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1-888 Foreclose-B-Gone !

Wednesday, February 13, 2008 | 04:00 AM

We heard a lot of hoohah about the new mortgage workout plan, including the 30 day foreclosure freeze, and the toll free 1-888-995-HOPE for consumers.

Shorter version, in trader lingo: "Nothing done!"

Longer version, via the WSJ:

"As the Bush administration announced a fresh plan to aid homeowners overburdened by their mortgages, initial figures suggest much-touted earlier efforts have done little to help most troubled borrowers.

An earlier plan, brokered in December by the Treasury Department, called for the mortgage industry to freeze interest rates or expedite refinancing for potentially hundreds of thousands of subprime borrowers, so long as they were current on their payments. In a companion move, the administration announced a toll-free number for homeowners, but the hotline has provided counseling to just 36,000 borrowers in the past two months, and representatives have suggested loan workouts for fewer than 10,000 of them -- a small fraction of borrowers in need...

The preliminary numbers throw into sharp relief the difficulty of finding a workable solution to the housing crisis, with hundreds of billions of dollars in potentially troubled loans flowing through the financial system and foreclosures hitting recent highs. Adjustable rates on some two million subprime mortgages are expected to rise in the next two years, raising the specter of further delinquencies and more financial turmoil."

Here's an overview of the process:
click thru for free WSJ interactive

Source:
Early Effort to Fix Mess In Mortgages Falls Short
RUTH SIMON and TOM MCGINTY
WSJ, February 13, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120285480915463431.html

The Housing Market and the House http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Housing080212-sort.html?s=1