Zillow Advice: Mortgage - 12% of Americans are Behind on their Mortgage? Hold on now...

Hi Katie,Just an FYI on your ...

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:35:00 GMT

Hi Katie,

Just an FYI on your post about the Home Affordable refinance, it does not need to be your primary residence to qualify.

Good points, both Sam and ...

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:47:00 GMT

Good points, both Sam and TM. TM, Zillow's Q4 Real Estate Market Reports showed that almost 20% of all transactions in '08 were foreclosures, so there's that piece of the puzzle.
What are your thoughts on Home Affordable? Do you think it will help the 7-9 million homeowners the administration says it will? I wrote a couple blog posts on the nitty-gritty -- who qualifies for the Home Affordable refinance and the loan modification -- but I'm curious to see what others think.
If the refi and loan mod together help 9 million, that's about 10% of all homeowners in the U.S. That would be significant.
We did some of our own analysis to see how many homeowners the refi might help. We found that about 25% of homeowners with mortgages, or 14 million, fall into the limits to qualify for the Home Affordable refi (LTV 80-105%, conforming loan), but we don't have any way to see how many of these are backed by Fannie/Freddie.

....good thought, that's ...

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:37:00 GMT

....good thought, that's another way to manipulate the numbers. The articles make no mention of those stats. You could also ask how many of those "behind 30 days" on payments just mailed their first payment a week late and will be caught up next month. Who knows?