Making Home Affordable: New Plan to Help Struggling Home Owners

I'm a little late writing about this, but better late than never right?

Finally, there is a plan in place with some details on how the US Treasury is going to try to help as many of the estimated 9 million or so troubled home owners as possible. In a Treasury Department press release the details were summarized. It is yet unclear to me whether or not loan originators (like me) are going to be involved in the process, or if it will just be the loan servicers. To clarify, a loan servicer is the person you write the check to every month. Once they take your money, they take their cut and distribute the money to the investors who own your loan. Until now, many servicers have been unwilling to help struggling families until they were severely late on their mortgages, or even in foreclosure. Now, the government is adding a cash incentive for banks to help consumers work it out. Banks really have yet to embrace the new program and put it in motion, but help is on the way.

Apparently, all banks that are receiving federal assistance are going to be required to participate in the program. I guess that's the power that hundreds of billions of dollars buys you, right? I read today that Fannie and Freddie are outlining the details in their selling guides now and the refinances should start somewhere around April 4th (my birthday) or so.

I will keep all of you posted on details as I read and digest them. There is a lot of information flying around out there, but the reality is, only a very small percentage of it really matters. There are countless programs and changes that have been proposed and even enacted- but unless the banks hopped on board, they just didn't matter.

On a positive note- I think all of this is very exciting and think that we are definitely headed in the right direction and will see some good news soon!