FundMyRemodel.com

Just because mortgage rates are at historic lows doesn’t mean homeowners can qualify to refinance. Most Americans can’t because their credit scores aren’t perfect, their houses have lost value or they’ve lost incomeAs a result, tens of millions of Americans have been effectively blocked from saving hundreds of dollars a month by refinancing.

If Riccio could qualify for today’s low rates, which are well below 4.5 percent, she would save $450 a month on her mortgage.“We would avoid more foreclosures, people would be happier and I think the economy would get a lot better” if everybody could access the low rates, Riccio says.That’s basically what some economists are proposing — at least for some 30 million Americans. The premise of the idea is that because of the financial crisis, the federal government has already guaranteed 60 percent of existing home mortgages.

So, since the government is on the hook anyway, allowing all those people to refinance at today’s low rates will make defaults less likely — and save homeowners money.

A ‘Tax Cut’ To Stimulate Economy

“You’d be giving what amounts to a tax cut for the life of the mortgage,” says R. Glenn Hubbard, an economist at Columbia University who helped come up with this proposal together with his colleague Christopher Mayer.

Hubbard says that extra spending money would help stimulate the economy. He says it’s a sizable chunk of money — as much as a few thousand dollars per year for many, many years.

In total, Hubbard says, the savings would add up to around $50 billion a year.

For more:　
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/11/131249862/refinancing-plan-could-face-political-hurdles