Federal Legislation: Housing Aid May Be Coming
Categories: Bankruptcy, Current Events, Foreclosure
At Seattle Debt Law we consider bankruptcy a last resort option for homeowners who are behind on payments and/or facing imminent foreclosure. However, clients struggling with payment resets that can often increase their monthly mortgage payment by a third or more have few options. Luckily Congress is pledging to finally bring relief to homeowners through a government housing fund backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Although the final bill has yet to come up for a vote, a deal has between reached by Senate Democratic and Republican leaders to bring a bill to the Senate floor and it should help homeowners with expensive adjustable-rate loans apply to refinance to stable 30-year fixed rate FHA mortgages.
It is too early to assess the impact of this bill on homeowners facing imminent foreclosure, but if there is a way to save your house, we will work with housing counselors to make it happen and keep your legal options for bankruptcy or predatory lending litigation open if the refinance or loan modification does not come through.
The “Bill” They are talking about, is a $300 Billion bail out that would shift Billions of $$ worth of mortgages into FHA programs. Who funds FHA programs? The Tax Payers.
I’m all for helping people to keep their homes, and would definitely support the government helping people, but a $300 Billion project like this seems very shortsighted, and I would be interested to see how they foresee this affecting the future generations of tax payers. The government needs to temper their willingness to help people in the short term by taking a look at how it will affect us in the long term.
My point being, let’s help people now, but let’s not set something in motion that could create a future situation that is far worse than the situation we are trying to allevieate.
Great Posts, By the way. You have a good blog going here, and I hope that others will post replies to it.
Comment by David Mordue — July 1, 2008 @ 12:26 am