HUD Wimps Out on Competitive Public Housing Recovery Funding, Opens Doors to Non "High Performers".

In a prior blog post HERE I had reported that several large PHA's had been shut out of competing for Recovery Act Public Housing funding (like other PHA's they had already received formula PHA funding) because they were not designated by HUD as "high performers".

Builder Online is reporting HERE that HUD is now changing the rules to reserve only 1/2 of the competitive PHA Capital Fund Recovery program to "high performing" PHA's.

The revised HUD NOFA can be found HERE.

Final Draft HASP Savings and Cost Excel Estimator.

This turned into a more complex task than I anticipated.

HERE is my final attempt pre program roll out on March 4th, of an Excel estimator to be used to estimate borrower savings and lender and government costs for the HASP loan modification program announced by the President last week.

Version number is 1.2; previous version has been removed.

In this final draft:

1. Baseline value used (in first column) are same as those in White House example, with addition of $5,000 in fees: A. $2,000 in payments to both borrower and lender/servicer and B. An additional $1,000 payment to lender/servicer.
2. Borrower mortgage payments are reduced by 26% over next 5 years, and principal is reduced by additional $2,000 for two years of on time payments.
   
3. Sources total $29,390. Lender provides $16,725, but also receives $3,000 in fees from government for a net cost of $13,725,
   

As before it's a work in progress with some loose ends:

1. "Mortgage Payment" is the term used in background materials. Not entirely clear if this will include taxes, insurance, and mortgage insurance or will be principal and interest only.I didn't attempt to itemize in the estimator.
   
2. Not totally clear if someone with a front ratio of less than 38% will qualify for loan modification. Current estimator assumes they will, but that front ratio of less than 31% will NOT.
3. No attempt made to project time value of money.
   

(TIP: The estimator is in Excel 2007 file format. Some users report when they save Excel 2007 files they end up with a compressed .zip file extension. My suggestion is to download and save the file to your pc. Find the downloaded file, and if necessary, change the .zip extension to Excel 2007 extension (.xlsx), and THEN open the file with Excel).

H.R. 1 Final Bill.

The 407 page final version of H.R.1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (prior to President's signature) IS HERE.

Chair Frank Highlights Housing Provisions of Recovery Bill.

Short direct summary HERE.

But for some reason, it doesn't include several items including public housing , NAHSDA, lead abatement/healthy homes, or Section 8 project based funding. Go figure.

Full Recovery Bill Conference Report from Congressional Record.

The recovery bill Conference Committee Report (111-16) from the Congressional Record HERE is the first in which text can be searched (it's 200+pages); it does not include the bill text itself, which is yet to be available on Thomas.

(CBO Cost Estimate for final bill is HERE).