Mortgage-Guy.com

Dear Dr. Don, We currently have 7½ years and $76,000 left on a 15-year mortgage . Our rate is great — 4.75 percent fixed

Due to the large amount of mortgage buy-backs within the mortgage industry caused by excessive defaults consumers are getting limited or locked out from getting a mortgage.

If your credit is good and you’ve tried to get a home loan, you may have found yourself in the perplexing position of being told you aren’t qualified—even if you feel that you are by old standards. What’s going on here? The answer is a secret problem in the mortgage-lending business called Repurchase Demands (loan buy-backs)—and they are slowly strangling the industry. Thus, fewer loan products are available for the qualified borrower.

More than one-third of Americans believe it’s acceptable under certain circumstances to stop paying a mortgage and walk away from the home, a survey by the Pew Research Center found.

While 59 percent of those surveyed said its “unacceptable” to abandon a home loan, 19 percent said it was “acceptable” and another 17 percent said it depends on the circumstances, an answer that wasn’t on the survey, said Rich Morin, a Pew Research senior editor in Washington. Of the respondents, 63 percent own homes and 31 percent are renters.

GMAC Mortgage, part of Ally Financial, informed servicing agents to stop foreclosures in Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin.

GMAC Mortgage stated that it may need to take “corrective action” on some foreclosures in the 23 states listed above, according to a memo it out.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The mortgage-interest deduction is America’s favorite tax break — and it’s also the costliest.

Between 2009 and 2013, the government will lose out on nearly $600 billion because of it, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

While there’s no way to stabilize U.S. debt without making tough choices on the tax and spending sides of the ledger, some sacred cows are more sacred than others. And the mortgage-interest tax break is still deemed untouchable.

Case in point: a new bipartisan tax reform proposal that has been gaining currency in policy circles. Co-sponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. and Judd Gregg, R-NH, the proposal would simplify the income tax system, streamline the numbers of credits and deductions, and lower the corporate tax rate.

But it doesn’t touch the mortgage deduction.

“We wanted a politically viable vehicle,” Gregg said at the Heritage Foundation last month.

Currently, individuals owning a first or second home can deduct the interest on up to $1 million in loans used to buy, build or improve the home. They can also deduct the interest on an additional $100,000 on loans secured using the home as collateral, regardless of how the money is used.

Many policy experts have proposed modifying the interest deduction for three reasons: It takes a big bite out of federal coffers; it favors higher-income tax filers; and it distorts investment decisions.

And while the deduction is seen as a big spur to

Mortgage modifications are something both the Obama administration and banks are providing for delinquent home owners in an attempt to help the economy. But as much as banks and the Home Affordable Mortgage Program launched by President Obama are trying to help, still others are weary of how genuine the programs are.

“Sometimes lenders push modifications forward, but often they let them die on the vine,” said David McDonald, a former president of the San Diego chapter of the California Mortgage Brokers Association, SignOnSanDiego.com reported.

McDonald added that loan-servicing agencies “tend to make more money the more delinquent a loan gets, so there’s not much motivation for them to help borrowers,” the report said.

The $75 billion HAMP have qualified just a mere percentage of the 1.5 million people who applied. The report added that 246,000 did not make it into the trial program, while 617,000 were canceled from the trials before getting permanent modifications.

According to CNNMoney.com, banks are doing nearly twice as many mortgage modifications under their own foreclosure prevention programs than under President Obama’s HAMP.

But that’s still no reason to celebrate, as many mortgage modification offers may not be as good as HAMP, CNN reported.

“We don’t know if they are sustainable based on the monthly payment,” said John Snyder, manager of foreclosure prevention programs at NeighborWorks America, the report said. Since banks don’t release a lot of information about their modifications in the first place, Snyder says