Fed Home Loan Bank of S.F. to host foreclosure workshop
The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco will sponsor a homeowner foreclosure-prevention workshop this weekend in Oakland.
The workshop, scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 9, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Faith Presbyterian Church on Webster Street, is the Federal Home Loan Bank’s first foreclosure-prevention workshop in the East Bay, and comes on the heels of a similar workshop it sponsored recently in Las Vegas.
The Federal Home Loan Bank provides low-cost funding for mortgage loans to its member banks and credit unions.
This weekend’s event will bring together several foreclosure-prevention counseling organizations from the Oakland area, including Housing and Economic Rights Advocatesand several of the bank’s member institutions, as well as the city of Oakland, to provide education and counseling to people affected by mortgage resets.
The workshop dovetails with the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco’s new Homeownership Preservation Subsidy program, which was devised to help low- to moderate-income homeowners in danger of losing their homes because of increases in monthly mortgage payments. Through the HPS program, the Home Loan Bank will make $10 million available to its member banks so that they can restructure eligible adjustable-rate mortgages into fixed 30-year loans. The program is structured so that the home loan bank will put up $1 for every $2 provided by a member bank, up to a maximum of $25,000 in funds per restructuring, but is limited to loans with an outstanding balance below $417,000.
The program, approved is January, is expected to debut in March and could help up to 1,000 homeowners, according to the home loan bank.
IndyMac Bank will be among the lenders participating in the Oakland workshop, according to Kevin Blackburn, regional manager for legislative and regulatory affairs at the Home Loan Bank. Other participating lenders requested that their names not be publicized, he added. Lenders are “trying to gear up their loss mitigation arms,” he said, referring to teams that handle foreclosures, loan modifications, and other credit loss issues. “They are formulating new groups that require training that can actually (begin working out a loan modification) as opposed to just intake. In order to be effective they are, if you will, taking a managed entry approach,” he added. “They don’t want to get overwhelmed by people they can’t really respond to.”
Big mortgage lenders such as Washington Mutual, Countrywide Financial Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. have publicized their attendance at previous local foreclosure prevention workshops.
U.S Congressman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) will attend the workshop as a special guest. Also scheduled to attend are state Assemblyman Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland), Dwight Alexander, vice president, Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Maeve Elise Brown, director of Oakland’s Housing and Economic Rights Advocates.
