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“By PETER S. GOODMAN
Half a million troubled homeowners have seen their loan payments lowered under an Obama administration relief plan, the Treasury announced on Thursday, claiming a significant milestone in the effort to spare families from foreclosure.
Unaffordable mortgages are now being modified at a pace faster than homes are being sold in foreclosure proceedings, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said.
“That’s an important shift,” Mr. Geithner said in a telephone briefing with reporters. “Half a million families are participating in loan modifications that are substantially decreasing their housing costs.”
Mr. Geithner added that roughly 40 percent of the 1.2 million homeowners deemed eligible for loan modifications under the Making Home Affordable Program have received them.
Treasury portrayed the data as clear evidence that its program to prevent foreclosures has gained traction and is operating effectively after a discouraging beginning. The administration had previously set a goal of 500,000 modifications by the end of October, reaching that goal three weeks early.
But many homeowners continue to complain that seeking loan modifications can be frustrating and seemingly futile: Mortgage companies routinely lose documents and require them to resubmit their files repeatedly, while giving them incorrect fax numbers and leaving them on hold for hours only to receive contradictory instructions from customer service officers.
Some mortgage companies assert they cannot modify loans because they merely send out the monthly bills, while the mortgages are owned by investors. Yet industry insiders say many mortgage companies actually profit by delaying the process and keeping homeowners in long-term delinquency, extracting myriad fees along the way.
Even as it claimed a significant achievement, the administration acknowledged that much more needs to happen before its anti-foreclosure program may be considered a success.
“Unacceptably large numbers of families across the country are still at risk of losing homes they could otherwise afford to stay in,” Mr. Geithner said.
With the official unemployment rate at 9.8 percent in September and expected to reach double-digits, joblessness is now sending previously sound households into delinquency. What began as a foreclosure crisis stemming from subprime mortgages — those extended to homeowners with tainted credit — has broadened into a national event whose pain is now hitting borrowers with previously solid credit.
During the briefing, administration officials urged Congress to pass pending health care reform legislation, asserting that unexpected medical bills are a major reason many homeowners fall into delinquency on their mortgages.
Treasury first announced its anti-foreclosure program in February before delivering details in March: Mortgage companies would be paid $1,000 for each loan they modified, then $1,000 a year for up to three years. The plan was advanced with the promise that it would eventually spare up to four million households from foreclosure.
But by June, evidence was mounting that the program had become a bureaucratic nightmare. Thousands of homeowners recounted poor treatment and disorganization at the hands of their mortgage companies. By the end of June, only about 50,000 loans had been modified, according to a Treasury estimate.
In July, frustrated by the pace of the progress and irritated by legions of homeowner complaints, Treasury summoned major mortgage companies to Washington for what was subsequently described by officials as a dressing-down.
In the months since, mortgage companies have added and trained staff and improved their processes of fielding applications, according to the administration.
“We’ve put significant pressure on the servicers to ramp up production,” said the Housing and Urban Development secretary Shaun Donovan, during Thursday morning’s briefing.
Still, the administration acknowledged that glitches and frustrations remain. Treasury and H.U.D. again summoned to mortgage industry officials to Washington for meetings this afternoon aimed at further accelerating the program, Mr. Donovan said.
“We are keeping that pressure on,” he said.