The Hope Now Alliance, a private sector alliance of mortgage servicers, counselors, and investors who work to help homeowners facing foreclosure, announced today that mortgage servicers helped a record number of homeowners avoid foreclosure in June 2008 and the second quarter 2008.
According to the organization, in June mortgage servicers completed more than 181,000 mortgage workouts, while in the second quarter mortgage servicers completed more than 522,000 workouts. Hope Now said that without these workouts the homes would have gone into foreclosure and defined workouts as including both modifications to the terms of existing mortgages and repayment plans. According to the announcement, these numbers were the largest number of mortgage workouts in any month and quarter since Hope Now began compiling data in July 2007.
“The industry continues to accelerate the pace at which it is helping homeowners and expects this positive trend to continue,” said Hope Now’s executive director Faith Schwartz. “Hope Now has already reached out to millions of homeowners though mailings, local events, and the Hope Hotline and is enabling homeowners to find solutions that will allow them to stay in their homes.”

The following estimates were released by Hope Now and reflect industry-wide efforts: – Approximately 1.9 million foreclosures have been prevented by mortgage servicers since July 2007 – Approximately 105,000 of the homeowners with prime and subprime mortgages who were helped by servicers in June received repayment plans, while approximately 76,000 received loan modifications – Subprime modifications exceeded 50 percent of all subprime workouts for the first time in both June and the second quarter of 2008.
Hope Now also released information today, regarding a survey which examined subprime adjustable-rate mortgages with rates resetting in 2008, as reported by 9 companies and representing approximately 60 percent of subprime loans.
The survey found the following results: – Approximately 928,000 subprime loans were scheduled to reset between January and June 2009.
Of these loans, less than 1 percent of loans which were current at the time of reset have now started the foreclosure process – More than 57,000 of these loans have already been modified. Nearly 72 percent of these modifications are five years or longer. – 41 percent of the subprime adjustable rate loans that were originally scheduled to rest during this period were paid in full when the homeowner refinanced the loan or sold the property.
To read the full results of these surveys, click here. 2008 Data Release.pdf