HAMP Offers New Hope for Borrowers

Are you considering applying for help from a foreclosure prevention program? Here's some good news. Recent changes to the largest foreclosure prevention program, the federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), should help the program work much more smoothly.

Over the last year, the press about HAMP has been overwhelmingly negative. Recent stories like this one in the Wall Street Journal point out that one-in-every-four borrowers who entered the program with trial modifications to their home loans have since been thrown out of the program.

Hundreds of thousands more borrowers have waited with trial modifications that went for six months or even longer, often racking up heavy fines and fees in the process according to the story, even though the trial period is only supposed to last three months.

Why were so many people kicked out? And how can the program be made to work?