The Obama Administration’s foreclosure mitigation programs provided relief to millions of distressed borrowers recovering from the housing market over the past four years.
The Making Home Affordable Program has assisted nearly 1.6 million homeowners since its inception in 2009, the Obama Administration said in its April Housing Scorecard report. That figure is up from the last scorecard report when the administration said more than 1.5 million home rescue actions were launched through HAMP programs.
Homeowners continue to benefit from deep payment relief, helping them sustain their mortgage payments overtime, the report added.
As of March, more than 1.1 million homeowners have received a permanent modification through the Home Affordable Modification Program, saving homeowners $546 on their mortgage payments each month — an estimated $19.1 billion to date.
Additionally, 87% of homeowners starting the program in the past two and a half years have received a permanent modification of their mortgage through HAMP.
As a result, HAMP modifications continue to exhibit lower delinquency and re-default rates than industry modifications, the report explained.
“The Administration’s programs have improved outcomes for homeowners by setting new standards for mortgage assistance and putting into place unprecedented consumer protections,” said Tim Massad, Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability.
He added, “HAMP continues to offer struggling families meaningful relief to avoid foreclosure and strengthen local communities.”
For instance, after six months in the program, more than 94% of homeowners remain in permanent modifications and 9.2% of homeowners are 60-plus days delinquent, the report noted.
The Federal Housing Administration has offered more than 1.7 million loss mitigation and early delinquency interventions since the launch of HAMP.
Meanwhile, HOPE Now lenders offered homeowners more than 3.5 million propriety modifications through February.
Homeowners currently in permanent HAMP modifications were granted about $9.9 billion in principal reduction. Of all non-agency loans eligible for principal reduction entering HAMP in April, 70% received a principal writedown.
In April, more than 109,000 second-lien modifications were completed through the Second Loan Modification Program. Additionally, more than 140,000 homeowners exited their homes through a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure with the assistance of the government’s Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program.
The 15 metropolitan areas with the highest HAMP activity included Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, Cali.; New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA; Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Fla.; and Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI.
Since the inception of the government’s Making Home Affordable Programs, the Treasury has required participating servicers to take specific actions to improve their processes through ongoing reviews.
The top three servicers for April were Bank of America (BAC), CitiMorgage (C) and Homeward Residential.
