HARP Miami - YouTube

Maria Fernandez, Associate Director, Office of Housing and Regulatory Policy, FHFA: Good morning I want to welcome you to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's fourth outreach

event on the Home Affordable Refinance Program or HARP as we also call it. I'm so

pleased to see all of you here today because we need your help to get the word out on the

unique opportunity that is HARP. Harp is not going to be available forever which is why

it is so critical that you help inform home owners of this opportunity. So what is HARP?

The program is designed to allow a streamlined refinance process for eligible borrowers

whose homes have declined in value. Our estimates show that HARP has helped home owners nationwide

on average, save $200 a month on their mortgage payments. That is $2,400 a year.

The savings for Miami home owners that have HARPed is even greater. On average, Miami area

home owners that have HARPed have reduced their mortgage payments by almost $220 per month.

Florida has the largest number of remaining HARP eligible borrowers with an incentive

to refinance in the country. It's not just Miami. It's places like Tampa where there are

17,000 borrowers that are eligible for HARP and haven't taken advantage of it. In Orlando

that figure is 11,000 borrowers, Jacksonville 9,200. So as you can see there are lots of

home owners out there that have not taken advantage of this opportunity. I have the

pleasure of introducing my boss, Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Mel Watt.

Mel Watt, Director, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA): I love the HARP program because it rewards the people that I think are the most committed

home owners. 3.2 million people nation wide have taken advantage of it. But because of

that ... we've had problems getting people to take advantage of it because imagine

yourself - your home is underwater, you're paying your mortgage every month and somebody

calls you on the phone and says you have the ability to refinance your mortgage into a

lower interest rate that will save you between 200 and 250 dollars a month. Imagine yourself

that situation, and you will see why people - the rest of the people about 800,000 people

nationwide 90 thousand people in the state of Florida, 21,000 people right here

in the Miami metro area have said BAAM....hang up the phone. The message we've also delivered

throughout this process is don't be scammed again. So we will now be moving into our panel

discussion to take a deeper dive on HARP and other programs to help borrowers. Joseph Cvelbar, Director of Housing Counseling, Consolidated Credit Solutions, Inc: These HUD

agencies are there as I explained we are non profit counseling agencies many of the activities

or services that we provide are provided at no charge so we can really be of assistance

to consumers. Many people don't think to come to us for either advice or assistance when

they are currently not having a problem with their mortgage. And we can help those people

as well, we can sit them down and say look this is what the HARP program does let's see

if we can pre-qualify you. And if they get turned down by their lender maybe for a HARP

refi we can talk about what other options are if they can go to other banks and look

to do the HARP refi. Mark McArdle, Chief Homeownership Preservation Officer, U.S. Department of the Treasury: Florida is our second biggest HAMP state. 12 percent of all HAMP

modifications are in this state, on average home owners have seen a savings of 474 dollars

and that's about 40 percent off their pre-modification payment. We just recently announced some significant

changes that we hope will help folks in HAMP modifications including extending our pay

for success payment into year 6. So right now if you are in a HAMP modification tier

1 you get 1,000 dollars for every year you are current. Now in year 6 you will get a 5,000

dollar payment and this should help as you start to face late step-ups that occur in

year 6. I also wanted to mention the hardest hit fund which is our second biggest

recipient of funds. 1 billion dollars went to Florida and they have at least 4 major

programs that can help folks. One of which is their unemployment mortgage assistance

program which can help folks unemployed make their mortgage payments. They have a reinstatement

program for those who fell behind. They have what they call the elderly mortgage

assistance program which helps folks with reverse mortgages who maybe fell behind on

their taxes and perhaps most relevant to the HARP discussion is they have a principal reduction

program. Unlike those other 3, that program is targeted to borrowers who are deeply underwater

and will provide principal reduction so they can address their negative equity. I'll go

with what Joseph said -- the most important for folks who have trouble with their mortgage

is to seek help early. Talk to your mortgage servicer early, seek out a HUD approved counselor.

Call that 995 HOPE hotline number because the earlier you address a problem the more

options you will have . Yvette Gilmore, Vice President, Servicer Relationship and Performance Management, Freddie Mac: There are key things with harp that will make it easier for them

to get through this process. One -- it's free so except for normal closing cost that anyone

would have to pay to refinance -- it's a free program. Two, lenders really want to do it.

They want to get engaged and get borrowers who are underwater into a stable, much more

more predictable payment and give them the savings they were offering. It's free

money. We are here appealing to you to help us help someone else. Robert Koller, Director of Credit Risk Management, Fannie Mae: So what I want to leave

with you is a few take aways. One is there are a lot of myths out there right so as I

mentioned from the examples just because your lender is telling you that they won't work

with you because you are in a condo doesn't mean you have to go back to that lender. As

mentioned before any lender offering HARP you can go to and work through a HARP refinance

you don't have to go through your current servicer. Two, this not a scam. This is the

real deal. And a lot of times people have that misinformation or miscommunication

that it could potentially be a scam, so we need to help them overcome those hurdles

and say this is the real deal. Three there is not max LTV. At one time when the program

was just rolled out in 2009 there was, but we enhanced the program through the years and

there is no max LTV, and whether you have a LTV of a 105 or 150 the program is able

to help you. If your loan has been modified through HAMP you can HARP. Right so just because

you have taken advantage of the HAMP program doesn't mean you are excluded or boxed out

of HARP. And just to circle back on something is that the program has been enhanced over

the years, so just because a borrower was turned down in 2009 doesn't mean they do not

qualify. Time is running out, the program is set to expire on December 31, 2015, that's

just a little bit more than a year from now. In addition to that, the true meaning behind

the 217 dollars in savings each month is based on where interest rates are. So as interest

rates go up that savings will go down, so the time to act is now. Laura Reichel, Senior Vice President, Ditech Mortgage Corporation/Green Tree Servicing: With this HARP program

it is clearly a quick and easy process for all of the borrowers we have helped for where

there is no appraisal, very little documentation on the new loan. We take a lot of documentation

from the original loan and bring it through the refinance so we do make it very easy for

the borrow to refinance. We just need that little extra push now, especially since

the program is coming to a an end in 2015 to get these these few borrowers who

just haven't done it who absolutely have a 150 to 200 dollar monthly savings to come and

get the loans refinanced. Just quickly just the difference between HARP and HAMP so we

make sure everyone is on the same page. So we can continue our conversation. So HAMP

is more focused for borrowers who are facing a hardship, so it's a modification program,

so if you are having trouble making your payments you have fallen behind, you really need a

deep payment modification that's what HAMP is for. if you are current but could use the

savings for what HARP provides then HARP is ideal for you. So we have a very special guest

with us today. Nicole Gibson. She is from the Florida HFA (housing finance agency) and you know we have been referencing

these special programs that they have but let's give Nicole just a few minutes to talk

about what her organization can offer for borrowers. We have 4 programs.

Programs for people in Florida who, we like to say that

we are helping and we can help almost any home owner in Florida with any of their unique

situations. We have our as we have talked about for individuals that are unemployed

or maybe once unemployed and got a job again but it's not where they were before. We have

our unemployment program and together with our reinstatement program. What we can do

with that program is if you are still unemployed still having a hardship we can reinstate

your mortgage. We will pay up to $18000 in that case and make your mortgage payment

for the next 12 months. We have the Elmore program, which is the elderly mortgage loan

assistance program. What this does is uniquely geared toward elderly individuals with reverse

mortgages who pulled out all the equity that they had in that reverse mortgage but can

no longer afford to pay their own taxes and insurance and thus are in imminent default

or their reverse and are close to losing their home. We can go in and help them pay the next

2 years' worth of their taxes and insurance and help them get caught up and get them

on a nice budget get them on their path that they will be able to maintain their home and

continue paying their taxes going forward. The fourth program, the one that probably

most closely resembles the HARP program is the principal reduction program. And what

this does is it takes current borrowers as you heard Director Watt say this program

rewards people who have stayed the course ok homeowners who are underwater who have

paid their mortgage who require 24 months of current mortgage payments will help

reduce their principal they have to be 125 percent or more underwater will help reduce their

principal by up to 50,000 dollars and will bring them down to 100 percent of their current value

of their home like i said up to $50,000. So again as you've heard please if anybody any

of your friends the people that you talk to get this direct mailer in the mail it again

is not a scam it is for real. It's going to say you may qualify for up to 50,000 dollars

in principal reduction and it's exactly true. Well we have a very special guest who just

joined us right now Congresswoman Frederica Wilson welcome congress woman. Thanks to

my colleague congressman Mel Watt who has been elevated now and has come to Miami to

share with you some very important information regarding HARP. So when he called me and said

He was coming to miami and he was coming to help people understand that HARP was not a

gimmick that HARP was for the people to help them keep their homes, reduce their payments

their mortgage payments I was so excited about it. All of you are ambassadors for Miami-

Dade county, especially for District 24. To go back into the community and let everyone

know that there is hope. There is help available. (Audience member): I am a Brazilian person, 'm a

church person as well so I have tons of people I know that are all Brazilian and unfortunately

have a horrible language barrier. But I definitely mean you need to get on your servicers and

make sure they give a better customer service. Because it is beyond, beyond far from what

it should be. And we do require all of our servicers to be able to communicate with all

of our customers regardless of the language the 888-995-HOPE number has a translation service

that hopefully shall provide language services to a variety of languages. And we encourage

folks who have had a bad experience like yourself to call that number so we can follow up and

track those servicers and make sure they improve. What I think we have made progress now we

had to convince lenders and servicers that there were other viable alternatives that

were better for them, and better for the borrower and better for neighborhood stabilization

and the whole economy if they would just try some of them. Now that they have tried some

of them you see a whole new kind of philosophy about this -- let's try to help the borrower figure

out how to save their home. Rather than let's go immediately to foreclosure. My question

to you is what incentive does the bank have to work with these programs? So it's like any

other performance incentive environment that they want to roll out these programs

because that's how we monitor and measure whether or not we want to continue to do business

with them. Fabulous thanks for joining us today, you all have homework take the word

back about HARP. HARP.gov is the official site if you are dealing with delinquent borrowers

Makinghomeaffordable.gov and the HOPE hotline. Thank you.