Home Foreclosure Help - Counseling Agencies Empower Homeowners
There are a bunch of different individuals and organizations that are trying to ease the strain that homeowners have been feeling because of the subprime mortgage crisis in this country. The best known example, is President Bush's compact with the mortgage industry to freeze interest rates on select mortgages before they adjust to make their required monthly payments higher. Another good example of an institution that's trying to make it easier for people to stay in their houses is the New Hope Alliance. The New Hope Alliance is made up of counseling agencies, trade groups, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr, and fourteen mortgage companies. With all of these different resources pooled together, the New Hope Alliance could provide a lot of help to a lot of homeowners.
While the efforts of the New Hope Alliance and President Bush are laudable, they do have some shortcomings. For example, the compact that President Bush made with the mortgage industry really doesn't offer that much relief. First of all, it will only help a relatively small number of homeowners. For example, if an adjustable rate mortgage was taken out before the summer of 2005, has already adjusted up, the homeowner has missed any payments, or the homeowner is judged to be able to pay the new rate; then that homeowner won't be eligible for help from the President's plan. At the same time, there's a good chance that even homeowners who are eligible for help under the President's agreement with the mortgage industry won't be helped. That's because the participation of the mortgage industry in the President's plan is completely voluntary because the plan isn't a law. The New Hope Alliance's efforts are respectable too, except that the New Hope Alliance is often criticized for failing to include banking egulators from individual states, thereby decreasing its own effectiveness unnecessarily.
The unfortunate side effect of these efforts is that many homeowners are getting a false sense of hope for a solution to their problems, when the reality is that that they won't necessarily get any help at all! Fortunately, homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure can take matters into their own hands by contacting a foreclosure counseling agency.
Foreclosure counseling agencies are institutions that can advise homeowners about the best way to avoid foreclosure and even negotiate with creditors to come to a mutually beneficial solution to the homeowner's problems with making their mortgage payments. Foreclosure counseling agencies- at least the legitimate ones- charge little or nothing to homeowners and are transparent in their dealings with homeowner's and lenders.
Foreclosure counseling agencies help homeowners at risk of foreclosure by taking advantage of an intimate knowledge of the laws and regulations governing foreclosure. In fact, many of the individual counselors who work in these agencies come directly from the banking and lending industry.
Of course the real benefit that foreclosure counseling agencies provide is a sense of control over their situations for homeowners. Rather than waiting around for someone else to come up with a solution to their problems (or more often not coming up with a solution at all), foreclosure counseling agencies allow homeowners to actually do something proactive to save their homes, or at least minimize the damage of a bad financial situation. That can be extremely empowering for any homeowner!
For more information, click Home Foreclosure Help.
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