As a homeowner struggling to make your monthly payment, you may have to choose between things like seeing a movie, Christmas presents or even food on the table just to keep the roof over your head. In a recent press release, HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a new loan modification program, which has plans to offer individuals struggling with their mortgage some help.

Note The Changes

The program, being called Hope for Homeowner, has undergone some further modifications. The goal is to get lenders to participate, something that has to happen for anyone to get their loan under the microscope for improvement. The new modifications to the program allow the lenders to write off less of the loan value than in prior situations.

The homeowner will benefit from this program because the lender will renegotiate the mortgage with them. They get a lower monthly payment and therefore have the money they need to make the monthly payment. In order to help make this possible, the loan terms (the length of the loan) can now go to as much as 40 years.

The Hope for Homeowners program is designed to help individuals to get into new loans if they are struggling with their own. The goal is to make the loans affordable for each borrower, so that foreclosure can be avoided. To do this, the rules of the program state that the monthly payment on the mortgage cannot be more than 31 percent of the homeowner’s monthly income.

The rules also allow for the lender to write down the loan to 96.5 percent f the home’s actual value. This is up from the 90 percent it was when the program first came to be this summer.  Another change is in the amount of debt that the home has. As a homeowner, you may not have household debt of more than 43 percent of your monthly income.

In order to qualify for the Hope for Homeowners program, your home loan must have originated prior to January of 2008. You also have to have a loan amount that is lower than $550,440.

Do You Qualify?

Many people may qualify for this program. Others may not. All should make the move now to find a solution to their current financial situation.  The Hope for Homeowner program is one option that many people have, and anyone who may be struggling right now to make their loan payments should contact a loan specialist to get some help in qualifying.

If you are otherwise struggling with your debts, even if you do not quality for this specific program there is still help available to some. Refinancing your loan is an option. There are also program in place to help you to liquidate the lien you have on your home through a second mortgage or equity line, so that you can actually qualify for the Hope for Homeowners program or refinance your home otherwise.

These changes to the program may in fact help encourage more lenders to start working with their struggling borrowers. You do not have to wait to see if your lender approaches you, though. In fact, you likely should not do this. Rather, you should work with an FHA loan specialist or other lender to try and find a better solution for your loan. In many situations, homeowners are never aware that they do have options for saving their home.

In fact, even if you are not behind on payments or struggling to make them, these professionals can help you to refinance your loan into more affordable terms or to help you simply to save money.

Tags: FHA, FHA Loans, Foreclosure, Hope for Homeowners

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 11:37 pm and is filed under FHA Loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.