not getting help with their loans and they should not get any help from taxpayers to pay the mortgage.

Having people stay in homes because they can now afford the new $1220 a month mortgage payment is ridiculous when they owe $275,000 on a home that is now worth $140,000. It will be generations before these homeowners will ever see anything near what they owe. The sooner these people wake up and move on the better. Stop hanging on to something that's not going to happen. Just let the bank have it, walk away and be done.

It still amazes us how so many Americans choose to stick their heads in the sand and pray to be saved by the mortgage gods known as the Making Home Affordable Plan and my tax money. Many of these same people would have and still do look at people who routinely take food stamps with disgust. Well wake up and enjoy your mortgage stamp!

How the Making Home Affordable Mortgage Program
can help you.

The Making Home Affordable Mortgage Program is part of the President's broad, comprehensive strategy to get the economy back on track. 

The Making Home Affordable Refinance and Modification Programs will help between 7 to 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages to avoid foreclosure.  In doing so, the Making Home Affordable Mortgage Program not only helps responsible homeowners on the verge of defaulting, but prevents neighborhoods and communities from being pulled over the edge too, as mortgage defaults and foreclosures contribute to falling home values, failing local businesses, and lost jobs.

The problem is the making home affordable mortgage program is not taking into account the estimated 17,220,000 people who will now choose to not make mortgage payments (and rightfully so).  To think everyone in a neighborhood is underwater by $150,000 and the government then chooses to help only the one family who currently is in actual financial trouble is crazy.  The reason why the few are in trouble matters not, only that the few will be helped and many other very responsible homeowners will be left stuck in homes that will take a decade or more to recover equity lost in the last two years.  The Making home Affordable Mortgage Program has a very steep hill to climb if it wants to make any kind of real difference in people's lives.

Are prayers are with everyone on both sides of the making homes affordable problem as their are so many millions of Americans that did nothing to end up where they are, but trust the very financial institutions that were supposed to have are best interest at heart.  The financial institutions simply decided that money was more important than the families they were setting up to fail.

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HUD Secretary Donovan Announces Expanded Eligibility for Making Homes Affordable Refinancing
Banks could get government incentive payments for allowing borrowers to sell their home at a loss rather than go through foreclosure, under new guidelines issued yesterday for the Obama administration's $75 billion housing plan.

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Here are the most important Guidelines to the Making Home Affordable Mortgage Program:

• Borrower must not be underwater any more than 5%.  Example: If you owe 300k, your home must appraise for no less than 285k.
• Adjustments to principle on mortgage loans during Bankruptcy
• Mortgage loans may be refinanced or adjusted up to the current high cost jumbo loan limit
• Support Local Communities and Help Displaced Renters
• Mortgage loans originated on or before January 1, 2009 are eligible
• Borrowers must fully document income, sign an IRS 4506-T, provide two most recent pay stubs, most recent tax return, and sign the affidavit of financial hardship (form 1021)

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Video: FOX 5 Money: Mortgage Help
Keeping up to 9 million Americans from losing their homes. That's the objective of the making home affordable program

Reuters: Treasury sweetens housing rescue incentives
The Obama administration on Thursday tweaked its housing rescue plan by increasing incentives for mortgage lenders to slash the payments for homeowners in the worst-hit markets.

Washington Post: Plan to Encourage Banks to Allow Short Sales
Banks could get government incentive payments for allowing borrowers to sell their home at a loss rather than go through foreclosure, under new guidelines issued yesterday for the Obama administration's $75 billion housing plan.

ABC NEWS: U.S. 'Short Sale' Plan to Aid Underwater Homeowners
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner unveiled plans to help borrowers sell their homes for less than what they owe -- known as "short sales" -- by providing incentives for more lenders to accept such sales.

Video: Hundreds Turn Up For Help With Mortgages
There's a new federal program that could keep thousands of Chicagoans in their homes. It's called Making Home Affordable and as CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli found out, it's designed to do just that.

Commentary: We're cracking down on those who defraud Americans
For most of our nation's history, pursuing the American Dream has involved owning a home. Few decisions have been financially bigger, and few have been more important, as families seek to establish roots in a community and secure their futures.

Wall Street Journal (Gov. Paterson): Obama's Making Homes Affordable Plan Is What We Need What is sometimes lost in the public discussion of our current economic crisis, amid the $787 billion stimulus package and the multibillion dollar bailouts of banks and insurance companies, is the root cause. The economic downturn began as a mortgage crisis and will not end until we solve that problem.

NY Times: U.S. Sets Big Incentives with the Making Homes Affordable Plan to Head Off Foreclosures The Obama administration on Wednesday began the most ambitious effort since the 1930s to help troubled homeowners with Making Home Affordable Program, offering lenders and borrowers big incentives and subsidies to try to stem the wave of foreclosures.

Wall Street Journal: Making Home Affordable Mortgage Bailout to Aid 1 in 9 US Homeowners The Obama administration announced details of Making Home Affordable Program it said would help as many as one in nine homeowners, from low-income Americans struggling to avoid foreclosure to well-off borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth.

SF Chronicle: Details of the Making Home Affordable Plan
The Obama administration unveiled key details of its housing market rescue program on Wednesday, including a ceiling on mortgages eligible for modification that was raised high enough to potentially help hundreds of thousands of struggling Californians, real estate experts around the state say.

Newsday: LI Housing Advocate Sees Positive Sign for Making Home Affordable Program As the nation awaits word of which lenders and servicers will join the federal “Making Home Affordable” rescue plan, one local housing advocate has seen a positive sign.

Washington Post: U.S. Launches Wide-Ranging Making Home Affordable Program to Steady Housing Market The Obama administration yesterday sketched in the details of its most ambitious attempt to reduce foreclosures and stabilize the beleaguered housing market at the root of the economic meltdown.

LA Times: Obama's Making Home Affordable Program aims to help 'responsible' homeowners The Obama administration's plan for a housing rescue aids two groups of homeowners largely left out of previous efforts and aims to deny benefits to those who have been unwise or greedy, according to details released Wednesday.

Boston Globe: Many in Mass. may get mortgage help with the Making Home Affordable Plan More than 100,000 Massachusetts homeowners who cannot refinance at current low rates because of falling property values may now be able to do so as part of the Obama administration's housing plan.

Miami Herald: Thousands in South Florida in line for home loan relief through the Making Home Affordable Plan The Obama administration released details Wednesday on how its $75 billion housing rescue plan could help about nine million borrowers nationwide who could qualify for a loan modification or refinancing.