New information has come to light in the past few days regarding HAMP, or the Home Affordable Modification Program. Aside from the fact that they need someone new in Washington to come up with better acronyms, the HAMP program was designed to assist homeowners in danger of foreclosure by reducing their mortgages and interest rates.

The HAMP website provides the following description of their mandate and the tools they’ve been given to achieve them:

The Home Affordable Modification Program is designed to help as many as 3 to 4 million financially struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure by modifying loans to a level that is affordable for borrowers now and sustainable over the long term. The program provides clear and consistent loan modification guidelines that the entire mortgage industry can use.

Borrower eligibility is based on meeting specific criteria including:

1) borrower is delinquent on their mortgage or faces imminent risk of default
2) property is occupied as borrower’s primary residence
3) mortgage was originated on or before Jan. 1, 2009 and unpaid principal balance must be no greater than $729,750 for one-unit properties.

After determining a borrower’s eligibility, a servicer will take a series of steps to adjust the monthly mortgage payment to 31% of a borrower’s total pretax monthly income:
• First, reduce the interest rate to as low as 2%,
• Next, if necessary, extend the loan term to 40 years,
• Finally, if necessary, forbear (defer) a portion of the principal until the loan is paid off and waive interest on the deferred amount.
It all sounds pretty good if you’re in danger of losing your home. There are even built in incentives for banks to extend these loan medications to buyers so they’re not just taking a huge hit in the bottom line. As I wrote about in the previous blog on loan modification banks don’t seem as keen to extend these modifications as one might hope. Only a fraction of the 3-4 million the program was supposed to assist have been granted modifications, and to make matters worse, the people still jumping through hoops to get their loan mods are now discovering that their credit has been ruined.

The way the program is supposed to work, on paper at least, is you contact the bank that holds your mortgage note and let them know you’re in a hardship situation and either in danger of defaulting on your mortgage, or are already late. They are then supposed to negotiate a lower payment and interest rate, which you and the bank agree to, for a trial period while they investigate the hardship and create a more permanent arrangement on your loan. This is where things are falling apart though. While the banks drag their feet for months, requiring obscene amounts of documentation on your hardship, many times more than once, the payments at the reduced rate are being reported as late because they are less than the original mortgage payments. Want to ruin your credit? Have your mortgage reported late for a few months. Trust me, that’ll do the trick.

So the obvious counter to this is, at least you have a reduced mortgage rate so you can keep your home and stay afloat, that’s a good trade off for a lower credit score. That reasoning ignores the ramifications of the damage done to your credit. The fallout from your lower credit score has the ability to actually raise your monthly bills. When your credit scores drop 100 points, which has been widely reported by consumers in the HAMP program, you’ll see your interest rates skyrocket on your credit cards, leading to higher monthly payments and credit limit reductions or freezing, eliminating what may be your last safety net. In addition, unless you had an 850 credit score to start with, a 100 point credit score drop is going to eliminate your ability to obtain a traditional loan modification, will ruin the chance of getting any other type of loan, for instance a debt consolidation loan to take care of the high interest credit cards, and greatly increased interest rates on new purchases, such as automobiles. The increased credit card payments alone have been enough to push some people over the edge that they had been teetering on before the loan modification.

So if you’re considering HAMP assistance, inform yourself of the downsides before you start down that road. If you’re already carrying a large about of credit card debt the increase in interest and fees resulting from the program’s impact on your credit scores may more than offset the reduction in your mortgage payment. With anything, it’s best to know what you’re getting into—and be sure you’re doing your own research because the banks certainly aren’t going out of their way to educate the home owners seeking assistance on the ramifications of them dragging their feet for months while they decide if they’ll provide the loan modification.