Good News for U. S. Housing: the October 2011 Housing Scorecard
I was on my way to bed, but I just read an article in today's RISMedia daily e-News that made me login to activerain again so that I help spread the good news. In our industry, reports like this one have been scarce in recent years, but this report is very encouraging.
The Obama Administration's Housing Scorecard -- a comprehensive report on the nation's housing market which was recently released by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U. S. Department of the Treasury -- offers a few glimmers of evidence that some of the effort to help America's homeowners weather the economic storm are making a measurable difference:
•October saw a continued decline in mortgage defaults, due in part to foreclosure prevention programs which are reaching more borrowers earlier in the process.
•in the last quarter, a million more homeowners refinanced their loans under some of the lowest interest rates in history.
•More than 5.3 million modification arrangements were started between April 2009 and the end of September 2011 – including more than 1.7 million HAMP trial modification starts, more than 1,064,000 FHA loss mitigation and early delinquency interventions, and more than 2.5 million proprietary modifications under HOPE Now.
•The total number of agreements offered continues to more than double the number of foreclosure completions for the same period (2.3 million).
•More than 850,000 homeowners have received a HAMP permanent modification to date, with a median payment reduction of over $520 each month.
•Eighty percent of eligible homeowners entering a HAMP trial modification since June 1, 2010 received a permanent modification, with an average trial period of 3.5 months. After six months in the program, more than 94 percent of homeowners remain in their HAMP permanent modification.
•Homeowners in HAMP permanent modifications have saved an estimated $8.8 billion to date.
Of course there is still much work to do to help the market recover, but these are definite signs of progress;
Read the article here: http://rismedia.com/2011-11-05/october-housing-scorecard-positive-trends-but-mixed-overall/
The government’s full report is available online at www.hud.gov/scorecard.
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