Chase and Home-Free in Loan Mod Effort

Home-Free USA, a Maryland-based, HUD-approved nonprofit counseling organization, will team with Chase Home Mortgage February 18-19 in a face-to-face modification event for borrowers struggling to make their house payment. Home-Free counselors will discuss each individual borrower's financial and employment situation, obtain a credit report for them, establish a budget that includes a potentially modified mortgage payment, and help them prepare a mortgage-modification application. The owners will then meet with Chase counselors, who will review their applications to ensure they have all the information needed for a loan modification review under the government's Home Affordable Modification Program or Chase's own loan-mod program. The applications will be sent for an accelerated review that averages just 30 to 45 days. Chase already has reached out by phone and mail to borrowers who may be eligible for either program. The sessions, scheduled for 10 hours each day, will be held at Home-Free's headquarters in Hyattsville, a D.C. suburb. "Together with Chase," said the agency's president, Marcia Griffin, "we are putting homeowners on the road to preventing foreclosure."