My post yesterday about Congressional efforts to extend unemployment led me to a rather off-the-cuff comment about how efforts to reform unemployment have left those homeowners without a job to face the brutal foreclosure system. And the unemployed homeowners aren’t able to qualify for programs to modify their mortgages because they don’t have sufficient [...]

President Obama announced his housing plan to avoid foreclosure of homeowners who are currently paying their mortgage but are not likely to be able to do so for long through little fault of their own. The program is also designed to stop foreclosure on homeowners who could afford a lower payment if they could get their mortgage refinanced at current market interest rates. The Obama housing plan is known as the Homeowner Affordability and Stability plan and is estimated to help 7 to 9 million people at a total cost of $275 billion.

Unlike current programs to prevent foreclosure, the Obama housing plan doesn’t require that the homeowner be behind on their payments to enter the program. And for homeowners qualifying under the foreclosure plan, the federal government also will make payments of up to $1,000 a year for five years toward the homeowner. That’s a $5,000 reduction in the principal of a mortgage for simply making your mortgage payment on time every month for the next five years!

Loyal readers may have noticed that I haven’t yet done my review of government and lender mortgage modification programs.  It’s not that I haven’t been thinking of issues related to foreclosures.  It’s simply that I’ve been too busy to sit down and put the work into the post that the topic deserves.  I hope to [...]

Absent some breaking news on the credit card front, I’ve decided to spend the next couple of days looking at mortgage modifications and the foreclosure process.  Although this is generally a website about credit card debt, I can’t help but occasionally stray on to the hot topics of the day.  It’s interesting to me, and [...]

Various news outlets reported on Thursday that Democratic Senators and Citigroup had reached an agreement to allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of mortgages for homeowners in the bankruptcy process.  The financial industry has previously opposed the procedure, known as “cramdowns,” which force mortgage modifications on debt holders.  The hope is that bankruptcy judges [...]