HARP Outreach Event - Newark, New Jersey - YouTube

Naa Awaa Tagoe, Senior Associate Director, Division of Housing Mission and Goals, FHFA: Good morning! I'm pleased to welcome you to FHFA's fifth

outreach event on the Home Affordable Refinance Program

otherwise known as HARP. Now before we turn to the details of

HARP, I would like to acknowledge a couple of people in the room today.

Mr. Colon is the Director of Real Estate Finance and Housing Assistance

for the city of Newark.

Julio Colon, Director of Real Estate Finance and Housing Assistance for the city of Newark: Thank you and on behalf of mayor Ras Baraka, I want to welcome you to the city

lovely city of Newark. Newark as we know

for the most part has a lot of struggles with respect to

in the area of finance and one in particular is the

mortgages that we carry in the state of

New Jersey. Foreclosure is a major issue.

I welcome the panel.

Mel Watt is the Director. Welcome to our fair city

and I look forward to a engaging

and interesting dialogue among us all.

Naa Awaa Tagoe: So now I'm really excited to share with you the details of the

Home Affordable Refinance Program, because HARP provides a unique opportunity

for homeowners who continue to pay their mortgages.

They owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth but they continue to

make their mortgage payments

and HARP is designed just for them. So with HARP these homeowners can

refinance their mortgages

through a simplified process which we call a streamlined

refinance process, and HARP enables them to save

hundreds of dollars a month by refinancing into a lower mortgage rate.

And our estimates show that New Jersey homeowners

who have refinanced with HARP, have saved about two hundred and twenty dollars a month

as a result of that. And that's twenty-six hundred dollars a year.

That's a significant amount of money, savings to a homeowner.

So that the program numbers are

good, but you know we believe that there are many more families out there

who can benefit from HARP. In New Jersey alone,

there are twenty thousand, that's twenty thousand homeowners in New Jersey,

who are both eligible for HARP and have a financial incentive to refinance.

But we believe that if homeowners are provided with the facts,

they will make good decisions and

we also believe that the people in this room are the right people to build that

trust and to

help us get the word out. Now this initiative is so important

that the Director of FHFA is here today. Please join me in welcoming

the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Mel Watt.

Mel Watt, Director, Federal Housing Finance Agency: I want to welcome you here.

I'm delighted to be here, I like these events because

I'll tell you why. We have

a number of opportunities to help people

who are struggling with their mortgages

but typically most

help is provided to people who have

defaulted on their mortgage. They're a month, two months behind,

three months behind, sometimes a year behind, but the HARP program

is different. In order to be eligible

to refinance under HARP, you have to be

current in making your mortgage payments.

Now, I said I like this program and the reason I like it is because

of all of the people that I would

think I would want to reward during this meltdown

that took place around mortgages,

it's the people who stayed the course. They're still struggling. Their homes are still

underwater yet

when we call them on the phone and say

"we got this deal for you", they say "oh no no no!"

"You told me not to fall for these scams..."

which we did tell them not to fall... I mean we are committed to that

proposition. You should never fall for a scam.

And this program sounds too good to be true.

They don't believe that we can save them money,

but we can. So we need

you to deliver the message to them

that this is not a scam, that this is something

that will benefit you ...maybe two thousand,

twenty-five hundred, in some cases, three thousand dollars

a year. I came to beg

you all to be our trusted partners

because I know that

the citizens of Newark trust you

a lot more than they trust me. I need you to tell them that we can help

and we will help, if they will take the first step.

And help your neighbors

and friends in your communities help us stabilize their

neighborhoods. Thank you so much.

Perhaps Robert from Fannie Mae, if you could answer for us the specific eligibility criteria for HARP.

Robert Koller, Director of Credit Risk Management, Fannie Mae: Yes, it's actually quite simple.

From an eligibility perspective for HARP, it really comes down to a couple

quick things.

One is is that the loan had to be originated

prior to May 31st, 2009.

From a payment perspective, what we're looking for

is that the borrower has made all their mortgage payments in the last six months

and only had up to one time thirty day delinquent

in months six through twelve. So it's pretty simple when we look at it that way.

In addition to that, just from an eligibility perspective, we get questions

all the time

"well, what is the minimum FICO that I need or the borrower needs to have?" and

really, there is no minimum FICO.

Naa Awaa Tago: If you could tell us ho the people in the audience

can help the lenders in the outreach in getting the word out to homeowners?

Alex Shreeve, Director, Portfolio Mangament, PHH Mortgage: So our challenge has been to reach those consumers, concerns

Once we reach those consumers, we're able to provide them the right direction and

assistance in making an educated decision

but it's just getting them on the phone or getting them to call us has been the

biggest struggle that we've had. So the folks here can help us with that.

Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, Executive Director, New Jersey Citizen Action: And then the groups in the audience, community-based groups,

can ..if they have volunteers...and many of you do,

we should be at VITA sites and in front of tax centers right now,

when people are paying, are getting their taxes prepared...

telling them about programs. Churches need to be doing

bulletin inserts telling their,

telling congregants that the program's available.

Audience Member: My question is about the interest rate on the HARP?

Alex Shreeve: What we do, from our perspective,

is take the time to walk through all the options with the consumer,

talking about what their current interest rate is, what their potential rate is,

their cost to refinance, and do an analysis

with them to provide them the data to make an educated decision. Rates right now, as we talked about, are

much lower, we still have people six, seven percent interest rates...

they don't necessarily have to go into a longer-term loan, they can shorten their term or

go into a like term.

Audience Member: I got jerked around

several times on several different programs

and I'm behind five years.

Phyllis Salowe-Kaye: I just want to mention that HUD-certified counseling agencies

are places that you should be

looking to for help, not necessarily people on

the internet that promise you, mail you, or call you.

Make sure whoever you're going to - a helping entity,

not a lender in particular-- you go to a HUD-certified counselor.

Audience Member: I've done that. It was always something qualify for....

Mark McArdle, Chief Homeownership Preservation Officer, U.S. Department of Treasury: Our focus here today is HARP, but there's also HAMP, which is the Home Affordable Modification Program.

The primary goal of the program to get you, it's for folks facing a hardship,

who are delinquent or behind on their mortgage or are facing a hardship,

and they try to modify your mortgage so it's affordable for you.

Yvette Gilmore, Vice President, Servicer Relationship and Performance Management, Freddie Mac: For any borrower who is ninety days or more delinquent,

if it is, if the loan

is owned by either Freddie or Fannie, you can qualify

for a streamlined modification.

So there's no documentation for it, it does

offer principal forbearance in certain cases,

so it's not an actual reduction, but it

is a forbearance and on a month-to-month basis,

it will give you the same relief.

Audience Member: How can you tell if you have a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan?

You want to explain that to folks?

Yvette Gilmore: Right, so you can actually go to FreddieMac.com

Robert Koller: Or from a Fannie Mae perspective knowyouroptions.com

Yvette Gilmore: Right, and you will actually come into a site and you simply put in your address

and it will tell you whether or not either one of us

own the loan. And then, actually in both of our websites, we have

all of the descriptions of the modification programs,

the refinance programs, etc. that we offer, so you're not reliant

on someone else to be able to tell you. You can self

educate and then be able to say "this is what I want

and tell me what else I would qualify for."

Audience Member: This is a wonderful program that my husband and I just went through

but I live in a neighborhood,

within two blocks of my neighborhood, there's at least six

vacant houses.

Yvette Gilmore: Both FHFA as well as all of us here are very, very sensitive to the issues that are

happening

in individual neighborhoods,who have been, in certain cases,

decimated by the foreclosure crisis.

We have a full suite of programs that can

help people if they are able to pay a mortgage payment. If they're not,

we can work with them to sell the property

even if it's worth less than what they owe.

Robert Koller: One, because I'm extremely passionate about the HARP program,

but two, I think that there's some valuable information in here that I want to

get out.

If your loan was modified previously, you can HARP as long as you meet the HARP

criteria. So whether you took advantage of one of the modifications with the GSE's

or a HAMP modification and now you are eligible for HARP, you can take advantage of

HARP.

Just because your current lender or your current servicer won't help you,

that doesn't mean you can't go to another lender out there.

From a Fannie Mae perspective, we have a scrubbed list of lenders from

across the country posted on knowyouroptions.com if your lender does not

work

with you or doesn't want to work with you, go to knowyouroptions.com,

look in in your local area and pick a handful of other lenders that are more

than willing to help you refinance your

mortgage. I'm gonna challenge every single person in this room, whether

you're a homeowner,

a Congressperson, a counselor...

you are all trusted advisers right?

You all know somebody who can take advantage HARP, so go out there and

help us with this information.

Alex Shreeve: I have consumers today that we are finally getting through HARP

that we've made seven or eight or ten attempts to get to before we've

reached them and gotten them comfortable with what it is.

So again as we talked about in the beginning, helping us and helping the lenders or

helping the consumers get to the right people is key.

Audience Member: One of my experiences or many of the experiences

is is that many lenders are not educated about what you're talking about.

Yvette Gilmore: We do train services, we do monitor and measure their performance,

but we can't guarantee that

the first person that you talk to is going to be the right person and be completely

educated but, if you

stay after it, as that intermediary for

a borrower, you will get to the right person.

Naa Awaa Tagoe: So as we wrap up I just wanted to point out that we have shared a lot of

information today, a lot of

eligibility criteria, we've shared numbers-

all of that information is available on the website that we've set up for this

program.

So please check out www.harp.gov. I do want to thank everybody for coming

out,

for supporting this event. We're sure we have the right people here with us and

we appreciate your support. Thank you.