Foreclosure: Lenders Come Forward To Help Foreclosure Victims
With foreclosures telling on all and bringing down the housing market to its knees lenders are at last awakening to the fact that when a ship sinks all go down. They are responding to strong criticism and promised the Mayors at Detroit last Tuesday that they would finance credit counseling, setting up of hotlines and put up a database to help sort out the tangled web of ownership of foreclosed properties.
At MGM Grand Detroit, mayors, lenders, bank personnel and non-profit community organization representatives went into a closed-door conference regarding foreclosures. On Tuesday the Mortgage Bankers Association promised to donate $100 per each unit of foreclosed property. The number runs into one million approximately. The objective is to set up hotlines for those in trouble. The association also is trying to set up a database to locate and detail all the units that are affected by foreclosures. As yet due to packaging of mortgages the whole thing is in confusion as regards servicers and actual lenders. By their efforts a studio will be set up in Washington, which will be available to mayors so that they can film a public service announcement regarding foreclosures. The mayor of Detroit, Kilpatrick pioneered such a move but it has not been aired as yet.
During the meeting some demonstrators, about ten in number, protested outside the hotel where the meeting was in progress. They were loud in their demands for legal action to put a hold on foreclosures.
A non-profit organization stated that 72% of those in foreclosures have the capacity to continue to stay in their houses if given the right kind of help. The mayor’s stressed on the point that those people in the foreclosure net or about to be caught should immediately seek advice and help. Three quarters of those in the foreclosure soup have not reached the end of the road but it is impossible for them to cope with rising interests – the rise often being more than double.
John Taylor, president and chief executive officer of National Community Reinvestment Coalition opines that what has happened is that an unprecedented number of people have been made to buy a bad product.
The president of the conference of mayors – Douglas Parmer of Trenton said that the problem is not confined to those in foreclosures but is spilling over to cover other areas. Consequently none will be spared.
