by David Chapman
Staff Writer
One of every 24 homeowners in Jacksonville – almost 25,000 people – faced some form of foreclosure in 2010.
Thursday, Fannie Mae opened its latest Mortgage Help Center in Jacksonville to educate homeowners about the options and tools available to help them stay in their homes.
“This is a problem, this is an urgent problem,” said Jeff Hayward, senior vice president of Fannie Mae’s National Servicing Organization.
“But help is here and help is here to stay,” he said.
Services will be provided through a partnership by Fannie Mae and Wealth Watchers Inc., a local nonprofit housing counseling and community development organization, to homeowners with mortgages owned by the government-sponsored Fannie Mae.
Such homeowners will be able to receive one-on-one counseling to review their loans and financing options and receive explanation on their available options.
Counselors can also help homeowners apply for loan workouts and other alternatives. Receiving an answer within 30 days is the goal.
The office is at 7077 Bonneval Road, off Butler Boulevard between Interstate 95 and Philips Highway.
Fannie Mae was established as a federal agency, the Federal National Mortgage Association, in 1938 and chartered by Congress in 1968 as a private shareholder owned company. It operates in the U.S. secondary mortgage market by providing funds to mortgage servicers to lend to homeowners.
According to a summary by The New York Times, Fannie Mae was taken over by the federal government on Sept. 8, 2008, along with Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., as the two mortgage giants struggled with deep losses and investors lost confidence in them.
Fannie Mae is the nation’s largest mortgage buyer, said the Times, and Freddie Mac, a publicly traded company that operates under a federal charter, is the nation’s second-largest mortgage buyer.
The collapse of the market for mortgage-backed securities has made them more crucial to the current functioning of the housing market, said the Times, and the pair and the Federal Housing Administration together guarantee about 90 percent of all new mortgages, far above their historic level.
The Jacksonville Fannie Mae Mortgage Help Center is the eighth opened nationally and the third in Florida. A similar center opened on Wednesday in Tampa.
Other service centers have opened in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Phoenix.
Hayward said the Miami location, its first, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. About two-thirds of homeowners who sought assistance were able to stay in their homes, he said.
The remaining third, he said, were able to have “graceful exits” through short sales or other options.
Hayward said the operation has and will continue to stabilize neighborhoods and help “bring us back to calm” amid the foreclosure crisis.
“There is hope out there and we’re bringing hope,” he said.
Between Fannie Mae and Wealth Watchers officials, there will be around 10 people on hand at the center to assist homeowners.
Those seeking assistance without a mortgage owned by Fannie Mae will be directed to other nonprofit organizations that can help, said Nicole Evans, the Jacksonville center manager.
Evans said having a strong financial services industry in Jacksonville will help facilitate greater communication between the center and mortgage servicers and lead to quicker resolutions for homeowners seeking assistance.
The center is available by appointment only. For more information, call 450-4545.
356-2466