Obama admin: foreclosure prevention effort on track!!!!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of troubled U.S. homeowners benefiting from loan modification efforts under an Obama administration plan increased by about one-third last month, a senior official said.

In testimony prepared for delivery at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Federal Housing Administration Commissioner Dave Stevens said about 360,000 borrowers had seen their monthly payments lowered under the plan.

A month ago the U.S. Treasury Department had put that figure at about 230,000.
In all, mortgage servicers had extended more than 571,000 loan modification offers to date, up from about 400,000 reported through July, Stevens said.

The new figures put the program to combat rising U.S. home foreclosures on track to meet the administration's goal of modifying more than half a million delinquent mortgages by November 1, Stevens said.

Staunching the record number of home foreclosures is seen as a key to an economic recovery.
Administration officials have been frustrated by how few mortgages have been modified under the plan first announced in February.

They used a report on modification in early August, the first in a planned series of monthly reports, to put pressure on mortgage servicers to step up their efforts to help homeowners.
Under the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), mortgage companies get $1,000 for each loan modification completed and additional cash for three years as long as the borrower stays current.

In the prepared testimony, Stevens said the administration was conducting a "high level review" of the housing rescue effort and was also exploring "programmatic options" to ensure signs of stabilization in the housing market are maintained.

Stevens warns of increasing evidence of "material and growing" challenges in the multifamily mortgage sector that could have negative consequences for tenants.

Mortgage Bankers Association data show that first-quarter 2009 delinquency rates among securities backed by multifamily mortgages rose dramatically from the year-ago quarter, Stevens said.