Adrienne Francis

They say good things come to those who wait. They also say he who hesitates is lost. But when it comes to half a dozen juicy tax breaks, it’s the second “they” you should listen to, because he who waits until Jan. 1, 2012, to take advantage of them will be out of luck.

William Compton has tried twice to refinance the mortgage on his home in Florida, but has been turned down each time.

Like millions of other homeowners, William D. Compton would like to refinance his mortgage so that he pays less each month for his three-bedroom house in Gulf Breeze, Fla. With the savings, he figures he could afford a few extra movies and restaurant dinners or he could buy a new stove and brakes for his car, purchases he has postponed because finances are so tight.

Although he would appear to be a good candidate, Mr. Compton, 57, has been turned down twice for a federal refinancing program aimed at homeowners like him.

Still, he has renewed hope. That’s because the government is expanding the Home Affordable Refinance Program, which was meant to help homeowners whose mortgages are backed by the government and whose home values have declined sharply, even below what the borrowers owe. Mr. Compton is one of those underwater homeowners.

When the Treasury Department announced the program, referred to as HARP, two years ago, it said it could help four million to five million homeowners whose home values had plunged. Yet just 900,000 borrowers — whose loans are owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored housing finance companies — have successfully refinanced through the program. Starting early next month, though, banks will begin using new criteria intended to make more borrowers eligible: raising the ceiling on how much owners can borrow over the value of their home as well as relaxing rules that might force banks to take back bad loans from the government. In announcing the change, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, carefully eased expectations, suggesting about 900,000 more homeowners would be helped, roughly doubling the size of the program to date.

Analysts welcomed the change, but some criticized it for still not capturing nearly enough of the people who could benefit from lower interest rates.

Of the 22 million borrowers who could be eligible for the government refinancing program, nearly 70 percent of them are paying interest rates of 5 percent or more, according to CoreLogic, a research firm. Conventional mortgage rates are currently closer to 4 percent.

Greater participation could help the beleaguered housing market, which showed renewed signs of decline in data released on Tuesday, as well as help shore up the broader economy.

“The universe is much larger than what has come through the pipeline,” said Paul Ballew, chief economist at Nationwide Insurance. Mr. Ballew said that if 10 million more people refinanced and saved an average of $200 a month, that would work out to be about $24 billion a year of additional spending power in the economy.

Other economists and officials of the Federal Housing Finance Agency say it is unrealistic to expect all those borrowers to refinance. Some people are wary of government programs, while others will be put off by upfront application fees and the paperwork burden. Those who have home equity loans or second mortgages could face tougher approvals.

Since the refinancing program is optional, lenders may impose additional restrictions. What is more, it is costly to devote staff to refinancing applications, so lenders may simply be reluctant to do so.

Mr. Compton has calculated that a refinancing would save him and his wife, Lynne, about $275 on their $1,397 monthly payment. He has not missed a payment, despite being laid off from one job and enduring two pay cuts in the last two years. His salary is now roughly two-thirds what it was when they bought the house five years ago — a house that has since fallen in value.

The loan servicer, JPMorgan Chase, initially turned down the refinancing application because the Comptons had been living in another, smaller property they owned while renting out their main house.

The couple moved back in September and reapplied after changing their drivers’ licenses and utility bills.

This time, a loan officer told Mr. Compton, who works as a public transportation planner, that he did not qualify because his loan had been sold to two different investors. Mr. Compton said he confirmed through a government Web site that his loan was now owned solely by Freddie Mac.

“It angers me quite a bit,” said Mr. Compton, who added that unlike other borrowers, he never took out a home equity loan during the boom and has consistently paid his bills. The refinancing program, he said, should be “a perfect fit for me.”

He suspects that Chase — as well as other lenders — believe “that if you just tell people ‘no’ often enough, eventually they will just say O.K., and move on.”

After being asked about Mr. Compton’s case, a Chase spokesman said the company was investigating his file. “We are reaching out to the customer to see if we could refinance him through HARP 2,” said the spokesman, referring to the expanded government program, “or offer another option.”

Meg Burns, senior associate director for housing and regulatory policy at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said the agency could not control individual lenders.

Ms. Burns said the new criteria were intended to “serve these specific borrowers whose home values had declined and did not otherwise have access to a refinance or at a cost that we thought was reasonable.” She added that the program was not meant to bolster the overall economy. (Separately, since April 2009, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have refinanced eight million loans through other programs for borrowers who still have equity in their homes.)

Some analysts complain that the new rules are too narrow to spur enough refinancings to actually help the economy. Christopher J. Mayer, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, said the new criteria would do little to encourage banks to compete for refinancing business. “This was a program designed to be very small,” he said.

Even if the program were to help far more borrowers refinance, some economists expect little increase in consumer demand. A much larger refinancing boom last decade led to a rise in consumer spending that was only “modest and transitory,” said Sam Khater, senior economist at CoreLogic.

Indeed, the savings from a refinancing may go toward paying off other debts or creating a cushion for lean times.

It took two years for Leslie Davidson, a consultant who helps companies produce audio and Web conferences, to refinance the mortgage on her townhouse in Pacifica, Calif. After spending more than $1,200 on appraisals and getting rejected by several lenders, Ms. Davidson finally got approved through the federal government refinancing program with her current servicer, CitiMortgage, earlier this year.

She reduced her monthly payments by nearly $400, and bought an Apple laptop. But she is mostly using the savings to pay off more loan principal each month and reduce the credit card debt that she racked up during the economic downturn.

Government officials say the main benefit of the expanded refinancing program is to reduce the likelihood that borrowers — even those who have consistently made payments — will eventually default.

“The economy is weak, and the unemployment rate is high, and sometimes bad things happen to good people,” said Frank E. Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac. “If they get hit with another whammy such as they lose their job,” he added, “they are more likely to go into delinquency and into foreclosure.”

But some critics say the government’s refinancing program sidesteps the fundamental problem that drives foreclosures, which is that close to 10.7 million borrowers — more than a fifth of all mortgage holders — owe more than their homes are worth. Many of them have already missed too many payments to be eligible for refinancing.

The housing market has yet to see its bottom, and an increasing number of economists worry that depressed housing prices and underwater borrowers are holding back a broader recovery.

“If the group we’re trying to reach is those who are underwater,” said Katherine Porter, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine who specializes in bankruptcy and mortgages, refinancing to lower monthly payments is “a very odd mismatch between the problem and the solution.”

She added: “Don’t get me wrong, that puts more dollars in families’ pockets and may have a stimulus effect, but it’s a very tangential way of addressing underwater homeowners.”

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More than three months after it was launched on iOS devices, Google Catalogs has finally come to Android.

In a post on the Google Mobile Blog on Monday, Google announced that the free digital catalog library would now be available for download on Android tablets.

Google Catalogs, which launched in August, is essentially a digitized version of all those shiny catalogs you're always finding in your mail box. It features products from more than 125 brands including Nordstrom, Nike, Williams-Sonoma and Sephora on over 400 catalog issues.

While Google search is great when you know what you're looking for, Google Catalogs is "all about the browse," as Business Product Manager Abigail Holtz told The Huffington Post in August. She said, "At its core, it’s a very simple app. It’s just about being inspired and finding things you didn’t know you’d love."

Besides browsing products, users can build collages of items that they like and share them via email to other users. You can also buy directly from the app and search for specific items.

Although the app's pages are basically just digitized versions of catalog pages scanned using Google Books technology, Tuaw described the user experience as "seamless". It certainly looks nicer than the slippery paper and tiny type of physical catalogs.

Take a look at the user interface of Google Catalogues, via our slideshow (below). You can visit the Android Market to download the app for your Android-powered tablet.

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