How to Jump-Start Mortgage Loan Modifications

July 6, 2009, Updated July 22, 2009

With no end to the housing crisis in sight, the need to modify loan contracts to make payments more affordable is greater than ever. While the number of modifications is rising steadily, it is running far behind the need. In the first quarter of 2009, the loan servicers reporting to the Government reduced the interest rate or loan balance on only 120,465 loans. This is an annual rate of about half a million, which is no more than one-fifth of what is needed.

 Modifying Mortgages Is Not That Big a Deal

 

According to Joseph Smith of Default Mitigation  Management LLC, who has been modifying loans on a small scale for several years, “After you get the borrower’s complete package, it only takes about 45 minutes from beginning to end to modify a loan. This includes reviewing a budget with the borrower (20 min.), determining surplus income (2 min.), completing the loan modification analysis worksheet (10 minutes), generating a special forbearance and mailing it out (10 minutes), and calling the borrower to report the result (3 min.). A few minutes more may be needed for additional calls, generating final modification documents and follow ups, so let’s call it an hour, which is conservative.”

 

Lets be even more conservative and assume 2 hours. JP Morgan-Chase has announced that it now has 3500 loan modification counselors.  Using the 2-hour assumption, these 3500 workers on their own, ignoring the counselors employed by all other servicing firms, could modify 70,000 cases a week, and 3.5 million a year! Clearly there is an enormous gap between the productivity of servicers today, and what is possible.

 Reasons For the Performance Gap

 

The reasons for the gap are well understood. Servicers over the years focused their system development on reducing the costs of dealing with borrowers who paid. Those with payment problems were few in number and could be handled by a relatively small staff. But as the number of problem cases has exploded, the servicers have been overwhelmed. Most have responded by substantially expanding their counseling staffs, but the systems needed for the staffs to work effectively have been lacking.

 

Smith notes that “While most loan servicers are trying to remedy the situation, progress has been slow. Most servicers have inadequate call routing for in-bound calls, have inadequate mail rooms, fax and image facilities, lack systems for tracking files, require excessive numbers of hand-offs in the decision process, and manage largely in a fire-fighting crisis mode.”

 

The results are well-known to the borrowers and their advisors who have tried to get their loans modified. It takes forever, and sometimes it is impossible to reach the counselor with whom they had their initial contact. They may have to begin again with someone else, who may not be able to find their file, and who may tell them a different story than the previous counselor.

 

If the borrower has not submitted all the proper forms, each one filled out correctly, the file is likely to be put aside, which the borrower may not know about unless they inquire and are lucky enough to speak to someone who knows. Files put aside often get lost, which means that the borrower has to submit the entire file again, without necessarily knowing what was wrong with the previous submission.

 

In some cases, a document submission gets lost in a chaotic fax room and is never logged in. When the borrower calls, no one they speak to knows anything about their submission.

 

Delays are compounded by needless divisions of responsibilities, including analysts who check the math and negotiators who deal with the borrower. Smith notes that “if the analyst has a week of cases in his pipeline and the negotiator has the same, the borrower’s total wait is 2 weeks, even if everything else goes smoothly.”

An additional problem for the borrowers, counselors and lawyers seeking modifications is that every servicer has its own unique financial questionnaire, reminiscent of the time when every loan originator had its own loan application form. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac solved that problem by creating a uniform application form, but they have not yet created a uniform modification form.

The bottom line is that a process that could be done within the day takes weeks or months, and often doesn’t get done at all.

 A Way to Break the Log-Jam

 

The one thing that could break this logjam effectively is widespread adoption of a web portal that would directly connect servicers with borrowers and counselors (“users”). The portal would allow users to access a servicer’s specific requirements, and submit modification applications just by clicking a “Submit” button. This would automatically forward the application to the servicer, who would also be alerted by email that a new borrower file has been created. All subsequent messages by the servicer and the user, and all new documents submitted by either, would be recorded and dated in the user’s file.

 

The portal would replace communication by phone and fax with documents and messages left in the portal. The correct forms are filled out because the user receives them directly from the servicer.. The long telephone waits, inability to find the same person, and conflicting information from different people, are eliminated.  The Portal allows both parties to view all messages by sender and date, so there can be no misunderstanding of what was said, when it was said, and by whom. All documents remain in the portal, can be accessed by either party, and cannot get lost.

 

I would not have bothered writing this if a portal that did all these things did not exist. It does, developed by Default Mitigation  Management headed by Joe Smith, who I quoted above. I have no financial interest in this firm.

 

Right now the portal is being used by attorneys with a number of enlightened servicers who account for about three quarters of all loans. The servicer pays a small processing fee for each file while the attorney pays nothing.  

The portal needs to be opened to counselors and borrowers, hopefully in that order. Getting counselors on the portal depends mainly on the major counseling organizations (Hope Now and Neighborworks), who have not as yet committed to it. If the counselors don’t come aboard shortly, I look for DMM and the servicers to open the portal directly to borrowers.

 

July 22, 2009 Note: A draft of this article was sent to Treasury, who forwarded it to Fannie Mae, which has responsibility for administering the program. Fannie responded immediately, requesting a demo from DMM, which they received on July 20. At the demo, it was suggested to the participants from Fannie that the development of a uniform application would be helpful.