Mary Salzer

  

Each lender uses different criteria determined by the investor and type of loan, borrower circumstances and other relevant issues that either support or do not support the decision for mitigation and/or forbearance.

You have a lot of questions that are germane to FHA only...and FHA standards as I responded in other post do not fit the bulk of the loans that we are dealing with here.

FHA has their own very structured guidelines and manuals for this intervention and the lenders follow them per the requirements set forth in the manuals and guidelines, however where there is no value to the mitigation i.e. the borrower is over 4 months delinquent and is not employed, has no visible or apparent ability to be gainfully employed to provide the income required to support the loan, this does not pertain to issues that are extenuating or mitigating and outside of the borrower's control, there will be no mitigation. Additionally if there has been chronic disregard for the obligation again no mitigation. The loss mitigation that FHA preforms is really not modification..it is forbearance only, they will not drop rates. And they are not frankly the easiest to get to mitigate, as the lenders are only constrained to their guidelines in the mitigation process, which is really not all that liberal....the manuals are very vague and do not address the mitigation process as the post that you cited, as liberally as the person that wrote that post interprets them. FHA is not really that easy to work with unless there are compelling, extenuating and mitigating circumstances causing and underlying the default. They must, the lender act within 4 months to mitigate, if during that time the intervention does not work...then they will foreclose with no repercussions from FHA.