SURPRISE, AZ -- Tara Holtorf is so upside down on her Surprise home, she’s too afraid to even calculate the percentage.
“It’s BIG,” says Holtorf.
She’s been trying to refinance and watching closely as the Obama administration announced program after program to provide relief.
“I’m frustrated, because you have families who are trying to stay in their homes, who are doing the right thing, who are making their payments, including ourselves and yet they won’t help us," Holtorf said Thursday.
Rick Strouse is with Castle and Cook Mortgage in Scottsdale. He says the expansion of the Obama mortgage rescue program will now allow people with mortgages that are 125 percent of their homes value to refinance. That’s up from 105 percent.
But even as he explains, there is the sound of skepticism in his voice and for good reason.
The program expansion basically means if you owe 25 percent more than what your home is worth you are eligible.
Strouse says the average homeowner in Arizona is underwater by 40 to 50 percent.
So is this going to help?
“My personal opinion is no. I think it will help a certain few,” said Strouse.
Those few are folks who had a substantial amount of equity in their home before the market plummeted, but that’s not Tara.
She says the stress can get to you.
“How does any couple or family go through it," she asks. You fight a lot and one of us sleeps on the couch every once and a while, but you get through it."
