US Treasury Releases State Data On Home-Loan Adjustments
By Darrell A. Hughes, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday released
state-specific data on its trial home-loan modification program that shows
California is the leading state with more than 134,000 active modifications.
The Treasury Department said the government's Making Home Affordable program
has more than 650,000 trial modifications underway throughout the U.S. and "the
program is on track to meet its goals over the next several years."
Of the 650,000-plus total trial modifications, California has 134,609 active
home-loan modifications.
"The program is having a pronounced impact in areas hit hard by the housing
crisis," Treasury Assistant Secretary Michael Barr said in a prepared statement.
"We're reaching borrowers at a larger scale than any other modification program
to date, but there is still much more work to be done."
Under the program, mortgage servicers receive hefty incentives to reduce
monthly payments of eligible borrowers down to 31% of their income. Borrowers
receive payments for staying current on the modified loan. No incentives are
released until the loan modification has survived a three-month trial period.
Other states with high levels of active loan trial modifications include
Florida with 82,614; Illinois with 33,514; Arizona with 34,424 and New York with
28,773.
The administration has insisted it is on track to help as many as four million
homeowners through the program--a goal that housing advocates and experts have
criticized as too modest, given the upwardly spiraling foreclosure problem.
About 4.6 million people will lose their homes by the end of next year despite
foreclosure-prevention efforts, Moody's Economy.com predicts, helping to bring
the total carnage of the housing bust to nine million homes lost by the end of
2011.
-By Darrell A. Hughes, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6684; darrell.hughes@
dowjones.com
(Jessica Holzer contributed to this article.)
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
11-10-091050ET
Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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