Not all foreclosure help is in the form of saving the home for the mortgage holders, and in the new pilot program offered by Citibank through its CitiMortgage are, they are offering other forms of help which will not only save money for the borrowers, but help ease them into the transition of moving.

The new CitiMortgage program won’t save the home for the customers, but how it helps is it extends the normal time alloted for people to stay in the home from the usual three months to six months. That in itself is of course a big help and relief to people who are able to make the move to another place to live, but are hindered by time pressures to get it done.

Two elements of the new program are particularly appealing and helpful, as there are times when CitiMortgage will provide assistance to those in foreclosure by helping them with their expenses while living in the home, and alos offering a minimum of $1,000 when applied to relocating. Counselors will also be on hand to help borrowers with their relocation process and the best ways to go about it.

All of this isn’t guaranteed for every customers, but will be determined on each individual case, as far as assistance with expenses. It sounds like most, if not all of those being foreclosed on will get the relocation help, but you will want to check to confirm that with the company.

Possibly the most valuable aspect of the program is Citimortgage will not ask for the customer to pay for the difference between what the home is valued at and what they owe on the loan at the time of repossession.

Finally, the added benefit of not having to pay the legal fees associated with the foreclosure process is another relief to one of the more difficult experiences one can go through in life: the loss of your home. This is done through what is called a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

To gain this assistance, borrowers will have to be a minimum of three months behind on their mortgage payments and in serious jeopardy of losing their home via foreclosure.

Another important conditions is the customer must not allow their home to fall into disrepair and be turned over in poor condition. They also must meet on an ongoing basis with the relocation counselors provided by the company so the bank knows the process is continuing on to conclusion.

The customer must also have their first mortgage with CitiMortgage, be free of any second mortgage, and have at least attempted to get a loan modification in order to keep their home if all possible.

In other words, this is for those that simply have no way of paying for their mortgage no matter how small the payments are and what the bank tries to do. This is help in light of having no way to stay living in their home.

The obvious benefit to Citibank in all of this is borrowers won’t be tempted to just let their homes go bad and just let them go to ruin, or in a number of cases, through frustration and anger even damage them themselves in order to vent on the bank and their personal loss.

Allowing the customers to stay in the home longer also is a preventative against vandalism, which is sure to bring the property down in value in a major way, or make it extremely costly to repair in order to bring it back on the market.

Either way, the bank loses in a big way, and helping their borrowers while keeping the homes the bank now will essentially own for a time, is a win/win which is relatively small in cost when considering the alternatives.
 
The new program was just rolled out on February 12, and is available in Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, Ohio and New Jersey. The company said if things work good with the program in those trial markets, they’ll extend it to other areas of the country too.