Sustainable Loan Modifications: The Obama Administration's New Loan-Modification Plan Imposes Hefty New Information-Tracking Demands on Servicers. To Make the Program Work, Servicers will Need to Capture Much More Data on Modified Loans and Borrowers Who Get Them (Servicing‪)‬

By all indications, the extraordinary pace of loan-modification activity that hit new levels last year will continue--and even accelerate--throughout 2009 and probably into next year. The economy is still very much on shaky footing, there is a huge backlog of bad loans in the pipeline and the foreclosure rate continues to be astronomical. * Now, with the implementation of the Obama administration's Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan (HASP) and its Home Affordable Modification Program (HMP), the pace will undoubtedly accelerate even more, with new wide-ranging requirements--and incentives--now part of the landscape. * Any institution that services loans must participate in the HMP for all eligible Fannie Mae portfolio mortgages and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) pool mortgages. While participation in the loan-modification program has been called voluntary, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may immediately amend their servicing guidelines to include the administration's loan-modification guidelines, in which case any loan i serviced in accordance with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac standards may have to utilize the proposed guidelines. In fact, even non-government-sponsored enterprise (non-GSE) loans are eligible under HMP. Still, within the structure of the administration's proposed loan-modification program, there is only one opportunity to modify a troubled loan and reap the government-provided incentives. Unfortunately, much of the significant effort that has been expended to rework nonperforming loans has been futile in more than 50 percent of the cases, according to LPS Applied Analytics, San Diego. That means overtaxed servicers must continue to manage the barrage of distressed borrowers seeking first-time modifications, while monitoring the status of loans that have already been modified so they can tackle new problems as they arise.