What You Need to Know About the Obama Loan Modification Plan

This Plan was developed to help struggling home owners restructure their mortgage, which would reduce the foreclosure rates and Keep home owners in their homes and would also slow the decline in home values. The Obama Loan Modification Plan has about $75 billion allocated to accomplish this task of making bad loans good and should help about 4 million home owners to save their home's from foreclosure. In the first quarter of 2008, over 50% of loan modifications that were done has failed within the first 6 months and these home owners were again facing foreclosure; the main reason for this is because they were put into unaffordable loan modifications. The Obama Loan Modification Plan was developed to make a change in the loan modification arena, which would make sure home owners that qualify would be put into an affordable loan modification.

The plan is centered around affordable payments for home owners, as they believe that homeowners will stay in their homes if they have an affordable mortgage, despite declining real estate property values. Majority of home owners that end up into foreclosure is because they can't Afford the payments anymore, whether it's because they got into a loan they couldn't afford in the first place or life events such as job loss, death in the family or illness.

In order to make the payments affordable, lenders that are participating in this program are required to reduce the home owner's mortgage payment to 38 percent of their gross monthly income otherwise know as their debt to income ratio or DTI. From there the government would make financial contributions to bring the 38 % DTI to 31 %. To accomplish this goal, the lender or servicer will first reduce the rate as low as 2 %, if they are not at the 31% DTI mark, then they will further extend the terms or amortization of the loan from a 30 year mortgage to a 40 year mortgage. One of the main disadvantages of this plan is that it doesn't have any provisions that would require the lender or servicer to reduce the balance of the loan, which would have been a great incentive for home owners to stay in their homes, especially in states like Florida, Arizona and California. Because for some home owners that have seen the value of their homes dropped up to 50% of what it was worth a few years ago, then an affordable payment make not be enough to motivate them to stay in their homes and instead they will either walk away and lose the home to foreclosure or do a short sale and move on with their lives.

The Obama Loan Modification Plan has a 3 month Trial period, if they payments are made on time for the first 3 months then the modification will become permanent and the rate and terms will be fixed for 5 years. Then lender will be paid $1000 for each loan modification and up to an additional $3000 over a period of 3 years as long as the home owner continues to make their payments. Home owners also get a cash incentive where they will get up to $1000 reduction in their principal balance for up to 5 years as long as they make timely mortgage payments.

It is important to note that the Obama Loan Modification Plan was developed for individuals that have primary residences and don't apply to investor or speculators that bought investment property in hopes to flip for a quick profit.