The Original Objective
When the White House first introduced the Making Home Affordable program in February 2009, it was positioned as a mortgage program with two goals:
- To help financially-needy homeowners get the mortgage relief they needed
- To help homeowners who’ve lost equity to qualify for today’s low rates
The Result Of The New Program
Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury finally introduced new details about Making Home Affordable.
It also created an “Am I Eligible For Making Home Affordable” form on its website. It’s pretty handy, you should also check IT out.
In the press release, the Treasury detailed the President’s original plans from February. Mostly, it provided explicit loan modification instructions that will assist up to 4 million delinquent homeowners and their respective mortgage servicers.
Get ready to read though, the modification guidelines are a thorough 17 pages long and leave little question about the whole loan modification process, and how it must be carried out. I guarantee it’s not an easy process. Loan modifications aren’t new, they’ve been around for a while.
The Disappointment
For as much that was as said for helping delinquent homeowners, the Treasury gave surprisingly little guidance to the estimated 5 million homeowners for who’s homes value have declined significantly. This makes it practically impossible for these folks to refinance.
For these Americans, the Treasury instead offers a basic Q&A and directs homeowners to call Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac to confirm their eligibility. The “refinance plan”, in summary, says that a homeowner who has paid his mortgage
as agreed and whose home value is “about the same or less” as the amount owed on his first mortgage may be eligible.
Until Fannie or Freddie release details on this (none as this is written), you can pretty much call this a tease. There’s nothing available that is different at this point.
If after browsing the website, you still have questions about the Making Home Affordable program, call your mortgage lender with specific questions. If you don’t have someone to chat with, I’d be happy to help! All of my contact information is on the right side of this page.
