Hope Now Trying to Keep Up with Growing Foreclosures

9 June 2008

Author: admin Posted under Foreclosure Filings

According to Hope Now, a foreclosure prevention coalition that includes lenders, investors, advocacy groups and mortgage servicers, they have already helped out around 1.6 distressed homeowners since the program started last July 2007.

Last April, they are proud to have helped 183,000 borrowers keep their homes and stop foreclosure. Most of these workouts were for repayment plans, giving distressed homeowners time to update their mortgage payments.

On the other hand, the number of loan modifications that were worked out reached 42 percent of the 77,000 workouts for April up from 36 percent last March. For experts, a loan modification is certainly better than a repayment plan since it is considered to be a long-term solution.

But for Hope Now, the battle is yet to be won especially since they are expecting more homes entering foreclosure in the coming months.

Their expectation is actually not baseless. Comparing the April loan workouts to March, Hope Now noticed a 7.6 percent increase. Roughly, they are talking about 23,000 loans. True, they have helped more families keep their homes but reports from RealtyTrac showed a 65 percent increase in foreclosure filings from last year.

April foreclosure filings reached 80,926 families, a 12 percent increase from March’s 72,024. Such huge increase is certainly making Hope Now quite frustrated. After all, they can only do so much.

The housing market is certainly deteriorating. According to Standard & Poor’s/ Case-Shiller, the national home price index have fallen by 14.1 percent during the first quarter of 2008. This index is actually the lowest since 1988.

With home prices declining, homeowners are likely to feel more pressured and worried about working out their mortgage troubles. Options to sell or refinance will no longer be considered if home prices continue its downward spiral. As of today, areas in Florida and California, which are seeing the largest decline in home prices, are also the parts where volume of foreclosure homes is huge.

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