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EHLP Overview The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act provided $1 billion to HUD to implement the Emergency Homeowners' Loan Program (EHLP). The EHLP is designed to provide mortgage payment relief to eligible homeowners experiencing a drop in income of at least 15% directly resulting from involuntary unemployment or underemployment due to adverse economic conditions and/or a medical emergency. Other EHLP eligibility requirements include: * Income Limit: Applicant has a total household income equal to, or less than, the greater of either $75,000 or 120 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) for a household size of four...

Homeowners facing foreclosure can now tap into a $1 billion program of emergency loans to help tide them over a temporary financial crisis, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced. Beginning today, homeowners in 27 states can file preliminary applications for the Emergency Homeowner's Loan Program (EHLP). Eligible homeowners can obtain interest-free loans of up to $50,000 to help cover mortgage expenses for up to two years. The program is available to homeowners who have seen their incomes fall and who could lose their homes to foreclosure due to circumstances beyond their control, including involuntary unemployment, underemployment,...

Robin Aaron thought it was the end. A ferocious storm ripped through Westmoreland County on Wednesday afternoon, leveling some houses and peeling roofs off others, tearing tops off trees and gouging the auditorium and athletic field at Hempfield Area Senior High School. As chunks of hail rained down, a churning funnel cloud screamed through Sewickley Township, leveling six homes on General Braddock Road. "I was outside taking my dogs in. I looked at the sky. It was getting real bad," Aaron said. "I grabbed my daughter and called to my son. ... We were all curled into a ball (in...

...Homeowners who believe their cases were improperly filed should seek help from a nonprofit housing counseling agency, Robinson said. Those agencies — which can be found at mdhope.org — refer cases in need of legal assistance to Civil Justice and other attorneys with foreclosure expertise. Pending cases with paperwork problems can be dismissed and refiled properly, Robinson said. He added that the really troubling question is what can be done about the homes — potentially thousands in Maryland — that have already been auctioned off in cases involving robo-signed or improperly signed documents. Ten former homeowners called his office in...

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--U.S. stocks closed modestly lower Thursday as investors retreated from financials because of concerns over banks' foreclosure practices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.51 points, or 0.01%, to 11094.6, snapping a four-session winning streak in a day of choppy trading. Financials led the Dow's declines. Bank of America dropped 69 cents, or 5.2%, to 12.60 and J.P. Morgan Chase fell $1.12, or 2.8%, to $38.72. Both are among the wave of banks reviewing their foreclosures after temporarily suspending evictions due to concerns over "robo signers," who approve hundreds of foreclosure documents a day. Among other banks...

The new, 49-state investigation into foreclosure frauds comes as no surprise to people who follow the mortgage service business. Shoddy, deceptive paperwork has plagued homewowners for years. In the industry’s slimy underside, firms push borrowers into default and foreclosure, even when they’ve been making payments on time. Their business model makes defaults profitable, says Marie McConnell who has been auditing mortgages for 24 years. The ugly chain of deception starts with the way the servicers handle your escrow account. A mortgage service company collects your monthly payments, deducts a fee, and passes the remainder to the investors who own the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Treasury Department on Friday acknowledged that the number of homeowners in trouble again despite getting help from the administration's signature mortgage aid program was higher than earlier estimates. Treasury officials blamed the error on mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae, which acts as the program administrator for President Barack Obama's $50 billion Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which helps subsidize new terms for borrowers struggling to keep up with their mortgage payments. Treasury said about 4,764 borrowers, who had obtained a permanent HAMP modification, were behind by at least 90 days, while about 53,041 borrowers were behind...

Treasury Denies Talk Of Massive Homeowner Bailout Joe Weisenthal Aug. 5, 2010, 12:50 PM Image: AP Alright, well for now The Treasury (via CNBC) is denying this morning's talk that Fannie and Freddie are planning to engage in a massive mortgage forgiveness scheme as a way of bailing out the homeowner. That's fine, though we're still not convinced that the Treasury isn't trying to figure out ways right now to further use the GSEs to goose the housing market. Remember, they were given a total blank check last year, add it's clearly the desire of the Treasury and the Fed...

Wildlife officials have killed a grizzly bear in Wyoming and a grizzly bear in Montana to head-off potential lawsuits. The Montana grizzly killed and partially consumed Kevin Kammer at a Gallatin National Forest campground near Cooke City, Mont. on July 29. The Wyoming grizzly killed 70 year-old botanist Erwin Evert on June 17 on the Shoshone National Forest near the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The circumstances were quite different, but the decision to kill the bears was undoubtedly influenced by a 1996 court case over the terrible bear mauling of 16 year-old Anna Knochel at a U.S. Forest...

siding back on the. When the crew was here, they noticed a lower ding on the siding and asked me if I wanted to have it caulked. I said yes (husband wasn't home) and it was no big deal as it's hidden behind the AC unit and behind a shrub. No one ever sees that area. Well, the insurance adjuster did. To boil it down, he said they would only pay to reside the front and back of the house as the caulk job showed we will accept some damage. The problem is our siding is likely discontinued. It will...

An early point about the Obama administration's new plan to help homeowners by forcing banks and lenders to reduce monthly mortgage payments to 31 percent of income, usually unemployment insurance: The new push, which the White House is scheduled to announce Friday, takes direct aim at the major cause of the current wave of foreclosures: the spike in unemployment. As noted in several places, the new health-care bill has already made the cost of employees more expensive and taken away capital that could otherwise have been used to hire workers. Farm-equipment manufacturer John Deere "said it expects its expenses to...

NEW YORK - One of every five U.S. homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their home was worth in the fourth quarter, a trend that poses a serious threat to the U.S. housing market's recovery, real estate Web site Zillow.com said on Wednesday. Homeowners with "underwater'' mortgages are more prone to defaults and foreclosures. They typically do not qualify for refinancings and are unable to sell their homes because they would need to cough up cash at closing time to pay off their mortgage.

A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose on 60...

(11-29) 04:00 PST WASHINGTON -- Go ahead. Break the chains. Stop paying on your mortgage if you owe more than the house is worth. And most important: Don't feel guilty about it. Don't think you're doing something morally wrong. That's the incendiary core message of a new academic paper by Brent T. White, a University of Arizona law school professor, titled "Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis." White argues that far more of the estimated 15 million American homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages should stiff their lenders and take...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Nov. 5, 2009) — Today, Congressman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) announced that Congress has approved H.R. 3548, the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act. The bipartisan legislation would extend unemployment benefits for 14 weeks and for six weeks in states with unemployment rates above 8.5 percent. Missouri’s unemployment rate was 9.5 percent in September 2009. It would also allow military personnel to fully participate in the first-time homebuyer tax credit program and will make payments tax-exempt under the Military Homeowner Assistance Program, which helps military families recoup costs associated with selling a home that has declined in value and...

ALL HOMEOWNERS BETTER READ THIS Cap & Trade legislation: This bill is only 1428 pages long. The House passed it without reading and it is in the Senate now awaiting to read it after they come back from their August recess "fact finding trips". Here is the link for the bill http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bil Home owners take note & tell your friends and relatives who are home owners!!! Beginning 1 year after enactment of the Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to complywith the energy and water efficiency standards of this Act. H.R. 2454, the...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration's effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure may not achieve its goal of helping 3 million to 4 million borrowers and may simply delay mortgage defaults for many, a government watchdog group says. The Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with making regular assessments of the $700 billion financial rescue fund enacted last year, said the Treasury Department should consider whether to improve the current $50 billion program or adopt new programs to meet an expected rise in foreclosures fed by increased unemployment. The panel's report is scheduled to be made public Friday. It comes a day after...

>>>People who default strategically and lose their houses appear to understand the consequences of what they're doing. Piyush Tantia, an Oliver Wyman partner and a principal researcher on the study, said strategic defaulters "are clearly sophisticated," based on the patterns of selective payments observable in their credit files. For example, they tend not to default on home equity lines of credit until after they bail out on their main mortgages, sometimes to draw down more cash on the equity line. >>>Strategic defaulters often go straight from perfect payment histories to no mortgage payments at all. This is in stark contrast...

As you may have guessed, rising unemployment accounts for many home foreclosures. That's turning many people from homeowners to renters. Judy Heller and her husband spent 24 years in their Rochester home, raising their kids. But they're moving out soon. "It's too expensive, we can't afford to stay here and my husband had looked for a job around Rochester but most of them are minimum wage, and you can't survive on minimum wage now," Says Heller. They're moving to an apartment in the Twin Cities, where her husband's found a job. Down sizing means living in a smaller place, and...

PHOENIX -- A Valley couple say their home was put on the auction block even though they successfully modified their loan. So, they contacted 3 On Your Side for help. I would say eight out of 10 times my reports are based on miscommunication and that seems to be the case here. azfamily.com Rachel and Jaime Torres thought they were making their new modified payment. But, as it turns out, they forgot to include money for their escrow account, meaning their new "modified" payment wasn't enough. "I said, 'Oh no! Oh no, my God,' and I broke down in tears,"...