FHA is lowering its mortgage insurance premiums to help borrowers refinance into lower interest rates, President Barack Obama announced yesterday in a national press conference at the White House. The initiative also includes help to members of the military who’ve been wrongly foreclosed on or denied a chance to refinance.
Under the FHA initiative, the agency is reducing its up-front premium to .01 percent, from 1 percent, for streamlined refinancings of loans originated prior to June 1, 2009, and cutting the annual fee for these refinancings in half, to .55 percent, from 1.15 percent.
The Administration says the two fee reductions together should save the typical FHA borrower about a thousand dollars a year, which is “on top of the savings that they’d also receive from refinancing,” President Obama said at the press conference. “That would make refinancing even more attractive to more families. It’s like another tax cut that will put more money in people’s pockets. We’re going to do this on our own. We don’t need congressional authorization to do it.”
In a scenario of how this would work provided by the White House, a typical FHA borrower with $175,000 outstanding on a mortgage would be able to reduce the monthly payments to $915 a month, assuming a new mortgage at 4 percent. Without the fee reduction, the monthly payment after a refi would be $1,010 a month.
The fee cuts begin June 11. (Details from HUD.)
President Obama used the press conference to urge Congress to pass elements of a broader housing assistance proposal he outlined in his State of the Union speech in January and which was subsequently fleshed out a few weeks later in another address. That proposal would apply the administration’s existing HARP program (Home Affordable Refinance Proposal) to all loans, not just those backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To pay for that expansion of the program, a fee would be charged to the country’s largest banks, which received public help after the mortgage crisis hit a few years ago.
Under HARP, lenders agree to modify mortgages, even if the borrower is underwater, as long as certain requirements are met.
Under the assistance to home owners in the military, the administration says it will take the following five steps:
1. Conduct a review of every servicemember foreclosed upon since 2006 and provide any who were wrongly foreclosed upon with compensation equal to a minimum of lost equity, plus interest and $116,785;
2. Refund to servicemembers money lost because they were wrongfully denied the opportunity to reduce their mortgage payments through lower interest rates;
3. Provide relief for servicemembers who are forced to sell their homes for less than the amount they owe on their mortgage due to a permanent change in station;
4. Pay $10 million dollars into the Veterans Affairs fund that guarantees loans on favorable terms for veterans; and
5. Extend certain foreclosure protections afforded under the Servicemember Civil Relief Act to servicemembers serving in harm’s way.
Read a transcript of the President press conference yesterday.
Watch the press conference in this CNN clip.
The 30-second clip above features President Obama announcing the FHA fee reductions.
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