Where the Housing Market Stands

" This morning we get a check of the state of the housing market. 445000. New homes were expected to be sold in August existing home sales in August slipped nearly 3% from July now meanwhile. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is negotiating with some of the nation's largest banks to help sixteen million people facing foreclosures staying in their homes. The program which cancels second mortgages hasn't seen much business -- One quite a while remaining Jackson she's the founder of advocate -- Which works to help those facing foreclosure and Sam's hand and is the president and chief economist of real estate. Kind of Patrick's warning that's great thing about -- Good morning -- worried that warning and you could tell it to you and the number is. Unbelievably shocking. That hope for homeowners program that was created the Bush Administration has only helped 95. Borrowers refinance. What is wrong with the program. I feel like."

" At this point there's really no we really have no uniform integrated approach. To help these borrowers and moreover. The information really isn't getting to homeowners homeowners in terms of letting them know that they have these options except -- of -- of the biggest problems."

" Can't look -- through here there are two different programs there's the hope for homeowners program that was created during the bush administration and then caught in this administration it was say. Whole modification. Program what is the difference between the 21 why is that the current administration's one more successful in the past one."

" I think the real challenge with hope for homeowners program and it's already been modified -- there were some changes made to the program last November when it it really fallen short of expectations. Is that it focuses some attention on borrowers that have a second mortgage for the second -- And so in the initial. Formation for over the initial structure of the program. The borrower would be able to move into mortgage that was more affordable that where they could make payments. But part of other requirement was that the second mortgage be canceled. And at least initially there was a credit -- paid down or paid down. There was a good credit given to the second lien holder that ultimately when the -- would be sold. Whether that was a year down the road or ten years down the road that they will be able to -- some residual against the sale of the house. That created a lot of uncertainty for the second mortgage holder. Because fundamentally there were the uncertainties in the housing market. And they were the uncertainties around when it is that the borrower would sell their home that is not something that would necessarily happen within the foreseeable future. With the modification of the program the government then. Offer to make an upfront payment so if you cancel the second mortgage we'll actually transfer some cash to you. The difficulty is in that for most second mortgage holders the payments that are being offered or insufficient to incentivize them. So there really isn't a strong motivation at this point to take part in the program and I think. That aside from the communication issue that's been -- how many homeowners really know about this program know about the options that are available to them and know how to get help. The combination of these two things is really limited the effectiveness of the program. If you look at the language from last November in terms of how effective they anticipated it might be. There were as many as 4500000. Homeowners that they anticipated would be able to take advantage of this program to stay in their homes and those numbers of obviously fallen. Far short of that."

" Only what we -- your personal story and how it is that you're trying to help other homeowners who were going through the same issues. Right in the -- 2006. We started receiving. Notice in the mail indicating that our mortgages past due when in fact it wasn't so really it's into Spanish simple accounting error that the -- could've fixed. However that's not when it happening and after about a year of going back and forth with mortgage company the foreclose on our property on January 1 2008 which in and of itself is sort of curious because. That's national holiday and the government doesn't usually operate a national holidays. So after that there's about another year of going back and forth at which time I just sort of took them bull by the horns and contacted this yelled my mortgage company directly and we had a response saying about 48 hours and they did right by -- in the hands so. After I was finished with my -- I just thought. -- when I was going through there's really nobody that I could go to to get information from cell. I like my job it's just empower consumers with information so that they can really take their own financial situation with their home into their own hands and try to resolve it. And -- in terms of people getting access to your personal story in the kind of ways that you help them where can -- get that information and is an online. Yet they can go to my website it's advocate genie dot org Kenya's AIME and they can look at my story in my contact information is there. And I'm happy to help walks into the process. We only knew what and RTL I read all the from the specifics and it it was unbelievable outrageous I hope -- foreclosure problems -- rising from getting any -- channeled -- very acute."