HAMP = Foreclosure
by ilene - April 27th, 2010 4:30 am
Yesterday’s article "Is 103 Months to Clear Housing Inventory Too Optimistic?" included an excerpt from the WSJ’s "Number of the Week: 103 Months to Clear Housing Inventory," suggesting there were at least 103 months of housing inventory yet to hit the market. Patrick Pulatie, CEO of Loan Fraud Investigations, wrote to me that he believed the 103 estimate was far too low.
One of Pat’s reasons was that "the HAMP modifications will have a failure rate of at least 75%. That is due to the Debt Ratios that the mods are approved at. In Feb, the mean ratio was 59.8%. In Mar, it was 62.7%, which to increase that much, most every Mar approval was far above the 62.7 number."
In this article, Pat discusses the HAMP loan modification program in more detail.
HAMP = Foreclosure
Courtesy of Patrick Pulatie (originally published at Implode-O-Meter Blog)
Over the last year, I have been watching the HAMP modification program with great interest. I have wanted to believe that the Federal Government would actually put into place a loan modification program that would help homeowners, though I knew that this was likely false hope. The results are now in, at least in my opinion.
HAMP is a fraud. Nothing else can be said otherwise. The Government has once again put into place a program that will not help homeowners. Instead, HAMP modifications will end up postponing homes foreclosures for a period of time for modified loans, but, most will end up losing the home in the end, except for a “very” lucky few who actually make it. I cannot believe that the Government expected anything other than the HAMP program would end up being a failure. To understand what to expect, we must look inside the numbers.
In March, the February results for HAMP were released. Key points of the update were:
* 1.3 million total trial modification offers.
* Almost 1.1 million trial modifications have begun since the program began.
* 72,000 new trial modifications started in February.
* More than 170,000 permanent modifications granted to date.
* 91,800 other permanent modifications offered and awaiting acceptance.
* 0.9% permanent modifications cancelled
* 8.8% total modifications cancelled, 88,663 total
If one looks at these numbers and compares the…