Hope Now Alliance - Mortgage Industry Spin Machine
The Hope Now Alliance, pushed down our throats as saviors to foreclosure victims by President Bush, is nothing more than a mortgage industry propagandist making sure we all know the big mortgage players are not at fault and doing all they can to help.
Hope Now Industry Partners
Hope Now numbers of foreclosure victims helped are consistently overstated or hide otherwise less than optimum results for mortgage borrowers, but I’ll get to the way they spin the story below. Before delving into that, let’s take a look at the Hope Now Alliance members since it was these folks who set the guidelines to help troubled borrowers in the first place.
They are some of the biggest mortgage originators and servicer in the country. Companies like Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup, Inc., Countrywide Financial Corporation, EMC Mortgage Corporation, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GMAC ResCap, First Franklin Loan Services, HomEq Servicing, HSBC Finance, Indymac Bank, LoanCare Servicing Center, Litton Loan Servicing, MERS, Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC., Option One Mortgage Corporation, Select Portfolio Servicing, Inc., Washington Mutual, Inc., Wells Fargo & Company.
They tossed in a few government paid loan counselors to get some “store bought” credibility to the idea they are “here to help”.
Come on…people, we’ve got the fox watching the hen house hear, so was it any surprise when President Bush promoted Hope Now to the public making outrageous claims about how much they could do. All of which turned out to be false, by the way. You can read my post called, “Bush Caught Lying About Rate Freeze” I wrote back in January when Hope Now was just getting their propaganda machine rolling.
Hope Now Spins The Numbers
Every time the Hope Now Alliance issues a press release touting the numbers of “foreclosures avoided” the mainstream media eats it up without question. They did it again today publishing a new release titled, “Over 2 Million Foreclosures Prevented In Past Year By Hope Now Alliance Members”….hogwash!
The press release states,
“In July 2008, HOPE NOW mortgage servicers helped homeowners avoid foreclosure by completing more than 192,000 mortgage workouts. Workouts include both modifications to the terms of existing mortgages and repayment plans. All workouts are intended to be permanent changes that, barring a life event such as a job loss, death, or illness, will enable the homeowner to stay in the home as long as he or she wishes to do so.”
Hope Now has zero transparency in their reporting of these numbers and lumping in loan modification and repayment plans like they are the same thing is a clear case for propaganda not reporting.
A repayment plan is simply a way to pay the bank everything it was owed under the terms of the original mortgage. Repayment plans are temporary fixes that are likely to go bad again. If they could not afford the loan before a repayment plan it is unlikely they will after. This is not a permanent solution no matter how many times Hope Now Alliance wants to repeat it. It is a collection mechanism, not foreclosure prevention.
A modification is a permanent material change in the terms of the original mortgage….like the rate freeze Bush lied about when announcing the Hope Now program back in January. Hope Now lumps repayment plans and modifications together to muddy the water and make their “helping”, which is really just another collection method, look more altruistic.
According to the Originatortimes.com reported last month,
“HOPE NOW servicers have been at this for a year now. Clearly they have failed. Delinquencies and foreclosures keep going up, and tens of thousands of loans “fixed” voluntarily by industry have already gone bad again. A survey of mortgage servicers by the California Department of Corporations, also released today, shows foreclosures continue to outpace modifications in that state. And a report released last month by a major federal banking regulator, the Comptroller of the Currency, provides more evidence that the nation’s lenders are unable to keep up with, let alone get ahead of, mortgages delinquencies.”
I thought you should know the truth about Hope Now Alliance and their spin machine.
Good Luck!
Previous Post:
Next Post:» Loan Modification Standstill - Who Is To Blame?
Tags: Banking Regulator • Foreclosure Victims • Hope Now • Mortgage Industry • Mortgage Servicers • Mortgage Servicing
Just got off the phone with HOPE and felt more “doomed” than anything else. The “counselor” basically said that I had a great rate (6.625), and that I didn’t make enough money by myself to carry the loan…..DUH! Then I decided to GOOGLE them to see how others recieved them. I feel so much better now. But still need assistance. Oh, my counselor also gave me some good news “Since you live in GA, it can take 6 months before they can start forclosure”???? YEH, THANKS HOPE! I am going to try talking with the bank (Suntrust) directly. Got nothing but hope;)
Please keep posting any tips. At this point I need all the help I can get.
We are in a loan modification with EMC and are still almost three months behind on payment due to both of us losing our jobs within weeks of each other. will this stimulas be able to help us? we are told from EMC that they cannot revise a modification until after an entire year has passed. i thought the stimulas plan was for people in such situations.