Making Heads or Tails of the Homeowners' Assistance

Making heads or tails of Homeowners Assistance Programs

Unemployed and not feeling so optimistic about finding a new job?

There are a ton of options now. I’m still trying to make heads and tails out of them all!

Will they help? Don’t know but let’s see what happens.

Jose Palomo of Riverside County in California lost job for the city of Riverside and his mortgage lender told him there was no way he could save his house from foreclosure.  Just recently he found out that he was approved for a forbearance program from CitiMortgage slashing his payment from $1,130 to $600 for three months and in the meantime he can hunt for a permanent job.

Nowadays unemployment is the number one reason why mortgages are defaulting. 

In recognition of that, some banks under the Making Home Affordable Program offer at least three months of special assistance to unemployed homeowners who have to make mortgage payments.  The assistance can be extended as long as the bank would like.

When the homeowner finds employment and the forbearance ends, the bank has to evaluate the homeowner for a permanent mortgage modification that is affordable based on their new level of income.

Details of the California mortgage forbearance program, especially eligibility which we all can agree is the most important part, were being redrafted early next week.  The California Housing Finance Agency’s original plan was to give each recipient $1,500 a month or half the monthly morgage whichever is less.

Additional help is coming called Emergency Homeowner Loan Program to assist struggling homeowners to provide them loans of up to $50,000 to help pay their home mortgage, insurance, and property taxes.

The question here is, will cutting that mortgage or giving this loan help San Diego keep their real estate or delay the imminent foreclosure?  Clearly it will help them be able to keep going for awhile.  The issue at hand may truly be that there needs to be more more job creation.  If people don’t have jobs, they can’t afford the homes or the loans:(