A panel of experts from organizations including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the U.S. Treasury Department share expertise on programs that can help homeowners and the housing market.

Several Illinois REALTOR® members and association staff members attended a town hall meeting Tuesday, July 8, 2014, to discuss ways to help homeowners with refinancing.

Mel Watts, FHFA

The meeting featured an appearance by Mel Watts, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Roughly 36,000 homeowners in the Chicagoland area are qualified to refinance their substandard mortgage with a Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) mortgage. The number increases to over 44,000 throughout the state of Illinois.

Refinancing a substandard mortgage into a HARP loan could result in several hundred dollars in savings monthly for homeowners.  According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) on average, those in the Chicagoland area could be saving almost $200 a month in payments, and in some cases the amount could be more.

REALTOR® members Mabel Guzman, with @ Properties; Gerald Willams, with Allpoints Realty; and Zeke Morris, with Keller Williams attended. Also at the meeting were
Charlie Dawson, regulatory specialist with the National Association of REALTORS®; Sharon Gorrell, housing policy advisor for the Illinois Association of REALTORS®; and Brian Bernardoni, a IAR government affairs director working with the Chicago Association of REALTORS®.  
More information on this program can be found on www.HARP.gov. The site has information on how many people are fall into the refinancing category by county, metropolitan area or ZIP code.
If you have a client who you sold to prior to 2009 and who might be in distress, this program might provide the help they need.