Since the housing crisis of 2009, programs implemented by the Obama Administration have fostered the market’s path to recovery, the White House announced this week. Through mortgage servicer improvements through the Making Home Affordable Program (MHAP), homeowner’s equity is now $1.5 trillion higher than April 2009, according to the November edition of the Obama Administration’s Housing Scorecard.
Included in November’s MHAP are detailed evaluations from the third quarter of 2012 for the largest mortgage services participating in the program. Established in June 2011, The Servicer Assessments have set a new standard around servicer efforts to assist struggling homeowners and lower foreclosure rates.
“The Administration remains focused on continuing to improve standards for the mortgage industry to help families avoid foreclosure,” said Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Tim Massad. “We continue to push the industry to provide better service to homeowners while expanding the range of solutions available to families facing mortgage concerns.”
The quarterly evaluations detail performance in three distinct categories which include: identifying and contacting homeowners; homeowner evaluation and assistance; program reporting, management and governance.
Third quarter results show that the analysis of identified areas in previous reports have led to servicers’ continued improvement in the latest scorecard report.
Part of the improvement, services are more effectively evaluating homeowners under program eligibility criteria as seen in the “second look disagree” category. This category reflects the rate at which the Treasury’s program evaluations disagree with servicers’ decision to find homeowners ineligible for assistance. In the third quarter, the scorecard notes, the average second look disagree percentage for the top servicers remained below 1%.
The second half of improved assessment relies on mortgage servicers continuing to accurately calculate homeowner income, which is used to determine homeowners’ eligibility and modified payment amount under MHAP. For the third quarter, the average income calculation error rate for top servicers was below 3%, with two servicers reporting 0% error rates.
To date, the Obama Administration finds that MHAP assistance actions have saved 1.1 million homeowners an estimated $16.2 billion on mortgage payments.
View the Housing Scorecard for November.
Written by Jason Oliva
