“can I count my unemployment compensation as income for a HAMP loan modification?”

Unfortunately, for all HAMP trial modifications starting as of July 1, 2010, unemployment compensation cannot be counted as income.

In the past, if your unemployment compensation was in effect for 9 months or longer on the date of your HAMP application submission, you could count it towards income.  Under the Treasury Department’s Supplemental Directive 10-04 (dated May 11, 2010) [.pdf document], this will no longer be the case.

This makes sense because the goal of HAMP is a sustainable mortgage – so reliance on a temporary source of income, such as unemployment, to calculate the new HAMP mortgage would not fit into that “sustainable” model.  But it makes “sense” to the detriment of hurting homeowners.

On the positive side, Supplemental Directive 10-04 introduced a new program called Home Affordable Unemployment Program (“UP”), which provides both payment forbearance and relief from foreclosure action.  I’ll discuss UP in a later post.