Philadelphia Foreclosure Relief Program Finds Success As Homeowners Meet Lenders

[Derechos]

With the nation in the grips of a punishing foreclosure crisis, one local program has found success in allowing struggling borrowers to stay in their homes.

A Philadelphia initiative started in 2008 requires the two parties in a foreclosure case to meet face-to-face and attempt to reach an agreement. That tactic, it turns out, can work. Of the homeowners who made deals through the program, nearly 85 percent are still in their homes 18 months later, according to an independent analysis released Tuesday.

The results offer a glimmer of hope in a bleak national situation. Of the eligible homeowners contending with foreclosure in Philadelphia, 70 percent went through the Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program, and a third of those borrowers reached agreements with their mortgage companies to allow them to stay in their homes, according to the study from the Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia-based community investment group.

One-and-a-half years later, most of those agreements have stuck.

"The success is we set the table. And we require the guests to come to the table," said Judge Annette Rizzo, who set up the program with the president judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. "Once you get that one-on-one, where the case's facts come to light, that's when individual deals come."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/14/philadelphia-foreclosure-program_n_876637.html