A quick HASP review
by Tim Manni
We’ve already written about HASP, the Obama administration’s latest salvo in his campaign to stem the growing tide of foreclosures, but now that it’s up and running here’s a quick review.
The program has set several ambitious goals. First, it is intended to enable as many as five million “responsible” homeowners to refinance their home loans. (Attendant to this is the goal of “supporting low mortgage rates.”)
HASP also plans on spending $75 billion on loan modifications; this is supposed to help another three or four million homeowners to keep their homes. These “loan mods” could help some homeowners rduce their payments by up to $400 per month. Other aspects of the plan will give other households $1,500 in cash and also pay off as much as $5,000 of their mortgage balance.
We have some doubts over how well this program will work, as well as concerns over the basic fairness of HASP, but we’re willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. To be sure, despite its flaws, we’d like to see it succeed; there’s a lot riding on it.
Full details are available at the White House website. And, of course, we’ll be back with more thoughts on it — and on the markets’ judgement of its effectiveness.
