No Evictions for Christmas

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 4, 6:16AM EST

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Rest easy, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have told people with homes in foreclosure. This holiday season there will be no coal in your stockings. Evictions will be delayed until January 2 of next year. In the meantime, eat food you do not have and give presents you cannot afford. Accept a gift that is no gift at all. By the way, the people who eventually will evict you will be on vacation anyway. So, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac moratoriums do not mean a thing.

According to the press release:

“We’re taking this step in support of families who have faced financial challenges and gone through a foreclosure,” said Terry Edwards, Executive Vice President of Credit Portfolio Management, Fannie Mae. “The holidays are a chance to be with loved ones and we want to relieve some stress at this time of year. We encourage homeowners having difficulty to reach out for help as soon as possible.”

Reach out for that help, with only three weeks until bank officials leave for a holiday weekend, or even take a week off. The two agencies want to give people who might be evicted all of that extra time.

There are several catches to the generosity. Among them:

Legal and administrative proceedings for evictions may continue, but families living in foreclosed properties will be allowed to remain in the home during this period.

This will give these families a few more days to pack whatever belongings they have and find a place to live, or not. They may be taken in by relatives, or find a place to sleep on the streets nearby.

The plans as announced make Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seem generous. It is good public relations. While agencies have told local officials to stop whatever plans they have to kick people out of their homes, these people can live in anxiety for a few more days, while the benefits of “extra time” hearten them.

Ho ho ho. It’s Christmas.

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.