Foreclosure counseling fair opens July 31
St. Louis — A week from tomorrow, hundreds of mortgage counselors will come to the Chaifetz Arena in midtown for the region’s biggest-ever foreclosure counseling fair.
It’s a four-day event, held by the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, designed to help troubled borrowers re-work their mortgages and stay out of foreclosure. And it will help thousands of people, said NACA Chief Executive Bruce Marks.
"We offer unprecedented solutions for homeowners caught up in the current mortgage and economic crisis," he said.
A Boston-based housing advocacy group with 38 offices nationwide, NACA has been an aggressive, sometimes contro versial, voice for borrowers in the current mortgage crisis.
It has also negotiated deals with 12 major banks — including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Fannie Mae — letting it modify mortgages to whatever level a borrower can afford, Marks said life insurance companies. He said those deals, coupled with technology and busloads of trained counselors, would enable NACA to do in a few hours what often takes mortgage counselors weeks of phone calls and paperwork.
St. Louis is the third stop on a ten-city tour NACA is running this summer. Last weekend, about 20,000 borrowers came to a basketball arena in Cleveland seeking help. By Monday night, Marks said, 5,000 had new mortgages, with interest rates, and sometimes principal, permanently reduced.
The event runs from July 31 through Aug. 3