A mortgage bill, designed to help distressed homeowners, was approved by the House Financial Services Committee after the Democrats successfully fended off all sorts of challenges from the Republicans.
The said bill authorizes the Federal Housing Administration or FHA to guarantee new mortgages in the amount of $300 billion, offered by private lenders approved by the government.
The Committee strongly believes that the bill could probably help over 1.5 million troubled homeowners. These citizens really need help especially during this difficult time, even though most of them took out loans that they can never really afford in the first place. There are also those homeowners who were taken advantaged of by really aggressive mortgage brokers and lenders.
For the Committee, letting these mortgages go all to foreclosure will certainly make the economy suffer. In fact, the last couple of years have already showed the negative impact of rising home foreclosures rate in the country.
On the other hand, the Bush Administration believes that the bill is actually just a bailout program that will basically utilize taxpayers’ money.
The said legislation is designed in such a way that the government will not be lending money directly. Instead, new mortgages from private lenders will be guaranteed. These mortgages can equal to at most 90 percent of the property’s current market value.
As a requirement, only homeowners whose debt-to-income-ratio is 35 percent or higher are eligible for the program. Also, the mortgage should have been taken out before January of this year to qualify.
As for the government, they will enjoy a share of the profits once the homeowner managed to sell the property. The government is only required to pay the lender in the event of a default. According to the committee, they are estimating about 1 to 2 percent of defaults, which can be roughly translated to $3 - $6 billion.
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