Lights, Camera, GSE
Freddie Mac has some creative ways to get the most out of its staff, including
Since being posted two weeks ago, the videos have received 5,145 views — not too shabby considering there are no celebrities (or kittens) in them. The 90- to 120-second videos show Freddie employees posing as fictional borrowers on a street of beautiful homes (outside the government-sponsored enterprise's headquarters in McLean, Va.) asking common questions about foreclosures.
The questions are then answered by a Freddie borrower-outreach specialist standing in a long hallway at the company's headquarters.
"The goal was to do it for zero money," said Brad German, a spokesman for Freddie. "If it helps just one person from foreclosure, it could save us tens of thousands of dollars."
In the "Myth #1" video, which received 2,263 views, the "borrower" asks: "I read online that if I lose my home to foreclosure I will never be able to buy a home again and my credit will be ruined forever. That's kind of scary — is that right?" The Freddie specialist then explains that a foreclosure stays on a credit report for roughly seven years but the person can own a home again.
Each video tells borrowers to contact their lender, a counselor with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a hot line run by the Hope Now Alliance of mortgage servicers.
Shadow Supply
New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland don't get much attention for their middle-of-the-pack foreclosure rates. But CoreLogic says these three states have the highest levels of distressed homes that are not yet listed for sale but make up the shadow inventory.
In January the nationwide shadow inventory of delinquent loans and reposssessed homes not on the market
Loan modifications and short sales could cut the shadow inventory in half, Fleming said. But low borrower response rates and high redefaults have made it difficult to clear the huge backlog.
Process Bottlenecks
In addition to the shadow inventory, another 2 million borrowers are expected to go into foreclosure because they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth — all of them by more than 50%, Fleming said.
The shadow inventory is actually much worse by another measure: the enormous
Because many of the largest servicers halted foreclosures last year, the inventory of loans in foreclosure keeps building; most of those homes will ultimately have to be put on the market. That will put more downward pressure on home values, LPS said Tuesday.
Roughly 30% of all borrowers in foreclosure have not made a payment in more than two years, LPS found. At the end of February, borrowers were delinquent an average of 537 days before being foreclosed on, compared with 417 days a year earlier, LPS found.
