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Housing

HAMP Failure Worsens As Only 340,000 Mortages Permanently Modified

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The $75 billion Making Home Affordable Program has not lead to many permanent mortgage modifications. Through May, the number was only 340,459. The figure is particularly pathetic compared to the number of borrowers who are eligible for mortgage changes–1,675,238. Total trials started under HAMP are 1,244,184.

All permanently modified mortgages involved an interest rate deduction. Fifty-four percent received term extensions. twenty-eight percent received principal forbearance.

Every single one of the numbers is dismal.

RealtyTrac reported that foreclosures last month were in excess of 300,000 and that the total for 2010 could be over 3 million–even higher than last year.

One of the lessons that is clear from HAMP is that taxpayer money is wasted on programs that only reduce interest payments. People are not likely to stay in their homes if they believe that their mortgages will be underwater forever. For  homeowners over 50, that may well be the case.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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