Thank goodness this charade is starting to be exposed. The federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, has misled hundreds of thousands of underwater homeowners into continuing to pay for houses they can’t afford.
Passed in 2009 and hyped by President Obama as a plan to “help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages”, insiders have known for a long time that HAMP is an absolute bust. In our experience, HAMP modifications rarely provided for a modification that could reasonably be termed “affordable”.
Now, five years later, homeowners are beginning to find out just how “affordable” their indefinite servitude loans are. Read this from Josh Salman’s article Higher payments ahead as mortgage program ends in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
About 500,000 U.S. homeowners will face higher mortgage payments this year under the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP. Because worker wages have generally not improved during the five years that those expiring HAMP loans have been in place, many of those same borrowers are still not in a better position to make payments than they were when they first sought help.
Only about 1 million homeowners successfully received a HAMP modification (just a slight miss from the 7 to 9 million promised), and nearly half of those homeowners are going to experience rate increases this year of 1% on their loans. Meanwhile, the interest rate on a 30 year mortgage is 3.82% according to Bankrate.com.
The HAMP program was a scam from the beginning. Many loans were never written down at all, but were increased by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. HAMP turned desperate homeowners into lifelong debt slaves – extending payments for 40 years!
That which cannot be sustained, won’t be. Rising interest rates for troubled homeowners will lead to more foreclosures in the next two years. Hopefully this time around, the homeowners and taxpayers won’t get fooled into subsidizing broke banks…again. Thankfully, the failure of this program is finally coming to light.
Daniel McKillop
Managing Partner, Operations Manager
H. Daniel McKillop sues and defends lawsuits for individuals, families, and small business owners. He also advises small business owners in areas of real estate and contract formations.
Dan takes pride in helping people through financial difficulties, providing legal advocacy and support during tough times.
Dan was an Air Force officer prior to attending law school at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. His duty assignments included deployments to Iraq, the Philippines, and various stints in east Asia.
Dan and Julia have two young sons and have recently relocated to Jacksonville to join our Jacksonville team.
Dan’s practice includes:
- Foreclosure defense
- Real estate litigation
- RESPA and TILA violations
- Probate litigation
- General civil lawsuits.