Behind On Your Mortgage? There's Still Time to Modify
San Diego, CA (PRWEB) July 19, 2013 -- Homeowners facing foreclosure have something to cheer about thanks to the Obama administration’s decision to extend its Making Home Affordable (MHA) initiative, including the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), until the end of 2015. The initiative was established during the peak of the economic and housing crises in 2009 and is aimed at helping homeowners who are more than 90 days behind in their mortgages lower payments through various loan workout solutions that provide more favorable terms.
Since it was first unveiled in 2009, HAMP has helped about 1.1 million homeowners permanently modify their loans to terms that make their monthly payments more affordable. HAMP is funded through the U.S. Treasury’s housing bailout program and was initially available for loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Today, the MHA offers a similar program for loans that are not underwritten by these two federal guarantors.
HAMP works by providing financial incentives to lenders that make it possible for them to rewrite existing mortgages, allowing homeowners to stay in their homes and avoid foreclosure while mitigating the lender’s own losses. Foreclosures are costly to both homeowners and the investors that hold mortgages in their portfolios, which almost always must take a loss when they take possession of the home following a completed foreclosure. Most states allow mortgage companies to pursue defaulting homeowners even after a foreclosure, but legal action is both protracted and costly. All of these factors, combined with the government incentives, make it worthwhile for investors to approve permanent refinance deals that can help avoid foreclosure.
However, lenders who agree to refinance or re-write existing loan terms under HAMP may still structure deals so that they are most beneficial to their own interests and bottom lines. Homeowners who are interested in loan modifications typically rely only on the data & reports provided to them by their lenders when they issue their refinance offer, a mistake which can be costly. As the HAMP program has matured, more and more homeowners have begun to perform their own analyses to determine the options that are best for their financial needs.
Just as they were useful in obtaining an initial mortgage, loan analysis tools and formulas can help homeowners interested in refinancing determine the terms that may work best with their budgets, both for them and for the investor that owns holds their loan. Even more importantly, new tools that use similar calculations and assumptions to those used by lenders can help homeowners learn about all their refinancing or loan modification options, including the ones that work best for their needs. These programs provide in-depth analysis of multiple factors to determine the full range of loan workout options, allowing homeowners to make sure the option they choose to pursue will work for them now and in the future.
The REST Report, a loan disposition analysis tool exclusively available to third parties via pre-screened licensees, offers an in-depth analysis as well as a comprehensive report of a homeowner’s loan workout options and was designed to help put homeowners in the driver’s seat when they decide to pursue loan modifications, short sales, or other popular loan workout solutions for their existing mortgages. To learn more about the REST Report, visit the official website at http://www.restreport.com.
About RESTReport.com
Based in San Diego, RESTReport.com is dedicated to empowering homeowners and loss mitigation professionals alike with NPV (Net Present Value) driven models to determine the best loan workout solutions for each homeowner’s unique scenario. The REST Report is an impartial analytics tool. It derives and presents multiple loan modification terms, affordable to the borrower while still providing the lender with the highest possible return on their investment. It proposes the best win-win loan disposition options given the existing loan terms and the borrower's current financial situation.
James Bailey, REST Report, http://www.restreport.com, (877) 610-7378, [email protected]
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