Does the Financial Fix-it Bill Include Loan Modifications?
Now that the ink has dried on the Obama Housing Stability Plan, people want to know what’s in it for them. In other words, people want to know will this bill help make my house payments any lower? So here goes: basically the Treasury Department will offer inducements and put pressure on lenders to reduce monthly payments for borrowers at risk of losing their houses which should result in five benefits for homeowners. They include:
1. The main benefit is that it provides assistance to homeowners who wish to stay in their homes. The sour economy has made it tough for many homeowners to refinance because for most, their equity has dried up and they are unable to do so. This plan also helps those who may have lost income due to the current recession.
2. No help for flippers. Remember those TV shows where investors boasted of making massive profits by fixing up houses and then reselling them? Those days are mostly gone and in addition, the Obama plan provides no assistance for real estate speculators with homeowners receiving all the funds.
3. It Helps to Protect Neighborhoods: This plan helps to stabilize home prices for all homeowners in a neighborhood. After all, a foreclosed home often reduces the value of the entire neighborhood. The average homeowner could see his or her home value stabilized against declines because fewer homes will fall into foreclosure relative to what would happen absent the Homeowner Stability Initiative.
4. The Plan Proactively Assists Homeowners Not Yet Late on Payments. Oftentimes responsible homeowners who know that their jobs are in jeopardy due to the recession will call their mortgage lender(s) hoping to make some kind of arrangement, only to be told that there is nothing that can be done. Unless a homeowner is in arrears, banks will not listen to their plea for help. This plan offers assistance to homeowners at risk of default despite being current on their mortgage payments.
5. It helps Bring Monthly Payments to Sustainable Levels: The goal of the Homeowner Stability Initiative is to reduce debt for a family to a sustainable (31% of debt to income) level. The Treasury Department will standardize the loan modification guidelines and implement them through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The goal is to create monthly debt payments that will be able to be kept for a long time.
The goal of the Obama program, in a nutshell, is to lend security to the current volatile financial markets. The Treasury must placate nervous lenders who wish to pull the trigger on non-performing assets out of fear that home prices might fall even further if they wait, but stop the market from plunging further so that new purchasers may buy. In other words, lately a purchaser with good credit is finding it difficult to purchase a home because of lender concerns about the depreciating values in the marketplace. The Obama plan addresses both issues in one fell swoop.
Obviously there is much more to the Obama Financial Stability Incentive Plan. There are many components and some involve giving incentives for people who modify loans, lenders who postpone foreclosures and as mentioned earlier, responsible homeowners interested in refinancing into a lower-interest loan.
By assisting responsible homeowners as well as the millions affected negatively by the recession, the Administration is hoping to jump-start the economy as well. The 75 billion may have an effect that is seen as quickly as June 2009. For this reason, many savvy investors are purchasing property and renting it out. This may prove to be a smart play to help revive your 401k nest egg.
Tags: attorney, business, entertainment, Foreclosure, foreclosures, homes, investing, money, mortgages, Reality
