Permanent modifications for more than 100,000 troubled mortgages have been approved under the government's Home Affordable Modification Program, the Treasury Department reported on Friday. Of those borrowers, 66,000 have accepted the modification offer and the remaining offers are awaiting borrower signatures.
It's an improvement over data released last month, and Phyllis Caldwell, director of Treasury's Homeownership Preservation Office, added that the department is "committed to working with servicers and borrowers to sustain this improved pace."
But despite the improvement in the HAMP numbers, John Taylor, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said more needs to be done.
"The response to the foreclosure crisis has been like that Marx Brothers movie where in the heat of a battle they shout that 'help is on the way' over and over again, but the response is humorously small," he said. "Tough talk and action on bonuses and repayment of bailout funds should be accompanied by a stronger response on foreclosure prevention. This is an important pocketbook and a political issue for millions of Americans, and failure now means growing disillusionment."
And the foreclosure problem clearly isn't going away.
Figures released earlier this week from RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure marketplace, showed that the number of U.S. residential properties receiving at least one foreclosure filing jumped 21% in 2009 to 2.82 million. The numbers would have been worse if it wasn't for some of the legislative and industry-related delays in processing the delinquent loans, RealtyTrac's CEO, James Saccacio, said.
In the long term, "a massive supply of delinquent loans continues to loom over the housing market," Saccacio said, and many of them will end up in the foreclosure process this year and beyond.
Keller Williams Sonoran Living
Realtor®
602-622-2776 Main
602-258-7035 Home
It's an improvement over data released last month, and Phyllis Caldwell, director of Treasury's Homeownership Preservation Office, added that the department is "committed to working with servicers and borrowers to sustain this improved pace."
But despite the improvement in the HAMP numbers, John Taylor, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said more needs to be done.
"The response to the foreclosure crisis has been like that Marx Brothers movie where in the heat of a battle they shout that 'help is on the way' over and over again, but the response is humorously small," he said. "Tough talk and action on bonuses and repayment of bailout funds should be accompanied by a stronger response on foreclosure prevention. This is an important pocketbook and a political issue for millions of Americans, and failure now means growing disillusionment."
And the foreclosure problem clearly isn't going away.
Figures released earlier this week from RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure marketplace, showed that the number of U.S. residential properties receiving at least one foreclosure filing jumped 21% in 2009 to 2.82 million. The numbers would have been worse if it wasn't for some of the legislative and industry-related delays in processing the delinquent loans, RealtyTrac's CEO, James Saccacio, said.
In the long term, "a massive supply of delinquent loans continues to loom over the housing market," Saccacio said, and many of them will end up in the foreclosure process this year and beyond.
Michael Pittman
Keller Williams Sonoran Living
Realtor®
602-622-2776 Main
602-258-7035 Home