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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (441843)	12/21/2008 8:19:42 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578264

Ted, > Chrysler claims 1/3 of their employees are mgmt. What percentage of the WA state education department actually consists of teachers? Ten's magical mystery tour. I give up. What percentage?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (441843)	12/22/2008 10:57:30 AM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1578264

Fannie Mae to offer "early workouts" even if you've never missed a payment By Kenneth R. Harney / The Nation’s Housing Sunday, December 21, 2008 Here’s some good news for homeowners facing tough financial times: You no longer have to miss two to three mortgage payments before your lender will “modify” your unaffordable loan. Starting immediately, mortgage giant Fannie Mae will allow borrowers who face financial problems to seek “early workouts” - even if they’ve never missed a payment. Fannie’s policy change has the potential to help thousands of people who are losing jobs or facing layoffs as the recession worsens. Most lenders and loan servicers traditionally refused to intervene in mortgage problems until borrowers were 60 to 90 days late. At that point, so-called “loss-mitigation” staffers would sometimes “work out” solutions short of foreclosure, rescheduling late payments, extending 30-year mortgages to 40 years, etc. But now, Fannie will require loan-servicing firms that handle its 12 million mortgages to inform borrowers about “advance” loan modifications. That’s where borrowers can get “trial periods” of reduced mortgage payments, usually for four months. Make payments on time during the trial period and the servicer might make your modified mortgage terms permanent. Say your spouse loses a part-time job and suddenly you can’t pay your $2,000 monthly mortgage bill. In the past, calling your loan servicer to ask for help would have meant being told nothing could be done until you fell several months behind on the mortgage. Unfortunately, you’d be thousands of dollars in the hole, facing big late-payment penalties and well along the way of ruining your credit by the time that happened. Under the new process, Fannie servicers will try to lower your monthly payments upfront. If you send in your reduced payments on-time for four months but your financial situation still hasn’t improved, the servicer will make your loan changes permanent. (Servicers will check income, credit reports and other documentation to make sure people don’t fake hardships just to get smaller mortgage bills.) Fannie’s new loan-modification program puts the company in sync with a number of other large firms that have begun reaching out to borrowers to prevent foreclosures. JPMorgan Chase plans to identify and work with as many as 400,000 customers who appear in danger of missing future payments. Bank of America recently announced a similar effort. With the addition of Fannie Mae, the vast majority of major market players now offer some form of early foreclosure prevention. But there’s one big unknown: If your servicer modifies your loan, will you stay out of trouble - or just fall behind later? The jury’s still out on that one. On one hand, a recent federal study found that 53 percent of people who got their mortgages modified wound up in trouble again within six months. But modification advocates like Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., argue that generous changes to consumers’ loan terms succeed at far higher rates. Ocwen Financial Corp., one of the country’s largest servicers of delinquent subprime mortgages, agrees. Less than 25 percent of its modifications - which often involve deep cuts in interest rates, payments and even loan principal - end up re-defaulting. “If you do it right, modifications really work,” Ocwen Executive Vice President Paul Koches said. What should you do if you see financial trouble on the horizon? Immediately contact your servicer to find out whether Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or another major lender owns your loan. If one does, request an early workout. Before home foreclosures started going off of the charts, getting such help from lenders would have been almost inconceivable. But today, it’s part of most loan servicers’ marching orders. bostonherald.com