Maze of Mortgage Modification
By Stephanie Hoops
...Navigating deals with the nation's banking giants is no easy task, but it's one being undertaken by distressed homeowners all over the country as policy makers fumble efforts to get lenders to write down balances on millions of underwater mortgages, remnants of the real estate collapse.
In the Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura metropolitan statistical area, 24.7 percent, or 42,718, of all residential properties with a mortgage were in negative equity in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to CoreLogic, a Santa Ana firm that tracks the real estate market.
..."One would hope that something would have been done a long time ago," said Richard Green, director of the University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate. "I think if anything, the political environment has become more favorable to lenders, not less."
...Besides signs of rising civil litigation, state attorneys general and federal regulators have the nation's largest banks -- Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and GMAC -- in their crosshairs.
Economists say the possibility of regulation has sparked a recent slowdown in foreclosures.
At USC, Green has been studying the situation and has concluded that unless loan balances are written down, nothing matters because people are going to walk away from their homes.
"I think there are potential solutions," he said. "I just don't see any of them happening."