St Louis Loan: Foreclosures More Profitable Than Loan Modifications
A new form of income has been enjoyed by numerous companies for simply approving home sales for less than the owed balance. The U.S. Treasury has been paying $1500 per file. These companies also handle the collection of mortgage payments and requests for assistance.
These companies or servicers would also get $1,000 for each loan modification completion under the government’s modification program and additional stipends over a period of three years if borrowers stay current on their new mortgage payments.
The problem that most St Louis mortgage experts are concerned with is there’s not enough incentives or time to save the majority of the 4.6 million U.S. homes that have loan payments more than 90 days overdue.
The irony has become quite clear that servicers make more money foreclosing on a person’s home than trying to help them save it.
In fact, “the incentives being offered by the government are small compared to the counter-incentive of foreclosure” so says chief economist Diane Swonk from Mesirow Financial.
She continues: ‘The mortgage service industry has its own set of incentives, and you can’t tell people to do what’s not in their financial best interest, especially in an economy that is still struggling or dying.’
Most consumers see this as an immoral greed factor helped perpetrated by the U.S. Treasury in its nearsighted approach to doing what is knowingly right for these unfortunate homeowners.
And yes, this has become a double-edged sword so to say. The second quarter of 2009 showed that modified homeowners has missed at least one loan payment as reported by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision.
If we look closer at these statistics, about twenty-three percent of these very loan modifications were 90 days overdue.
Some now say that loan modifications do not work while others insist that we need more time to see how this plan unfolds before throwing in the proverbial towel.
Either way, here’s the interesting part of this whole scenario. These servicers may not lose money in a re-default after-all, said Marie McDonnell, owner of Truth in Lending Auditing & Recovery Services in Orleans, Massachusetts.
The fact remains that these servicers will get their money no matter what happens. How? If a person cannot meet the terms of their new modified loan or if the short sale is not approved by HAFA, the property goes into foreclosure and when sold, the servicer gets their new found income.
The truth be told, the majority of servicers prefer loans that are in default since most of them turn into cash cows. So, why are foreclosures more profitable than loan modifications?
These mortgage servicers can now start charging enormous fees for processing and markups for the attorneys and appraisers who are involved in this transaction.
This of course does not include any late fees that have been charged which can literally run as high as 5 percent of the loan payment.
Take for instance a St Louis foreclosure on a $190,000 home. It may bring in about $9000 or more in income for these servicers who then get paid before the mortgage investors who provided the loan.
The end result could provide up to 10 times the amount of money compared to any government stipends being originally offered to help modify this same home loan.
It is only a matter of time time as mortgage investors fight to minimize such losses due to the fact that servicers are first in line to receive payment upon the sales of the foreclosed property.
This unfortunate situation was only made worse when politicians rejected new legislation designed to allow bankruptcy judges to reduce mortgage balances and interest rates to help such homeowners.
This cram-down provision or what would have been known as ‘judicially modified mortgages’ would have given borrowers better terms and allowed them to avoid foreclosure which is what they wanted in the first place.
This new legislation would have prevented servicers from using greed and financial gain in deciding who gets a loan modification and who goes into foreclosure. One has to stop and think was there any real hope for stopping this mortgage crisis.
To learn more about a St Louis mortgage, stop by Floyd J. Tapia’s site at http://www.LibertyLendingConsultants.com/StLouisMortgage where you can find real tips about securing a St Louis loan. We also invite you to call us at 314-334-0210.
December 31, 2010
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Posted by Floyd J. Tapia
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