Homeowners are facing the worst crisis due to the present recession and the economic crisis. Due to the ever increasing foreclosures, house prices are at an all time low. This is because of the depressed sentiment that even one foreclosed home can create in its neighbourhood. This has caused the peculiar situation that many homeowners are saddled with their home that is worth less than their liabilities on account of its purchase. President Obama, having realised the predicament of the homeowners has now introduced the home loan modification plan to solve these problems.
The plan had a quick start in March, 2009 after being announced just a month before, that is, February, 2009. A part of the plan provides for refinance to the homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure. Traditionally, one is asked to at least invest 20% equity in order to be eligible for refinancing. But the fall in prices have robbed the homeowners of their wealth who no longer can afford such investments. Considering this fact, Obama's plan provides for easier terms for refinancing to enable the homeowners to better manage their payment of monthly instalments and thus avoid foreclosures.
About 5 million homeowners are likely to be benefitted by the plan, which offers ways and means of modifying the mortgage loans. The Government will compensate the mortgage lenders who will work with the distressed homeowners by restructuring their monthly payments at lower levels.
The lenders would be made to reduce the interest rates so that the monthly payments of the homeowners using the loan modification plan will not be more than 38% of their gross monthly income. There are still more possibilities to further reduce the interest rates to make the monthly payments to 31% of the monthly income. For this the lenders can get matching dollar amounts from the Homeowner Stability Initiative of the Government. Considering that the present layoffs have considerably reduced the monthly incomes of the people, often a homeowner may have to part with 40 to 50% of their incomes towards mortgage payments, loan modification plan has become has become an absolute necessity to provide relief to them.
The lending institutions are required to complete a series of steps, as laid out by the U.S. Treasury while providing relief to the homeowners through loan modification. These guidelines would help to make the process more efficient compared to the past initiatives of same nature. What happened in the past was to provide loan modification by linking missed payments with the principal amount. However such an attempt failed to reduce the monthly payments. Now Obama's plan strikes the right chord with the people as they would be required to pay lesser bills and thus have the real solace.
by Lindsy Emery
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