As many communities throughout the country continue to recover from the housing crisis, Freddie Mac is trying its best to help as many distressed borrowers as possible avoid foreclosure.
Since nearly a third of all visitors to the McLean, Va.-based government-sponsored enterprises website (FreddieMac.com) are homeowners, Freddie Mac decided to launch a new tool on their website that provides homeowners help in finding and understanding what relief options are available to them.
The Mortgage Help Navigator was designed to make sure that homeowners obtain the right information that meets their personal circumstances.
Tracy Hagen Mooney, senior vice president of single-family servicing and real estate owned at Freddie Mac, said the Mortgage Help Navigator launch is “part of our overall strategy to optimize outcomes for borrowers.”
The purpose of this tool is for the GSE to work with their sellers and servicers to find the best possible solution for struggling homeowners. Even though the goal of Freddie is to keep a borrower in their home, the enterprise utilizes several options when this can’t be done.
For example, some exit strategies the GSE uses with a borrower includes two new loan modification programs, streamlining documentation requirements and timelines of current programs, which is beneficial for servicers too, and responding to relief options for service members and homeowners impacted by natural disasters.
“Over the past 18 months, we greatly enhanced and expanded our foreclosure prevention policies and programs so we designed the Mortgage Help Navigator to help ensure that homeowners are learning about the right ones for their individual needs,” Mooney stated.
Since the start of the housing crisis, Freddie Mac has prevented over 830,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure. Furthermore, the GSE helped another 1 million underwater borrowers refinance their mortgage through the Home Affordable Refinance Program.
