Stats released on Thursday show that less struggling borrowers received assistance with their mortgages in August, then they had in July. From July to August, the amount of those assisted by Hope Now to try and prevent foreclosures, decreased by 1.7%. The executive director of Hope Now, Faith Schwartz, remarked on Hope Now´s stats, saying that "It's difficult to look at any one month and see a trend,...We're still outpacing the second quarter in total workouts. Hope Now is absolutely successful in that it is saving people from going into final foreclosure, and that won't change,... But any further direction that helps homeowners offered by the government would be helpful."

At the same time, the government plan to save the financial system is returning to the House for voting, after having passed the Senate on Wednesday. It would allow the Treasury to buy $700 billion in bad assets, the majority backed by mortgages from banks to clear their balance sheets and allow more lending. Of course, there are still many skeptics who feel that this new measure will not magically fix the situation, as they believe the crisis cannot be solved until the housing market is more stable, foreclosures are less, and home prices become more level. At this moment, home prices are still falling, declining 16.3% from the figure in July 07 in comparison to July 08, according to the Standard & Poor´s/Case-Shiller 20 city housing index.