If your in foreclosure I have some critical advice for you. Don't count on the government to save your home for you.
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) program might assist about 80,000 delinquent borrowers the ability to refinance into more affordable loans. With 1.2 million homes in foreclosure that comes out to only about 7% will get assistance. That leaves 93% with no assistance. That means you have a 93% chance of losing your home if you count on the Federal Government. Those are bad odds.
We certainly check the bailout program eligibility of everyone that contacts us, but the guidelines are so strict that virtually no one qualifies. To me it seems an easy way for our politicians to sound like they are doing something about the problem, without doing something about the problem.
"It won't help the majority," said Lisa Rice, vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, a national organization dedicated to ending housing discrimination. "It's only going to help that one bucket, and it's hard to say how large that bucket will be without knowing the details of how the Treasury Department will assess affordability."
The plan would also seemingly exclude borrowers who hold option-ARMs that aren't subprime. These are loans that start with extremely low "teaser" rates before rising dramatically a few years into the loan.
It has also been reported that homes that were bought as investments - as opposed to for the purpose of living in - would be excluded.
We see some people in foreclosure procrastinating, thinking that some government program is going to come to the rescue. By the time they realize that they are on their own, many times it's to late to work something out with the mortgage company. Let's face it, our government moves, slow and the foreclosure process moves quick, these two time lines just don't match up.
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) program might assist about 80,000 delinquent borrowers the ability to refinance into more affordable loans. With 1.2 million homes in foreclosure that comes out to only about 7% will get assistance. That leaves 93% with no assistance. That means you have a 93% chance of losing your home if you count on the Federal Government. Those are bad odds.
We certainly check the bailout program eligibility of everyone that contacts us, but the guidelines are so strict that virtually no one qualifies. To me it seems an easy way for our politicians to sound like they are doing something about the problem, without doing something about the problem.
"It won't help the majority," said Lisa Rice, vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, a national organization dedicated to ending housing discrimination. "It's only going to help that one bucket, and it's hard to say how large that bucket will be without knowing the details of how the Treasury Department will assess affordability."
The plan would also seemingly exclude borrowers who hold option-ARMs that aren't subprime. These are loans that start with extremely low "teaser" rates before rising dramatically a few years into the loan.
It has also been reported that homes that were bought as investments - as opposed to for the purpose of living in - would be excluded.
We see some people in foreclosure procrastinating, thinking that some government program is going to come to the rescue. By the time they realize that they are on their own, many times it's to late to work something out with the mortgage company. Let's face it, our government moves, slow and the foreclosure process moves quick, these two time lines just don't match up.
