Mortgage Foreclosure & Refinance Resource

The pace of housing rescue efforts slowed in the first quarter of the year, according to a new report, while the number of people losing their homes to foreclosure skyrocketed during the same period.More than a half million at-risk home owners had their loans reworked during the first three months of the year, according to Hope Now, the coalition of mortgage lenders, servicers, investors and community advocates put together Nearly 1.4 million homeowners have gone through some sort of loan workout since July.

But the effort is not keeping pace with the rate of foreclosures.

“Unless you think the foreclosure problem [is bottoming out], the deceleration in workouts might be considered a disappointment,” said economist Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute. He doesn’t think that the mortgage crisis has hit its nadir yet.

The administration-backed coalition says that through the end of March it helped 503,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure. That’s up just 6% from the roughly the 473,000 borrowers it helped in the last quarter of 2007 - and a notable slowdown from the 20% increase in the number of people Hope Now helped in 2007’s third quarter.

Meanwhile, the number of homes lost to bank repossessions during the first three months of 2008 totaled 205,207, up 36% from 151,403 a quarter earlier, according to Hope Now.

“Hope Now is helping some people,” said Bernstein, “but not enough to hasten the [housing] correction along. It’s a small piece of the puzzle.”