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Digital News Report – The Housing market has been at the most affordable prices in the last 10 years. In addition to this interest rates are at historic lows which have also helped give Obama’s scorecard good marks for housing affordability.
While the housing market isn’t completely recovered, HUD Assistant Secretary Raphael Bostic said that it is doing better than they had predicted it would a year ago.
According to the July Housing Scorecard, there have been over 7.2 million homeowners that were able to refinance their mortgage to a lower interest rate since April of 2009. This equates to over $12.9 billion of savings that homeowners will benefit from because they refinanced to a lower mortgage interest rate.
Struggling homeowners have avoided foreclosure by getting restructured mortgages since April of 2009. There was over twice as many loan modification than the 1.24 million people that had completed home foreclosure proceedings.
The government run Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) had converted over 50,000 trial modifications to permanent modifications. The average permanent modifications are around 50,000 home loan modifications being completed.
The HAMP program is also implementing the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternative Program (HAFA) and the Second Lien Modification Program (2MP). These new programs will help other struggling homeowners that don’t meet the requirements to participate in the government’s HAMP mortgage loan modification program. The HAMP program reported less than 2 percent of homeowners that have gone to foreclosure sale and less than 10 percent that have entered in the foreclosure process.
Tax credits for first home buyers ended in April, which caused a drop in housing sales during the month of May. Even though home prices are more affordable, HUD says that the housing market is still fragile and more time will be needed to see recovery.
To read the complete Housing Market Scorecard you can visit www.hud.gov/scorecard.
By: Victoria Brown