Fighting foreclosure with 31 precent of your income

Written By: George Haughton

Fighting foreclosure just became interesting for many home owners. I have taken one paragraph out of the president Obamba's speech to analyzes it some more for my understanding and to be able to write or blog about it. The flowing is the paragraph regarding how the government will work with the those in foreclosure:

"If lenders and home buyers work together, and the lender agrees to offer rates that the borrower can afford, we'll make up part of the gap between what the old payments were and what the new payments will be. And under this plan, lenders who participate will be required to reduce those payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower's income. This will enable as many as three to four million homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure."

After reading the speech I got to wondering if this new payment was based on a new rate and current monthly income with a subsidy from the government for the difference? For example if the home owner makes $1000.00 per month then my monthly payments would be about $310 per month. However, what if my original monthly payment was $2000.00, which included my taxes and my income went from $2800.00 to the current $1000.00 will the government pay the difference? I really doubt this could actually be the case but that is how it sounds to some home owner fighting foreclosure. Other say this $310 is based not a traditional 30 mortgage but more like a 500 year mortgage. Fighting foreclosure just got easier.

This is what one reporter wrote quoting the president: "In prepared remarks today in Phoenix, the president said, “Let’s say you earn about $30,000 per year and you find a house that costs $232,500. 31 percent of your monthly income would be about $775, which puts you in a nice comfortable 443-year mortgage at an interest rate of 4.0%, which is fair for someone like you. You win, the banks win, and most importantly, the economy wins."

Again fighting foreclosure not only just got easier but if you can't stop foreclosure with this plan then you don't need to own a home right now.

How do I know if I qualify for this plan? Check the White House Web Site

Foreclosure real estate

Foreclosure real estate Attorneys experienced their bankruptcy business slow down after the bankruptcy laws were changed by the government in favor of the credit card companies and most creditors in general. In other words the laws were now stacked against the borrower. Due to the current home foreclosure crisis the government is now amending the bankruptcy laws to allow the trustee to get some principle reduction or restructuring for the homeowner.

After this brief slow period the attorneys is experiencing once again a boom in bankruptcy filing, but now the attorneys have added the filing of a possible loan modification. Loan modification is needed because homeowners are dealing with mortgages that were created in good times with weird guidelines.

When these mortgages went bust in early part of the recession lenders counting on the increase of the equity to cover any lost sustain in a home foreclosure. However, when the housing bubble burst the opposite occurred, property values fell hard and foreclosures increased.

Real estate as always been a sure bet in the past and banks did not consider that they would take such a nose dive. Typically in normal economic environment homeowner could have use a mortgage refinance to get themselves out of trouble. However, these toxic loans pushed homeowners in foreclosure instead . Meanwhile the lenders made a plead for a bailout from the government hoping to survive this wave of foreclosures ; which they did not see this coming.

Bankruptcy was all ways an option in the past for homeowners facing foreclosure. However, now we are dealing with a different type of loans that when went bad were difficult for homeowner to handle. For example the sub prime loans came with adjustable rates that would push payments out of the reach of the homeowner. Bankruptcy could not stop that. Most of these borrowers could not refinance into a prime rate mortgage because of their credit or income data.

Another type of loans that went bust was the option arm loan which was structured with an introductory rate as low as 2.9% with a potential increase of additional 6 percent over the life of the loan. Therefore if you started with a rate of 2.9 with an index of 4.5, your effective rate would be 7.40 but you were only require to pay each month the 2.9 interest only. These option arms created a negative amount each month because the borrower was not paying the fully indexed mortgage rate each month based on the 7.40. Therefore, under the prefect conditions these loans could work but with the Libor and Treasure index going creating a run away mortgage.

Attorney’s across this country is now in demand working with homeowners fighting foreclosure using not only bankruptcy but loan modification. Filing bankruptcy has its limitation, with home equity falling. Loan modification would not only create a fix rate but increase the numbers of years to pay off the loan. Hopefully the new bankruptcy laws will allow the bankruptcy trustee to obtain such restructuring.