Part II of this article series examines the pedigree of a true “short sale specialist” and highlights the many tedious aspects of qualifying a negative-equity homeowner for a short payoff with his mortgage lender.

Part I of this article series details the process of qualifying a negative-equity homeowner for a short payoff, setting the sales price at the broker price opinion (BPO) and submitting a purchase agreement to the lender for appraisal and closing conditions, with a brief discussion of tax aspects of a shortsale and alternatives.

Eligible homeowners may skip all or part of their monthly mortgage payments for one year or more as part of the administration’s new foreclosure avoidance program. The effort is directed at unemployed homeowners in an effort to keep people in their homes while they get back on their feet. Here, under yet another government program, [...]

The California housing market continues to flounder almost two years after the official end of the nation’s Great Recession (June 2009), and so does the broader economy. Statewide home sales volume and prices continue to decline and the present trend in the number of single family residential (SFR) construction starts is downward as well. [For [...]

The Administration’s Housing Scorecard for May 2011 was recently released, giving detailed assessments of the ten largest lenders participating in the Making Home Affordable Program, which includes the Administration’s own Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The Housing Scorecard rates the performance of lenders in three categories: identifying and contacting homeowners; homeowner evaluation and assistance; and [...]

The federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has been officially deemed a failure by the House of Representatives, and legislation has been introduced to end the botched corrective effort. HAMP’s goal was to provide loan modifications for up to four million homeowners nationwide, but narrow qualification requirements left all but 521,630 homeowners ineligible, a [...]

The administration implemented the $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) to lower a homeowner’s monthly mortgage payment by reducing their interest rates to as low as 2% for five years and extending the loan terms for up to 40 years. To sweeten the deal, the participating mortgage companies receive tax incentives. For lenders, participation [...]

This article provides a sneak peak at the California Housing Financing Agency’s (CHFA’s) proposed allocation of $700 million of federal aid intended to help California’s distressed homeowners stay in their homes or provide relocation assistance.

The following is an abridged editorial version of the original article. For the full article, please click here. In preparation for the deluge of foreclosures expected to wash over California and the country by the end of 2010, Bank of America (B of A) has released information on a new program: a $3 billion principal [...]

This article examines Bank of America’s proposed principal reduction program scheduled to go into effect in May 2010.