Despite speculations that Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt would extend the Home Affordable Refinance Program Tuesday, he did not.

The FHFA recently started an extra push to capture the significant proportion left of eligible HARP refinances. To start, Watt, along with housing experts and community leaders, gathered in a town hall-style meeting at the Woodson Regional Library in Chicago on July 8 to discuss the benefits of HARP and encourage the approximately 36,000 Chicago residents still eligible to participate in the program.  

And just as U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced the extension of the Making Home Affordable program until at least Dec. 31, 2016, Compass Point Trading and Research thought the FHFA would align the HARP expiration with the HAMP expiration, since both were earlier adjusted together  in 2013.

This didn’t happen.

But even if it did, Kristy Williams Fercho, senior vice president and chief acquisition officer at Fannie Mae, who was on the panel in Chicago, said that with mortgage rates so low, now is the greatest opportunity to take advantage of HARP before rates rise.