Free Republic

Nearly half of the homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out. A new report issued Friday by the Treasury Department said that approximately 630,000 people who had tried to get their monthly mortgage payments lowered through the effort have been cut loose through July. That's about 48 percent of the 1.3 million homeowners who had enrolled since March 2009. That is up from more than 40 percent through June. The report suggests foreclosures could rise in the second half of the year and weaken the ailing housing market, analysts say. Another 421,804, or 32.3...

WASHINGTON – Just over 31,000 homeowners have received permanent loan modifications under the Obama administration's mortgage relief plan, a big setback for the government's embattled effort to stem the foreclosure crisis. Lenders blame the low success rate — only about 4 percent of the nearly 760,000 borrowers who have signed up — on borrowers who don't return the necessary paperwork to complete the process. Bank of America Corp., for example, had only completed 98 modifications at the end of November, far fewer than several smaller rivals. GMAC Mortgage completed 7,100, the most of any lender in the program, which was...