Treasury to Deploy 'Financial SWAT Teams' to Police Mortgages

2 years ago

0 Comments Say Something »

Text Size

Correspondent

The Treasury Department says it will try and reduce the high national rate of foreclosures by sending financial "SWAT" teams this month to police the performance of leading mortgage servicers.

The monthlong effort is part of the $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program, which calls for permanent changes to distressed mortgages that would benefit homeowners in financial trouble, McCLatchy reported Monday. The Obama administration accuses servicers of acting too slowly to modify toxic mortgages.

A trial period of 650,000 mortgage modifications has saved borrowers an average of $576 per month on payments, according to Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr. He said the government hopes to make permanent changes to about 375,000 of those mortgages.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said in early November that one in every seven mortgages was now past due.

The administration believes reversing the trends of growing mortgage delinquency and foreclosure rates is the key to national economic recovery.

Filed Under: Economy, Obama Administration

Tagged: banks, daily guidance, DailyGuidance, financial crisis, FinancialCrisis, treasury department, TreasuryDepartment

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.