The blame for the slow rollout of the Obama Administration’s Making Home Affordable Program (HAMP), at least in part, rests with Bank of America and Wells Fargo, according to the report on home loan modifications released by the Treasury. The two banks, which also rank as the largest mortgage servicers in the country, came in last in terms of the initiation of trial modifications as a percentage of their eligible loans. Bank of America, which initiated 27,985 trial loan modifications under the guidelines of HAMP, had the lowest percentage at 4% of its eligible loans while Wells Fargo carried a rate of 6%. Wells Fargo’s poor performance is due in part to their acquisition of Wachovia Corp., which modified only 2% of their mortgages.
The governments Making Home Affordable Program (HAMP) released in March last year was designed to help homeowners modify mortgages and stay in their homes. While qualifications for HAMP seem pretty straight forward, the governments program appears to be failing.
While many borrowers have applied for HAMP, a very small portion of them seem to be getting the mortgage relief they had hoped for ending up in foreclosure or hiring a bankruptcy attorney. If you can’t get a straight answer from your mortgage servicer or denied a loan modification without good reason you might want to consider alternate measures. Borrowers continue to complain about going round and round for months with no results, or stuck in a trial period with no permanent modification.
Bank of America is the third major lender over the past two weeks to freeze foreclosures in the 23 states where the foreclosure process is controlled by the courts. Bank of America went further than GMAC and J.P. Morgan Chase who have said they will amend paperwork only in cases they think were improperly done. So far, that's been a small handful of cases.
Bank of America, in an e-mailed statement, said it would “amend all affidavits in foreclosure cases that have not yet gone to judgment.”
