After awarding $36 million worth of grants to hundreds of national, regional, and local organizations to help families and individuals with their housing needs and to prevent future foreclosures in April, HUD recently awarded an additional $6 million in grants to add to that total. HUD also mentioned that the announcement includes nearly $1.5 million for new housing counseling grantees and $4.5 million to supplement the funding awarded in April to existing grantees.
Nearly 6 million dollars of the total 42 million dollars will directly support the housing counseling services provided by 33 national and regional organizations, six multi-state organizations, 20 State Housing Finance Agencies, and 248 local housing counseling agencies. According to HUD, most of the grants they are providing for these organizations were completed through the department's two-year Comprehensive Housing Counseling Grant Program Notice of Funding Availability.
Data released by CoreLogic recently found that approximately 254,000 properties regained equity in the first quarter of 2015, bringing the total of residential mortgaged properties with equity nationwide up to 44.9 million, or nearly 90 percent of all mortgages. Although more than a quarter of a million homes regained equity during Q1, the percentage of residential properties with negative equity declined year-over-year by about 19.4 percent from 6.3 million homes in Q1 2014 down to 5.1 million homes in Q1 2015..