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| Citigroup to help 500,000 mortgage holders keep homes |
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Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 12-Nov-2008 00:30 hrs |
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| The Citigroup logo. Citigroup said Tuesday it was placing a moratorium on foreclosures for most home loan borrowers, and that it would work with some 500,000 stretched mortgage customers to help them keep their homes. |
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Citigroup said Tuesday it was placing a moratorium on foreclosures for most home loan borrowers, and that it would work with some 500,000 stretched mortgage customers to help them keep their homes.. The US banking giant said that over the next six months it would "preemptively reach out" to 500,000 of its mortgage customers who are not behind in their payments but require help to keep their payments up-to-date.. The effort will focus on areas of the country where local economies and home markets are facing extreme difficulties.. "This effort is expected to result in workouts of approximately 20 billion dollars in underlying mortgage balances," the bank said in a statement.. Citi also said it will "systematically implement" its existing practice of not foreclosing on holders of Citicorp home mortgages where the home is the borrower's main residence, the borrower is working in good faith with the bank, and the borrower has the income to be able to continue making "affordable mortgage payments.". Citi also said it is asking investors who bought up Citi-originated mortgages to include those mortgages in the program.. "In today's economic environment, Citi continues to build on its long-standing efforts to develop new ways to help our customers remain in their homes," CitiMortgage chief executive Sanjiv Das said in a statement.. "Since the beginning of 2007, these efforts have helped approximately 370,000 homeowners we service avoid foreclosure on their homes.". Several of the new initiatives build on efforts it has taken in the past two years to help keep homeowners from losing their homes, the bank said.. Citigroup's moves followed a similar announcement several days earlier by JPMorgan Chase, which said it would accelerate the restructuring of 110 billion dollars in real estate loans to help 650,000 families keep their homes.. In early October Bank of America also said it was going to modify mortgages for 400,000 homeowners who were customers of Countrywide Financial Corporation, which Bank of America took over earlier in the year. — AFP
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