Obama’s housing plan released: Making Homes Affordable

Last month Barack Obama came to Mesa to outline his a plan to help the housing market. Today, the details of his “Making Homes Affordable” plan was released. Looking at all the reports online the only thing that is really clear is no one agrees what the bill will allow you to do and what the outcome will be. There seems to be as much confusion now as there was when Obama announced there would be a plan last month.

It appears that those who have fallen behind in their mortgage and can prove why that has happened with income and tax returns, the government will be giving incentives to both you and your lender to come to an agreement that gets you current on  your loan and keeps you there. We will try to get details from loan mod experts and let you know the details as the get clarified.

The plan aims to help nearly 4 million Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac customers who currently owe up to 105% of their home value to refinance the loan. The plan did not though specify how those homes could be refinanced, but instead left Fannie and Freddie to come up with refinancing guidelines. The Treasury Department did not say exactly who would qualify, but estimated it would be around 4 million. While details are yet to be developed the Treasury did say this program would be for those who are current on the mortgage payments. It appears by most reports this program appears to be more like a FHA Streamline Loan where no appraisal is required on the home.

So for now we recommend homeowners contact their mortgage servicer to get more details on how the refinancing or modifications may effect them.