Keep Your Home California is funded under President Barack Obama’s “Hardest Hit Fund,” a $7.6 billion package that the administration is extending to 18 states that have witnessed high rates of unemployment or large dips in housing prices.
The Hardest Hit Fund, in turn, is part of the $50 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention fund. President Obama unveiled the Hardest Hit Fund in February last year and California was among the first states to qualify for inclusion.
For a homeowner to qualify, the California Housing Finance Agency said he or she must first meet restrictions on income and other qualifications. The homeowner’s loan servicer must also be a participant in the program, the SFGate said.
The Keep Your Home California program aims to:
• Provide homeowners who are behind in their mortgage obligations up to $15,000 to reinstate them.
• Provide borrowers who owe more than the worth of their homes, assistance in reducing up to $50,000 in their principal balances.
• Give to homeowners who give up their homes in relation to a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure or a short sale up to $5,000 in transition assistance.
A homeowner might be qualified under more than one program. However, he or she cannot get over $50,000 in total assistance.
Keep Your Home California program requirements include:
• The applicant must be receiving unemployment benefits. However, the individual can not be within 90 days of exhausting them.
• An applicant’s income must be 120 percent or less of the median income for a family of four in his or her county.
• The individual’s loan must have originated on or before Jan. 1, 2009. Also, the balance cannot be over $729,750.
• The applicant must be delinquent or at risk of becoming delinquent. However, he or she cannot be in foreclosure or more than three months past due.
• The applicant must be living in the home or condo, and he or she cannot own any other real estate.
• An applicant will not qualify if he or she refinanced his or her mortgage for more than the outstanding balance (except to pay for mortgage-related fees). If that individual refinanced just to get a lesser rate, that person will not be disqualified.
• Individuals with a stand-alone second mortgage, such as a home equity loan or line of credit, will not qualify.
The SFGate report said homeowners can avail of assistance for up to six months of up to $3,000 per month or 100 percent of their mortgage payment, whichever is lesser. The assistance, the report said, “will be structured as a non-recourse, non-interest-bearing lien against the property that is forgiven after three years.” An individual who defaults on his payments, sells or refinance within three years, might have to repay it, the article said.
For additional information, go to keepyourhomecalifornia.org.
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Way to kick us 99ers while we’re down. On top of ignoring us in the unemployment extension, they are denying us (or those that will become “us” within 90 days) any assistance under this program as well. They sure do know how to let us know how worthless they think we are.