Know who needs mortgage forgiveness? Real Estate speculators.

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**biccat**

From Bloomberg (and today's Press Conference):

The Obama administration will extend mortgage assistance for the first time to investors who bought multiple homes before the market imploded, helping some speculators who drove up prices and inflated the housing bubble.

Landlords can qualify for up to four federally-subsidized loan workouts starting around May, as long as they rent out each house or have plans to fill them, under the revamped Home Affordable Modification Program, also known as HAMP, according to Timothy Massad, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial stability. The program pays banks to reduce monthly payments by cutting interest rates, stretching terms, and forgiving principal.

**Vulcan**

Good and bad.

Good, in that it helps relatively new landlords maintain their properties.

Bad, in that the speculators who helped drive the prices up to cause the problem in the first place get a bailout.

**daedalus**

How about casino loss forgiveness?

**WarOne**

Or failed diet weight loss forgiveness?

**daedalus**

WarOne wrote:Or failed diet weight loss forgiveness?

I forgive you for failing to lose all that weight.

**Manchu**

Is the purpose to prevent landlords from evicting tenants?

**LunaHound**

Vulcan wrote:Bad, in that the speculators who helped drive the prices up to cause the problem in the first place get a bailout.

Exactly, thats why RE is so popular in atleast where I live,
and rich chinese always comes over and buys out a whole prime estate.

They certainly dont need more help....

**Manchu**

Mustache-twirling vilification aside, it seems that this plan only benefits landlords whose properties house people. It's not really a matter of rewarding speculation but rather of staving off the worst consequences of that speculation.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

daedalus wrote:How about casino loss forgiveness?

We had that already but it was only for high stakes gamblers.

**biccat**

Manchu wrote:Is the purpose to prevent landlords from evicting tenants?

There are already laws that prevent banks from evicting tenants (for some period of time, 30 days or something) if the house is foreclosed.

**Manchu**

I would have expected Bloomberg to report on that.

Edit: Oh, for only 30 days? Then I can see that this program is necessary.

**Melissia**

Yes, thirty days of protection isn't much.