BAP Blog Home loan modification hard to get, report says

California homeowners continue to have trouble getting home loan modifications that stick under the Obama Administration's Home Affordable Mortgage Program, according to a report released Tuesday by the CaliforniaReinvestment Coalition, a consumer advocacy organization whose members provide foreclosure counseling. The findings of the report suggest that modifications are still hard to come by, and that servicers have not corrected many of the problems that have led to investigations of foreclosure abuses the coalition wrote in summarizing its findings after it reviewed data the Treasury made public earlier this year and its own latest survey of nonprofit housing counselors. Among the highlights of its report: Of 568,630 borrowers who have requested loan modifications, 46 percent were denied immediately, 23 percent received a permanent mortgage modification, and a third of applicants were stuck in trial modifications or had their modifications cancelled. Principal reductions are nearly impossible to receive. In Los Angeles andFresno only 5 percent of loan modifications included some degree of principal forgiveness. 94 percent of housing counselors reported that homeowners are losing their homes to foreclosure while still in negotiations with their servicers for loan modifications.