The federal Making Home Affordable program offers several alternatives for helping homeowners who can not cover their mortgage. If you’ve already fallen behind in your payments, then the best bet is HAMP, the Home Affordable Modification Program. HAMP offers loan servicers financial incentives to change initial mortgages so the payments will become more affordable; it is advised to accept applicants through the end of 2012.
Function
HAMP is available to qualified homeowners who are struggling with their mortgage, whether they are near falling behind, delinquent or in foreclosure, Making Home Cheap states. If your monthly payment–such as property taxes, insurance and homeowner association dues–is over 31 percent of your yearly earnings, your loan servicer will lower it to 31 percent by reducing the rate of interest. If this doesn’t work, he might also extend the duration of the mortgage and make it possible for you to postpone paying some of the principal before the end of the mortgage.
Identification
Creating Home Affordable defines your loan servicer because the bank that manages your loan and collects your obligations. This might be the same firm that owns your loans, but a lot of lenders contract mortgage-management out. Any servicer that manages mortgages backed by the federally regulated businesses Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should take part in HAMP; the authorities also offers financial incentives to servicers that don’t cope with corporation.
Considerations
To qualify for HAMP, you have to own and reside at a one- to four-unit house with a first mortgage that began before Jan. 1, 2009. Your monthly payment must be over 31% of your pre marital earnings, and you need to be able to prove financial hardship that makes it impossible for you to continue paying it. There is also a limit on how large the remaining principal on your mortgage can be: On a one-unit residence, for instance, it can not be greater than $729,750.
Benefits
The government pays servicers for each loan that they change under HAMP. Creating Home Affordable also pays a part of their principal off for each on-time payment the homeowner makes. A year of timely payments could result in a 1,000 pay-down of their principal.
Process
If you meet the basic HAMP qualification, your servicer will require recorded information about your income and expenses to be certain that you are able to pay off a loan. She’ll then figure out whether the loan, including the government’s incentive obligations, is worth to the proprietor. If it is, the mortgage must be modified; or even, modification is optional. If the servicer modifies the loan, then you’ll have a 3-month trial period to make payments on it; if everything goes smoothly, you and the servicer will sign a modified loan agreement.