Do you qualify for gummint mortgage help? (Page 2)

Another factor in refinancing a home that has lost value is the cost of mortgage insurance.  If you originally financed a small enough percentage to avoid m.i., you might not be in the same situation now.  So, while the lower interest rate may be appealing, the end result (with fees and adding m.i.) is no better.  Just something to keep in mind if you start down that path. 

Again, I believe that the whole point of the refi part of the bill is to enable people to do the refi with more than 80% Loan to value.  Since the 80% rule is what they use to figure if you need PMI I am guessing that they thought of this.  Or you would be correct that your P&I payment might go down but then tack on PMI and you are right at the same payment you started with.  HOWEVER, that PMI would only be on there until you got back to an 80% loan to value.

Do you have the details on that part?  I kept my house in SD and rented it so that I wouldn't have to take a loss on it.  But if the government is going to help me out I would think about putting it back up on the market eventually (depends on my tenants really...they seem like good people who wanted to stay a few years).

Yup!! What she said!!  We make our payments on time and scrimp elsewhere if needed and didn't get in over our heads from the get-go....so no $$ for us! 

Well, our payment is still on an ARM that's fixed until the time is up (for another year or two .. can't remember).  But we are paying out more than 31% of our income for the house.  Based on the first criteria I guess we qualify for "modification" except we are not in default or close to it.

But we are not in good shape right now .... the arbitration/lawsuit with our builder didn't help and we have totally depleted our equity line and cannot increase it (debt to income ... there is still plenty of equity in the house/land just my income doesn't allow us to).

One of the reasons I'm looking for a higher income position ......

No hard feelings for those genuinely effected by these difficult economic times but for every one that has been laid off or had their hours/income cut...there are many that bought into ARMs so they could afford WAY more house then their means or chose to "find a way to make it work".......

If we were all to benefit (or could all be eligible for mortgage renegotiation based on our homes current value versus prior value due to economic conditions), then by all means let's spread some money around.  But once one person that overextended or out-borrowed their equity gets "bailed out" for their bad judgment (as opposed to job loss or other income eliminating issue) then those of us who were prudent and conservative with our home-buying decisions are asking..."hey, what about us?"

Paul 

Here you go.  http://hap.usace.army.mil/EP_PCS.html .  You'll notice in the bottom left hand corner that they're still working on the process of benefits but I'd rather have my application in the early stack.  The application isn't that hard it's just finding all of the correct paperwork to go along with it.

Congrats on renting your house.  We were actually just paying our full mortgage from Japan because the renting market sucked too.  We weren't in a huge expensive house but we still lost a bunch.  We have 3 years of living in base housing to dig out of our hole. 

 good luck