Bills.com co-CEO suggests ways to manage a mortgage during the meltdown
Michael Azzano
Cosmo PR
(415) 596-1978
michael@cosmo-pr.com
SAN MATEO, Calif., Sept. 13, 2007 – In response to President George Bush's proposal to manage the U.S. mortgage lending crisis, Bills.com (www.bills.com) co-founder and co-CEO Andrew Housser is available to comment on the impact of the FHASecure program on homeowners as well as the FHA’s new mortgagee letter detailing the proposal.
- Qualifying borrowers for the FHASecure program
- Criteria for qualification
- Challenges to qualifying (including debt-to-income rations, appraised values, geographic limits)
- Pending legislation
- Steps homeowners can take to evaluate their mortgages and resolve mortgage problems
"While better than nothing, the FHASecure proposal’s measures will help only a very small percentage of troubled mortgages," said Housser. "As of last year, up to 7.5 million subprime mortgages were outst&ing; more than 2 million of them will be put in potential foreclosure risk by the end of 2008 as rates adjust.
Bush has proposed changing Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage lending rules to allow homeowners to refinance their mortgages into low, fixed-rate FHA (government-insured) mortgages if they have missed loan payments. The FHASecure program would only apply to borrowers who missed payments because of a recent spike in adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) interest rates that caused their total payments to jump – and who were current in payments before the re-set.
"This latest proposal will help some people on the margin, but there needs to be a correction in the market – and the government will not be able to help every person who is over-extended," said Housser. Homeowners have ignored the process of evaluating the right type of loan for their budget too long, he added. "The fact remains that many people with subprime mortgages are in homes they couldn’t afford and shouldn’t have purchased in the first place."
Based in San Mateo, Calif., Bills.com is a free one-stop online portal where consumers can educate themselves about complex personal finance issues and comparison shop for products and services including credit cards, debt relief assistance, insurance, mortgages and other loans. The company blogs about consumer finance issues at /. Since 2002, Bills.com has served more than 15,000 customers nationwide while managing more than $350 million in consumer debt. Bills.com is a division of Freedom Financial Network, LLC, whose co-founders and CEOs, Andrew Housser and Brad Stroh, were named Northern California finalists in Ernst & Young's 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.
