Freddie Mac Expands Efforts to Help People Facing Foreclosure Save Their Homes
Freddie Mac is the government-controlled mortgage giant that, along with Fannie Mae, has bought the majority of mortgages in this country. They currently have 340,000 loans where borrowers have missed payments and are facing foreclosure. While these loans are owned by Freddie Mac, they are being serviced by other mortgage companies such as Wells Fargo, CitiMortgage, JP Morgan Chase, and US Bank.
Although Freddie Mac owns these loans, he has sold them to investors in mortgage-backed securities. Each time one of these loans is foreclosed, both the investor and Freddie Mac lose a substantial amount of money. Therefore, it is in Freddie Mac’s best interest to help people facing foreclosure save their homes, if possible.
As of September 2009, the results of the Making Home Affordable loan modification program have been a dismal failure. Trial loan modifications have been initiated on only 16% of the estimated 3,100,305 loans that are eligible. The mortgage companies in the program aren’t moving fast enough. So Freddie Mac has taken two steps to help people facing foreclosure save their homes.
Step One: Titanium Solutions
Many people facing foreclosure have no idea what they can do to save their homes. Most feel that it is useless and that there is nothing they can do. They will lose their homes. So they do nothing. They do not contact your mortgage company. Do not seek help from a lawyer or loan modification expert. They just wait for their mortgage company to take their house and evict them.
Some people have contacted their mortgage company and asked about a loan modification. However, they never send the information your mortgage company needs to process and rule on your application.
The first step that Freddie Mac took was to address both situations. They hired Titanium Solutions. Titanium Solutions hires local representatives to go out and meet with people who have fallen behind on their loan payments and are facing foreclosure. These representatives are usually real estate agents who know their areas well.
The first group of people Titanium representatives call are those who have been notified by their mortgage company that the foreclosure process has begun and have not responded. Titanium representatives walk them through the Making Home Affordable Program and the steps they can take to apply for a loan modification.
The second group of people that Titanium representatives target are those who have not provided all of the information that your mortgage company needs to evaluate your loan modification application. They will ask you to get the missing information and help you submit it to your mortgage company.
The third group of people Titanium representatives help are those who have started trial loan modification periods. They help them fill out the paperwork to make trial modifications permanent at the end of the three-month trial modification period.
Freddie Mac felt that one of the challenges people facing foreclosure had was trusting that someone really wanted to help them save their homes. They felt that personal contact from Titanium representatives, especially since they were people right there in their own community, would go a long way in establishing this trust.
Step 2 – Home Retention Services
Freddie Mac has also engaged in home retention services. This is a subsidiary of Stewart Lender Servicers, Inc. Many of the mortgage companies that participate in the Making Home Affordable modification program have a large backlog of requests for modifications to be processed. Home Retention Services representatives help these mortgage companies process these applications.
Interestingly, Freddie Mac did not require the mortgage companies to increase their staff in order to handle the high volume of applications they have. Rather they chose to hire an outside company to provide this service.
The work done by representatives from Titanium Solutions and Home Retention Services should help increase the number of trial loan modifications. It should also help many more people facing foreclosure save their homes.
If you are facing foreclosure and a representative from Titanium Solutions contacts you, please remember that the representative has been hired to help you. Meet with them and let them help you.
Your loan modification request may be processed by a Home Retention Services representative and you may never know it. If you find that one of their representatives is processing your application, remember that they are helping your mortgage company process the application record they have. Because they are more impartial, the results may be more favorable than if your mortgage company processed your application.
