Obama Pushes For Principle Reduction
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Obama administration is trying to push a settlement that could force the largest U.S. banks to pay for reductions in loan principal worth billions of dollars following breakdowns in mortgage servicing, The Wall Street Journal said.
Should a settlement be reached, some state attorneys general are also pushing for banks to pay more than $20 billion of civil fines or to fund a similar amount of loan modifications for troubled borrowers, the newspaper said on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Regulators are looking to settle with as many as 14 servicers, including three of the nation’s four largest banks: Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo & Co, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The administration wants a commitment from loan servicers to reduce loan balances for borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth, and that such costs would not be borne by investors who bought mortgage-backed securities, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
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Categories: HAMP, Loan Modification, Obama plan Tags: diy loan modification, diyloanmodkit.com, do it yourself loan modification, Loan Modification, Obama plan, principle reductions
Chase Offers Homeowners Help
Chase will open an office in Minnesota to help counsel homeowners on ways to avoid foreclosure.
It’s one of 25 Chase Homeownership Centers the bank plans to open in 19 states this year, targeting “the hardest-hit communities” in the wake of the foreclosure and loan modification crisis. These counseling centers provide struggling homeowners with face-to-face advice and resources to help them stay in their homes, the bank says.
Chase, the consumer and commercial banking business of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., has 51 homeownership centers now. It plans to open centers for the first time in a dozen states, including Minnesota and Wisconsin, and will add centers in seven others.
The centers are open six days a week. Chase expects to have them operating in 27 states and the District of Columbia this year, and plans nearly three dozen events this year in 25 other cities to expand the reach of the program.
Wells Fargo offers similar face-to-face counseling services at 27 Home Preservation Center offices in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Ohio, said spokeswoman Peggy Gunn. These centers serve Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and Wachovia Pick-a-Payment customers facing financial hardships.
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Categories: foreclosure, Loan Modification, Obama plan Tags: chase foreclosure, chase loan modification, diy loan modification, DIYLoanmodkit, do it yourself loan modification, Loan Modification, Wells Fargo
Loan Modification Approvals Increase
In December the amount of homeowners receiving permanent Loan modifications using the Obama HAMP program outnumbered those dropped from the program.
The Treasury Department stated that 30,030 homeowners received permanent loan modifications in December under the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, slightly above the 29,972 that received permanent modifications in November.
A total of 18,448 borrowers were cut from both permanent and trial modifications in December about the same level as in November and less than the month’s tally of new permanent modifications.For much of 2010, dropouts had outnumbered new permanent modifications as documentation requirements became more stringent.
However, 792,529 borrowers had been dropped from the program through December, or about 54 percent of the 1.47 million modifications that had been started since the program was launched in 2009.
The Treasury data showed that there were about 521,630 borrowers that had received a permanent modification at the end of December, compared to about 505,000 at the end of November and 483,000 at the end of October.
But this was far short of the administration’s initial goals of helping 3 million to 4 million homeowners, a goal that has since been scaled back. Under the tougher guidelines put in place last year, about 1.42 million borrowers were eligible for the program.
The Treasury also released new data about the borrowers who are receiving loan modifications under the program. The median gross annual income for a homeowner entering a trial modification was $46,344, while the median loan balance for those starting a trial modification was $223,283.
The top five metropolitan areas for active permanent modifications were Los Angeles, with 6.9 percent of the total volume, New York with 6.1 percent, Riverside-San Bernardino with 5.4 percent, Chicago with 5.3 percent and Miami-Fort Lauderdale with 4.6 percent.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/us-usa-housing-workouts-idUSTRE70U68K20110131
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