FHA Allows for Loan Modifications for Homeowners Who Haven’t Yet Missed a Payment
Welcome Back Readers! It was a busy week last week in the real estate world, the Lancaster County PA Real Estate Market is moving quickly. I apologize for the shortage of posts recently due to this but you can expect a little more consistency in the coming weeks. I wanted to start of this week with a nice change announced by HUD last Friday.
Until HUD made this change to the rules for FHA loans, in order to qualify for a loan modification, struggling homeowners had to actually MISS payments. So, if you knew you were going to be in torouble, you had to let it happen before you were eligible for loss mitigation. Check out the release from HUD on the details of the program.
The complete press release from HUD is after the jump
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| HUD No.10-017 Lemar Wooley (202) 708-0685 |
FOR RELEASE Friday January 22, 2010 |
- FHA defines an “FHA borrower facing imminent default” to be an FHA borrower who is current or less than 30 days past due on the mortgage obligation and is experiencing a significant reduction in income or some other hardship that will prevent him or her from making the next required payment on the mortgage during the month that it is due.
- A forbearance agreement is an agreement by the loan servicer to postpone, reduce or suspend payments due on a loan for a limited and specific time period.
- FHA-HAMP allows qualified FHA-insured borrowers to reduce their monthly mortgage payment to an affordable level by permanently reducing the payment through the use of a partial claim combined with a loan modification. The partial claim defers the repayment of a portion of the mortgage principal through an interest-free subordinate mortgage that is not due until the first mortgage is paid off. The remaining balance is then modified through re-amortization and in some cases, an interest rate reduction.
The borrower must be able to document the cause of the imminent default which may include, but is not limited to, one or more of the following types of hardship:
- A reduction in or loss of income that was supporting the mortgage loan, e.g., unemployment, reduced job hours, reduced pay, or a decline in self-employed business earnings. A scheduled temporary shutdown of the employer, (such as for a scheduled vacation), would not in and by itself be adequate to support an imminent default.
- A change in household financial circumstances, e.g., death in family, serious or chronic illness, permanent or short-term disability.
Loan servicers must document the basis for its determination that a payment default is imminent and retain all documentation used to reach its conclusion. The servicer’s documentation must also include information on the borrower’s financial condition.
Additional information and guidance can be found on HUD’s website.
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So, good news overall for those struggling with making ends meet. Don’t be fooled into thinking a loan modification won’t hurt your credit, it will, but not as much as losing your house to foreclosure would. If you have an FHA Mortgage and are having a tough time making it due to a hardship in your life, call up your mortgage company, maybe you can save your home and your credit from foreclosure.
As always, I’d like you to be part of the conversation, so if you like what you read here please comment, forward The Lancaster Connection.com to your friends, subscribe and if you have questions, need real estate advice or want to buy or sell a home, you can call or text me at 717-371-0557, email me at Jason@JasonsHomes.com or contact me at the office at 717-490-8999!
Your Friend in Real Estate,
Jason Burkholder
Weichert, Realtors – Engle & Hambright
Search for Lancaster County Homes for sale at www.JasonsHomes.com by clicking here!
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Comments
One Response to “FHA Allows for Loan Modifications for Homeowners Who Haven’t Yet Missed a Payment”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying...[...] Readers! I put up a post the yesterday about how FHA has recently chnaged their policies to allow loan modifications for qualifying borrowers before they miss a payment . This is a great policy and I sincerely hope it will help more people stay in their homes. [...]