A new study shows why restructuring mortgages and implementing a loan modification plan that works is harder than it seems.  Even though the foreclosure crisis is awful, there has at least been nationwide agreement on the best solution for foreclosure prevention: Get more mortgage lenders to modify the home loans of more homeowners. Whittling down the principal, interest or both should benefit all concerned: Homeowners get to keep their houses; lenders save the huge cost of repossessing and reselling a distressed homes; and neighborhoods avoid the appearance of dropping property values. It should be a win-win-win — which is why the Bush administration launched an effort to promote loan modifications and the Obama administration continued the expansion of loan workouts.   Even so, none of these loss mitigation programs has quite lived up to its promise. Under the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), the Treasury Department offered lenders up to $75 billion to help them defray the cost of reducing borrowers’ monthly payments to 31% of their incomes. It also enticed loan servicers with $1,000 for each modification, plus another $1,000 for each modified loan that is still performing after 3 years. The Obama administration estimated that as many as 4 million households would benefit. But after 4 months, only 350,000 borrowers have even been offered new home mortgages, just over half of which have gone into effect, according to the Treasury. . According to RealtyTrac 1,155,299 homes are facing new foreclosure filings from March through June,

FOX Video on Loan Modification for Preventing Foreclosures

It’s still too early to pass final judgment on HAMP. Cleary the program and others like it are struggling in part because of the rising rate of unemployment, which makes it impossible for many people to pay any kind of mortgage, even a more affordable one. No doubt, as critics of the financial industry suggest, many servicers have been slow to train enough staff to do modifications and investors in mortgage-backed securities pose a lingering obstacle.   But new research suggests that the mortgage loan modification effort may also be based on faulty economic assumptions.

According to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the win-win-win concept of mortgage modification understates two of lenders’ strongest incentives to foreclose. The first is that roughly 30% of troubled debtors eventually can pay without a loan modification; thus, for lenders, 30% of the total cost of the loan modification is wasted. And since lenders can’t know in advance which 30% will “self-cure,” they hesitate to offer any mortgage modifications.   The 2nd problem is the risk that homeowners re-default on a modified loan. By the time that happens, the value of the house has declined further, and foreclosure costs the lender even more than it would have earlier. The HAMP program includes $10 billion for partial protection against that risk, but it may not be enough, especially given the sour outlook for employment.

State and federal officials have launched ‘”Operation Loan Lies” — an effort targeting nearly 200 loan modifications firms for a number of alleged illegal practices including promising services they can’t deliver, charging more than $5,000 in advance fees and misrepresenting their affiliations with mortgage servicers.  Former Ditech executive, Jeff Morris said in a recent interview with Loan Modification Buzz, “There is nothing wrong with paying a loan modification company money to renegotiate the terms of your mortgage, but make sure the company actually submits a loan workout request with your lender’s loss mitigation department.”  Morris reminded the news company that not all loan modification firms were bad and that some were actually save families from foreclosure.

Federal and state agencies took 189 actions today against modification and foreclosure-rescue firms, the Federal Trade Commission announced. The coordinated actions were part of a national law-enforcement effort by 2 federal and 23 state agencies to crack down on loan modification scams.  “Operation Loan Lies,” has targeted loan modification firms that allegedly promised to obtain modifications or stop foreclosures, but the companies actually did nothing. Advance fees charged by the loss mitigation firms were equal to one or more mortgage payments, but no loan negotiations ever took place. 

According to a recent report from Foreclosure Related News, mortgage fraud reports spiked 36% in the United States last year as distressed homeowners and mortgage professionals tried to maintain their standard of living from the boom years, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said last week, calling fraud rampant and growing.  The State of Maryland recently issued cease-and-desist orders against seventeen loan-modification companies, part of a national effort to go after consultants the Federal Trade Commission alleges are “con artists” preying on homeowners in trouble. 

Here’s what the federal agency says about “Operation Loan Lies”:The FTC charged that the defendants falsely claimed that they would either obtain a mortgage loan modification or stop foreclosure, or both, and that some of the defendants falsely represented that they would give consumers refunds if they failed to do so. After charging consumers the equivalent of one month’s mortgage payment or more in advance, these companies often did little or nothing to help homeowners renegotiate their mortgages or stop foreclosure. After failing to provide the promised services, the defendants that promised refunds did not honor those promises. Several were mortgage broker outfits and several were loan modification companies that were run by attorneys.

The state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation offers suggestions for avoiding foreclosure-help scams, including this one: “Beware of any person or organization asking you to pay up-front fees in exchange for providing mortgage counseling services or mortgage modification of a delinquent home loan.”  Remember, HUD-approved nonprofits have counselors who help borrowers navigate their lenders’ loan-modification process, and they do foreclosure-prevention work free of charge. Here’s the list of Maryland housing counseling groups.