AAHMP has met with Members of Congress and staff as well as the White House. Its participation in the process is reflected in the President’s “Making Home Affordable Refinance and Modification Option Plan”. Further efforts will better enable lenders, investors and their agents to craft the timely and effective loan modifications now urgently required by our nation’s mortgage foreclosure crisis. AAHMP is ready and able to help strengthen and execute The Plan.

There is an overwhelming need for fast and effective action. Thousands of modification professionals must work with millions of homeowners to analyze their capacity for sustained payment under modified terms. Borrower circumstances can change and no doubt will, but lasting modifications can only be structured with professional execution of underwriting process outlined in The Plan, strengthened by the skills, standards and experience of the modifiers servicing the loans. AAHMP personnel will be trained to be cognizant of the borrowers’ on-going capacity to maintain their modification commitments. They will be trained to spot fraud and abuse of the process. We propose a case-by-case personalized approach that builds upon the automated procedures employed to date by the FDIC and others. It is labor-intensive, but effective. It is used in the private sector and has been proven to work.

The number and pace of preventable foreclosure modifications needed to stabilize real estate markets has failed to keep up with the flood of foreclosures now destabilizing them. The President’s Plan will help by expanding eligibility for refinancing and modification, but unless its pace is quickened and the number of trained personnel engaged in the process is significantly increased, The Plan’s failure may be inevitable, a development that could only make matters worse. Success requires that modifications be sustainable. Recent data proves that in increasing numbers they are not, as re-defaults continue to mount. An excessive number of re-defaults later will not only defeat the present purposes of The Plan, it will also harm the success of the overall strategy, making matters irretrievably worse. In short, the immediate need for additional trained personnel is compelling. AAHMP offers a solution.

Our members are ready and able to assist. We strongly support the establishment of a federal procedure to provide pre-certification for modification providers including self-regulated membership organizations like AAHMP. We can help address our nation’s mortgage modification challenge by adding more trained modification professionals to our membership, each of whom will be governed by our AAHMP standards (attached), including the requirement that each member company have a HUD Direct Endorsed Underwriter on staff.