I spoke to Jim Wasserman of the Sacramento Bee briefly on Wednesday regarding the new Federal HAFA (Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives) Program that takes affect on Monday, April 5th. He used a few of my quotes for an article that appeared in today's SacBee about Short Sales.
The premise of the HAFA Program is good idea and all (to streamline the short sale process and provide financial incentives to lenders and sellers/borrowers for doing short sales)...and like the HAMP Program for loan modifications, I think that the implementation by the loan servicer participants, and overall effectiveness of HAFA will be slow and probably a bit clumbsy to gain any real momentum. I do not think the financial incentives offered to these servicers will be any major carrot for compliance with the program...
Apparently, all the of the loan servicers that are (voluntarily) participating in HAMP will be required to (voluntarily) participate in HAFA as well. There are many loan servicers that are working with the HAMP Program already - many of the major ones include Aurora Loan Services, American Home Mortgage Servicing, Bank of America (formerly Countrywide), JP Morgan Chase, CitiMortgage, GMAC, HomEq, Litton Loan Servicing, National City Bank (aka, PNC), OneWest Bank (formerly Indymac), US Bank, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo...there are several other small banks and credit unions on board.
I have spoken to many of the loss mitigation reps at all of the loan servicers I am doing short sales with (literally, reps from that entire list above), and most have never even heard of HAFA. Wells Fargo's loss mitigation department seems to aware of HAFA though, and seems to be restructuring itself a bit to get ready...but again, I think the roll-out will take a long while....and as I am quoted in the SacBee article, Wachovia has the smoothest short sale process out there already. Time will tell!
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