Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Treasury Hosts Servicer Workshops for Florida Agents and Homeowners

The U.S. Treasury Department is heading to the coastal cities of Miami and Tampa, Florida, this week and setting up shop for a single day in each city in order to offer assistance to homeowners who are struggling to make their mortgage payments.

Treasury will host a “Help for Homeowners” community outreach event in each of the hard-hit Florida cities, giving homeowners there a chance to meet one-on-one with their loan servicers and with housing counselors to work toward resolving their mortgage problems and averting foreclosure.

Realizing that staying in the home is not always an option, Treasury has included several opportunities within each event’s agenda for real estate professionals and housing counselors to discuss short sales as a foreclosure prevention strategy.

The Miami event is Wednesday, February 22. “Help for Homeowners” moves to Tampa on Friday, February 24. Each event is opened up to homeowners from 1:00 – 8:00 p.m. Tim Massad, assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability is scheduled to speak at the Tampa event at 1:00 p.m.

Before those doors open, though, Treasury has set aside two-and-a-half hours for agents and other real estate professionals to participate in short sale workshops that Treasury says will “explore just about everything you need to know about executing short sales in today’s market.”

They’ll have the opportunity to hear directly from Bank of America, CitiMortgage, GMAC, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo about the most effective ways to get a short sale offer approved. The lenders will also share tips for navigating through the short sale process, provide assistance for working through difficult cases, and discuss ways agents can close the deal faster.

Treasury officials will also be on hand to talk about the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program. For real estate professionals unable to attend one of the Florida events in person, live footage of the short sale workshops will be streamed via a webinar which can be accessed through Treasury’s HAMP admin site.

The short sale workshops and live webinar are being offered to real estate professionals free of charge. “Get all of your questions answered,” Treasury prompts in the marketing material for the event posted to its admin site. The morning short sale workshop sessions are not open to homeowners.

Treasury is also giving real estate professionals a unique opportunity to meet on their clients’ behalf with one of the participating servicers: Bank of America, CitiMortgage, GMAC, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, as well as OneWest/IndyMac and Seterus.

Registration for these servicer meetings has been closed according to the scheduling information available online. Additional details on each of the Florida “Help for Homeowners” events can be found on the MakingHomeAffordable.gov website.

By: Carrie Bay

No comments:

Post a Comment

Type your comment here.