Mortgages

Step One: Find out who holds the Mortgage – How to find out who holds the mortgage

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a new site where you can share your stories, make suggestions, and file complaints. http://www.consumerfinance.gov/

By the Numbers: A Revealing Look at the Mortgage Mod Meltdown:
by Olga Pierce and Paul Kiel

Stories in this series

• Failed Oversight
• Obama’s Retreat
• A Dysfunctional Industry
• Poor Results, Little Progress
• The Way ForwardMarch

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The State of the Government’s Loan Modification Program

See the performance of all the mortgage servicers.

Tell Us Your Story

Are you a homeowner who’s struggling to pay your mortgage? Are you seeking a loan modification through the government program? We want to hear from you .

Are You in Mortgage Servicing?

Have you worked for a servicer in a loan modification call center? We want to hear from you.

Resources

• Making Home Affordable.gov
  The administration’s web site for the foreclosure prevention program. Provides an FAQ, homeowner examples, and other tools to see whether you might qualify for the program.
• Foreclosure Avoidance Counselors
  A list of HUD-approved housing counseling agencies nationwide.
• FTC Tips for Mortgage Servicing Consumers
  Tips for homeowners from the Federal Trade Commission.
• Program Guidelines for Mortgage Servicers
  These “supplemental directives” lay out how mortgage servicers are supposed to conduct the program.
• Compensation for Mortgage Servicers
  This Treasury Department document lays out how mortgage servicers are compensated for completed modifications
• Calculated Risk
  A finance and economics blog that provides news and metrics on the state of the housing market.

For the past year, we’ve been digging into the administration’s fumbling efforts[1]. We’ve crunched a lot of numbers along the way, and now we’re sharing what we found – including loads of previously unreported data.Using new Treasury Department figures, previously unreleased documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, and new analyses of state and industry data, we have assembled the most detailed look yet at how the the mortgage industry [2] and the government’s main effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), have failed homeowners. It provides crucial context to the ongoing government investigation into mortgage servicing practices, which might lead to reforms [3] of how banks and servicers handle homeowner requests for modifications.

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Tell us your story

Are you a homeowner who’s struggling to pay your mortgage? Are you seeking a loan modification through the government program? We want to hear from you.

Here’s what we learned:

• Only a fraction of struggling homeowners are getting help.… [4]
• Mortgage servicers are only reaching a small fraction of struggling homeowners.… [5]
• The largest servicers, especially Bank of America, have left most struggling homeowners in limbo without either modifying or foreclosing. [6]
• HAMP itself hasn’t made much difference: It hasn’t led to an increase in modifications.… [7]
• Just over one in five homeowners who applied for a HAMP mod have received a permanent modification… [8]
• And in one quarter of rejections, mortgage servicers – notorious for losing documents – have cited missing documents as the reason. [9]
• Here are your overall chances of getting a mod with each of the top servicers. [10]
• Treasury claims servicers are improving, but its own data show otherwise. [11]
• When servicers offer a mod, it’s generally more affordable than mods used to be.… [12]
• But instead of mods, servicers have recently been offering more repayment plans, which actually increase struggling homeowners’ payments. [13]
• In the end, most government funds set aside to help homeowners are still unused.