Mortgage Freeze Program?

The mortgage rate freeze plan that was announced on December 6th, 2007 is designed to help those that qualify avoid foreclosure by freezing their payments for five years. The only problem is that qualifying for the program may be as hard as winning a lottery.

The first thing that you should understand is that the program is voluntary. This essentially means that if your lender feels like it they can give you the opportunity to participate in their version of it.

So here goes. These are the hoops that you have to jump through to make it to the end of the maze of qualification.

· Your mortgage must be an adjustable rate loan
· You must have taken out your loan between 2005 and July of 2007
· Your credit score has to be less than 6.60%
· You home value must be less than your mortgage amount
· You cannot be over 30 days late on your payments
· You cannot have been over 60 days late on a payment in the last 12 months
· This only covers loans whose rates are resetting in 2008
· The borrower must not be able to afford their increased payment amounts
· The payments must be increasing by over 10%
· Your credit score cannot have risen by more than 10% during your loan
· Plan goes into effect next year. If your loan resets this year – too bad.

Need I go on? If you are one of the few people that may qualify for this program, then your next step is to call your lender and see if they feel like arbitrarily changing a legal contract that they may or may not have sold to investors. I wonder how that will play out in court?

Your lender has always had this plan available. A better name for it might be called refinancing. If you think that you might be included in this plan you are welcome to call the Home Preservation Foundation at 800-995-HOPE to find out. Don’t hold your breath waiting.