Government’s Program to Ease Mortgage Crisis Doesn’t Help Much

The government's $50 billion program to ease the mortgage crisis is helping only a tiny fraction of struggling homeowners, and a list released Tuesday showed which lenders are laggard , Seattle Times reports.

Meanwhile, under the administration’s Making Home Affordable loan modification program, just 9 percent of U.S. borrowers, or 230,000 trial modifications, have begun out of the 400,000 loan modification offers that have been extended , Bizjournals.com reports.

However, in a conference call, Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr said that servicers who collect monthly mortgage payments on behalf of banks and investors who hold pools of mortgages had modified 230,000 distressed mortgages since mid-February. The administration wants large mortgage servicers to modify 500,000 troubled home loans by Nov. 1, MiamiHerald.com reports.