President Bush's plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure met with praise, skepticism and a warning that the underlying problem can't be solved with legislation by Denver-area experts.

"I am in favor of everything the President said," Jim Spray, a mortgage broker and consultant said today. "Still, I can't help but thinking of the promises he made to New Orleans (after Katrina). Promises are one thing, meaningful action is another."

Lou Barnes, principal of Boulder West Financial Services, said some things Bush proposed have merit, but the core issues causing a record number of people losing their homes can't be solved by laws.

"The president does not really understand the problem, but he's trying," Barnes said.

Among other things, Bush is calling on Congress to "modernize" the Federal Housing Administration.

Allowing the FHA to refinance high-interest, subprime mortgages is a good idea, Barnes said.

"Anything that intercepts the subprime resets to 11 to 12 percent is laudable," Barnes said. .

But he said at the heart of the foreclosure problem — Colorado could have a record 40,000 this year, according to a report released yesterday by the Colorado Division of Housing — is a lack of equity in homes where the owners can't afford the mortgage payments.

"Households that are in trouble with no equity, there is no way to work them out," Barnes said. "There is no way to refinance them. The deep trouble out there is that there is no equity in homes. There is no legislative solution to this."

Jim Cramer, the Mad Money host on CNBC, recently advised homeowners in this situation to let their homes go into foreclosure. He compared it to the tech-meltdown, where he said investors were better cutting their losses than putting good money after bad. Cramer mentioned Denver as one of the cities where people should be walking away from their homes.

Barnes said the industry term for that is "jingle mail," because of the sound the house keys make in the envelope.

Barnes said homeowners with no equity, which is primarily found in certain "foreclosure belts" in the Denver area, such along northern Interstate 25, where the market is overbuilt, can try to wait for the market to turn around.

The Denver market did that in the early 1990s, after the energy crash and overbuilding of the mid-1980s.

"If you run into a rising market again, that would turn things around," Barnes said. "But here we are in Colorado, six years past our price peak," and foreclosures are showing no signs of slowing, he said.

Spray said that he hopes "all ethical mortgage brokers and indeed the ethical investors, will also heartily embrace the concepts (Bush)addressed. My hope is that these concepts are made a reality sooner than later."

He said the National Association of Mortgage Brokers has been calling for these "new" policies since Bush entered office.

"It's a darn shame it has taken a global financial crisis to bring this to the forefront," Spray said.