About 15 protests were held across the country by ACORN, a community group, to call attention to the sluggish progress of the Obama Administrtion’s $75 billion repossession houses prevention program, dubbed Making Home Affordable.
Some major mortgage institutions that received federal bailout funds have yet to join the program designed to help distressed homeowners avoid turning their properties into repossession houses.
Protesters called for lending institutions, including the Litton Loan Servicing, OneWest and Homeq to join the federal initiative.
A protest was held outside the office of OneWest in Pasadena, California after which, Chief Executive Officer Terry Laughlin announced that the lending company would sign up in the federal initiative. OneWest is the 24th company to sign up in the program, which includes Chase Financial, GMAC Mortgage, CitiMortgage and Bank of America.
According to government officials, the federal program is expected to help as many as 9 million financially struggling homeowners. According to the Department of Treasury, lending institutions holding about 20 percent of eligible mortgages have not yet signed in on the program despite government incentive for each altered loan.
The department pointed out that mortgage companies have modified a total of 185,156 loans in the first three months of 2009, representing a 55 percent increase from the last quarter of 2008. However, the number of filings for repossession houses rose by 22 percent to 844,389.
HIS Global Insight economist Patrick Newport said that so far, the loan modification initiative is not performing as expected.
Meanwhile, ACORN protesters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania lambasted Litton Loan Services for failing to sign in on the federal initiative even though Goldman Sachs, its parent company, received nearly $10 billion in bailout fund in 2008. Goldman was able to repay the federal funds.
Maude Hurd, ACORN president, sent a letter to Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer at Goldman Sachs, claiming that the organization has a list of distressed homeowners who encountered difficulties in their attempts to have their loans modified with Litton.
On the other, Goldman Sachs issued a statement that Litton had modified over 40,000 loans, thus helping about 10 percent of troubled borrowers avoid the possibility of turning their properties into repossession houses.
Also targeted by ACORN protesters is Homeq whose parent company, Barclays received about $8.5 billion in bailout funds.
Joseph Smith has been educating buyers on the finer points of
Repossession Houses at ForeclosedPropertiesData.com for over five years.
