Making Home Affordable: An Industry No Longer Without Regulation

August 16, 2011 | Author: Ken Melblock | Posted in Debt Consolidation

The days of simply opening up shop and starting a loan modification business have come to an end in Florida. Individuals or businesses providing loan modification services must now be licensed as a mortgage broker by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation (OFR) in order to conduct business. The Florida legislature recently passed Senate Bill SB 2226. This law makes significant changes to Florida’s mortgage brokerage law – Chapter 494, Florida Statutes – effective January 1, 2010. In particular, the new law specifically covers negotiation of existing loans as being part of the duties of a mortgage broker. As such, any individual or business attempting to negotiate a loan mortgage modification in Florida will require a license through OFR. Additionally, there are new disclosures required in order to perform a loan modification – large type print on contracts and a three day rescission period are among a few of the changes.

Second, if loan modification is for you, you need to write a hardship letter to your lender. You counselor can help with this, or you may use any number of free hardship letter templates on the Internet. Basically, your letter is a brief statement of your financial difficulties and why you can’t afford your mortgage payments. Your counselor will submit this to your lender.

Adding more rooms to the back of the house is not an intelligent and affordable way to extend the home. In fact, construction of a double storey is quite a sensible extension. Through this extension, you will not lose your home comfort, as compared to the inconvenience in the backyard construction. The double storey scheme, if properly discussed and planned with a skilled architect, can result into huge future benefits. You can make use of this double storey extension as a rental place and can redeem all your investment in the form of monthly rent. Moreover, if you are not interested in the double storey construction, or if your budget, your neighbours or your surroundings do not allow you to do so you can simply adopt the idea of sidewise addition of rooms. All the extensions should be made considering the strength of the building foundation.

If the only available place where extension could be made is your backyard, do not worry about that. You can have a simple affordable home extension plan for there also. You can definitely add a sunroom there in your backyard; or if you want to enjoy huge and spacious living area, that can also be done.

Making Home Affordable includes a $75 billion initiative to help American avoid foreclosure by providing incentives to participating lenders and homeowners for successful modifications and payments. Right now, only loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are eligible for modifications through Making Home Affordable, but your lender may have other provisions for loan modification in place even if your loan is not a Freddie or Fannie loan.

Learn more about Obama Mortgage Relief Plan Qualifications.

Author: Ken Melblock

This author has published 39 articles so far. More info about the author is coming soon.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.