Over 400,000 Helped by Repossession Property Program
Over 400,000 American homeowners have been helped by the national repossession property prevention program administered by NeighborWorks America under congressional authority.
The program called National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling (NFMC) was crafted to provide free repossession property prevention counseling to distressed families to enable them to save their homes from foreclosures.
According to NeighborWorks, a national network of over 230 community development groups across the U.S., over 90 percent of families who received foreclosure prevention help through NFMC were still staying in their houses as of February this year.
Six percent of those counseled eventually lost their homes to repossession property inventories while three percent were able to avoid foreclosure through short sales, deed-in-lieu or refinancing.
The NFMC study also found that lower-income families had higher rates of foreclosure filings than families with higher incomes.
NeighborWorks also found that distressed homeowners are more successful in saving their homes if they participate in the program when they are only a couple of months behind in their monthly payments.
Based on NFMC data, among homeowners who were in default by only 3 to 4 months and who sought help under NFMC, only 27 percent were not able to save their homes from foreclosure. On the other hand, among homeowners who were in default by over four months and who sought NFMC help, 60 percent were not able to save their homes.
This finding should prompt distressed homeowners to seek help from legitimate organizations during the first months of their default and even before they commit their first missed payment.
The NFMC program has also attained success in helping minorities save their houses from repossession property inventories. Around 53 percent of families who were counseled under NFMC were minorities and around 67 percent of these families were earning only about 80 percent of what is considered the median household income in the area.
According to data collected from over 1,700 nonprofit agencies that obtain funding under the NFMC program, the program has been helping households most battered by the foreclosure crisis.
A single mother in Greenville, North Carolina almost lost her house when she got laid off and had to pay medical bills. When she was helped by the Mission of Peace under the NFMC program, she was able to reduce her monthly payments significantly.
According to NeighborWorks’ CEO Ken Wade, the single mother’s story is just one of thousands of stories of families saving their homes from repossession property inventories under the NFMC program.
