Consumer Law

Obama Foreclosure Plan Still Falling Short

By Alan White

Treasury has issued its report on mortgage modifications under HAMP for December.  The total number of permanent HAMP mods rose from 31,000 at the end of November to 66,000 at the end of December.  In other words, HAMP is resulting in 33,000 permanent modifications per month.  A year ago, the industry was voluntarily and permanently modifying more than 100,000 mortgages per month.  In November and December, about 420,000 new foreclosures were started and about 170,000 foreclosure sales were completed.  HAMP is just not working.

Despite Treasury?s fanfare about its drive to convert temporary modifications to permanent modifications, the pace of conversion did not increase significantly in December.  Treasury tries to mask the sad reality by reporting only cumulative numbers each month, rather than giving a more honest report of month-by-month numbers, requiring those of us who care about what is actually happening to do some arithmetic to get at the truth. 

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on January 15, 2010 (boomark / email).