Federal regulators issue final illustrations of consumer information for hybrid ARMs

HOPE NOW reports homeowner workouts reach record levels in April MortgagePress.comHOPE NOW, mortgage loan workouts, ARMs, Faith Schwartz, forelcosures HOPE NOW, the private sector alliance of mortgage servicers, counselors, and investors that is working to help prevent foreclosures, announced today that mortgage servicers provided loan workouts to approximately 183,000 homeowners in April 2008, the highest monthly amount since the program was begun in July 2007. Since July 2007, the industry has helped almost 1.6 million homeowners avoid foreclosure through workouts which include loan modifications and repayment plans. "These numbers clearly demonstrate that HOPE NOW is succeeding at helping homeowners avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes," said HOPE NOW Executive Director Faith Schwartz. "Foreclosure benefits no one: the borrower, community, lender and investor all lose," Schwartz added. "HOPE NOW has every incentive to help troubled homeowners hold on to their homes, and the alliance will continue to do everything possible to reach and help as many as possible." The April report from HOPE NOW estimates that on an industry-wide basis: • Mortgage servicers provided loan workouts for approximately 183,000 at-risk borrowers in April. This is an increase of 23,000 from the number of workouts in March 2008 and is the largest number of workouts completed in any month since HOPE NOWs inception. • The total number of loan workouts provided by mortgage servicers since July 2007 has risen to 1,558,854. • Approximately 106,000 of the prime and sub-prime loan workouts conducted by mortgage servicers in April were repayment plans, while approximately 77,000 were loan modifications. HOPE NOW also announced today that a separate survey of sub-prime adjustable rates mortgages determined that: • Approximately 603,000 subprime loans were scheduled to reset between January and April 2008. • 30,545 (5.0 percent) of these loans have already been modified. Nearly 63 percent of these modifications are for 5 years or longer. • 273,000 (45 percent) of the subprime adjustable rate loans that were current at reset were paid in full when the homeowner refinanced the loan or sold the property. • A limited amount--927 (0.3 percent)--of the loans that were current at their date of reset have started the foreclosure process. A summary table with all the April results can be found at www.hopenow.com/upload/misc/files/AprSummaryTable.pdf.