LAS VEGAS - A leading loss mitigation executive told participants of the American Credit Union Mortgage Association meeting that the nation will need to correct its mortgage policy in order to stop ongoing waves of foreclosures.
"We still have not addressed the fundamental problem of negative equity," said Camillo Melchiorre, senior vice president for loss mitigation with the Radian Guaranty, a subsidiary of the Radian Group. Radian provides mortgage insurance. "And that will continue to make it more difficult to address the foreclosure issue no matter how much faster we can make the loan mitigation process."
Melchiorre and Radian are aligned with the U.S. Treasury to further streamline and upgrade the process homeowners go through for mortgage relief before foreclosure. He said the combination of politics and poor processes make it unlikely that enough homeowners will be helped by the government's time line.
"As of now I would be shocked if we didn't see another significant push from Congress this year on mortgage cram downs," he told the credit union mortgage executives. "It's just such a political animal and was a political animal from the beginning."
