Representatives from mortgage servicing companies will be meeting with
senior officials from the Treasury and Housing and Urban Development
departments today to discuss the results thus far of the government’s
Home Affordable Modification Program. Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan told the mortgage servicers in
a letter that there have not been enough mortgage modifications
completed to date. There were 160,000 trial mortgage modifications made
by servicing companies as of mid-July, according to the Center for
American Progress, with 165,000 more outstanding offers. More than 1.5
million homes have gone into default or received foreclosure notices in
the first half of 2009. TRD 4 Comments

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Congress should fund state and local mandatory foreclosure mediation
programs, a new report from the Center for American Progress argues.
When hearing foreclosure cases, most judges find that more than 80
percent of homeowners at risk of foreclosure have not made any attempt
to work with their lenders to mitigate foreclosure. But in states where
mediation programs are now used more frequently, up to 75 percent of
foreclosure cases are being resolved without formal proceedings, the
report found. The report recommends that the Department of Housing and
Urban Development allow community development block grants to be used
to fund mediation programs until Congress provides funding and that the
government require mediation for all federally insured home loans. TRD [more]