I can't believe that we can't do something together. There is something afoot, and it is called HAMP or HAFA.
I was working with Titanium Solutions, but I think they might have dropped me already because of some comments I made on the Rain. So, here goes the other shoe, as they say.
Why aren't the banks working with the current homeowners to help them stay in their homes? Why are they working so hard to get the homeowner to fork over thousands of dollars when they fall behind for a month or two because their finances have fallen apart because of a job loss, death, divorce or a call to the service?
Everyone assumes it is because the owner is a deadbeat. And everyone assumes that the banks don't want to own property.
Both are fallacies perpetuated by the media....and owned or controlled by someone who has a financial interest in government...by the people, for the people, etc.
Only 500,000 homeowners had received permanent loan modifications as of August 31, 2010 through the government's HAMP program (Home Affordable Modification Program). In most cases, it consisted of either a lower interest rate or longer payment terms. On the other hand, I know of cases where the HAFA program consisted of higher interest payments AND longer payment terms, which most borrowers were adverse to.
There are estimates that there will be be anywhere from 3 to 5 million mortgages delinquent in the near future, and the pace of foreclosures will rise again, once the lenders figure out how to deal with the government's intrusion on their foreclosure practices..which will happen because we know that Wall Street and the banks are too big to fail. How about you....and me....and our friends and neighbors? We are not too big to fail, are we?
No one cares if we go down. NO ONE.
But, the good news is that the banks may not be adverse eventually to reducing mortgage balances. Why? At a congressional hearing this year, a J.P. Morgan Chase executive said that reducing the amount owed would reward people who consumed more than they could afford while potentially raising costs for future borrowers. However, the recourse is that you yank those people out of their homes, giving up future potential earnings on a nearly identical debt load at a nearly identical interest rate, and it costs the bank, the interest for over a year in Minnesota, at least, attorneys fees, appraiser fees, realtor fees, MERS fees (in lieu of paying recording fees to counties and local governmental agencies), taxes, upkeep on the property, trashouts in some instances and heat and electricity costs often.
Does that make good economic sense? No.
And, yet, we, the consumers, investors, and taxpayers yield to the megaliths's determinations of how to deal with this economic crisis that they brought on themselves with their "derivatives" finally crashing the stock market and getting the government to bail them out. This is madness at its finest.
I will smash the Lincoln Log fort, and dad, can you not only put it back together for me but buy me a new set so I can wreck it again? That is pretty much what happened in pre-school terms.
If, we, the taxpayer, consumer and investor had it so good!
Take a good look at the candidates this election year. Are they working to make your life better....or is it business as usual. Do they still support the banking industry or are they willing to make them clean up their act(s)?
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