Word: hampe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...problem the Administration is out to tackle is related to the structure of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The first three months of a mortgage rewrite are something of a probation period- and very few homeowners are making it out of that trial. More than 650,000 borrowers have been placed in trial modifications, but as of September, fewer than 2,000 had become permanent. (See pictures of the faces behind the foreclosures...
...effort being spent on whipping companies into shape, though, there is much less energy going toward addressing the changing nature of foreclosure. HAMP was crafted to deal with the effects of the housing bubble: excessively easy credit let people buy homes they couldn't really afford and often with loans that carried spiking interest rates and payments...
...Under the U.S. government's plan, a modified loan payment must not account for more than 31% of a family's income. With unemployment north of 10%, in a growing number of cases, the mortgage isn't the problem - the lack of a paycheck is. "It increasingly appears that HAMP is targeted at the housing crisis as it existed six months ago, rather than as it exists right now," concluded the Congressional Oversight Panel, a group charged with evaluating the program, in an October report...
Still, the larger storm cloud on the horizon is the state of the jobs market. While an out-of-work person can, theoretically, get a loan modification under HAMP by proving eligibility for at least nine months of unemployment benefits, the program isn't set up to handle someone without a regular stream of income...
Rising unemployment isn't the only dynamic HAMP fails to thoroughly take into account...