Room to Negotiate Flexibility for your Mortgage Payments

If you just lost your job because of the Coronavirus outbreak or if your income has been affected, help with your mortgage could be available starting right now. About 50% of all home loans are held by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The federal government just instructed Fannie and Freddie to be flexible with those mortgage payments. Other mortgages are not held by these two entities but their holders may adopt similar flexibility in the near future.

Here are the links to check if your mortgage is held by Fannie or Freddie. I just did it for myself. All you need is your name, your address and your social security number. It took me less than a minute for each.

If your mortgage is held by one of these two entities (and your income just got affected by the virus crisis) you can contact your service provider. Your service provider is the entity (most likely a bank) to whom you are sending your mortgage every month. The people you will talk to have been instructed to show flexibility and not to ask for an endless stream of justifying documents.

Here is a link from Fannie and one from Freddie that provide you more details on this help from them.

For most families, mortgages are a large share of monthly expenses. It is better to use this to accommodate to the shock if you need to. This buys you time and that can be critical.

Stay safe!

Marc Anselme