Today, the Treasury and Housing and Urban Development Departments released April data on the Home Affordable Modification Program, the Obama administration’s effort to modify mortgages in order to stem the tide of foreclosures and keep families in their homes. Modifications increased 13 percent month-to-month, to 300,000.
“As the number More…
On mortgage giant Freddie Mac’s blog, “Featured Perspectives,” executive Don Bisenius takes on strategic defaulters — underwater mortgage-holders (that is, homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth, meaning that if they sell their house they will still owe the bank money) who chose to More…
Today, Freddie Mac — the government-sponsored enterprise that buys mortgages on the secondary market, and is currently under a Federal Housing Finance Agency conservatorship — reported losses of $6.7 billion in the first quarter.
It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, but it is bad, and a sign More…
RealtyTrac reports that foreclosures reached their highest-ever level in March: “[F]ilings were reported on 367,056 properties in March, an increase of nearly 19 percent from the previous month, an increase of nearly 8 percent from March 2009 and the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in More…
With the Home Affordable Modification Program faltering in its effort to stem the foreclosure crisis, Dean Baker, the co-chair of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argues for a simple and free way for Congress to aid banks and underwater homeowners.
Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Housing More…
Today, a report from the Congressional Oversight Panel faults the Treasury Department’s efforts to stem the tide of foreclosures:
Treasury’s response continues to lag well behind the pace of the crisis. As of February 2010, only 168,708 homeowners have received final, five-year loan modifications — a small fraction of
Tomorrow, the House Financial Services Committee, headed by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), starts a series of hearings on mortgage modification and the housing market. The schedule is as follows:
To much fanfare, the Obama administration a year ago launched a $75 billion program designed to prevent foreclosures by providing financial incentives to lenders and servicers who modified mortgages to keep them affordable. The program, the White House said, would reach between 3 and 4 million struggling homeowners. More…
A few weeks back, it was the House Oversight Committee’s domestic subpanel that examined the effectiveness of the White House programs designed to curb foreclosures. (They weren’t pleased.) Now, the full committee will have a crack.
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Oversight panel, just announced a More…
One year after the Obama administration launched its $75 billion anti-foreclosure program, the housing market remains volatile, loan modifications have been scant, foreclosures are still sky-high — and more and more lawmakers are wondering why the White House hasn’t More…
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