INSTANT VIEW: U.S. housing plan to aid up to 9 million families

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's plan to deal with the U.S. housing crisis will help as many as 9 million families restructure or refinance mortgages to avoid foreclosure, according to a summary released by the administration on Wednesday.

KEY POINTS:

* Administration releases homeowner aid plan aimed at helping 7 mln to 9 mln families avoid foreclosure

* Plan to provide refinancing for 4 mln to 5 mln homeowners

* Plan to provide $75 billion to help 3 mln to 4 mln "hard pressed" homeowners

* U.S. Treasury to double Fannie, Freddie preferred stock backstop agreements to $200 billion each

COMMENTS:

MICHAEL CHEAH, SENIOR PORTFOLIO MANAGER, AIG SUNAMERICA ASSET

MANAGEMENT, JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY:

"This plan is good, but it is unnecessarily complicated. Every effort helps, but the question is effectiveness. I think it could come with side effects, like people trying to game the system. The Fed should just go ahead and expand the purchases of mortgage backed securities. If you can push mortgage rates down enough, it will reignite mortgage refinancing. The later they implement this, there will be more upside-down loans and fewer people will benefit from refinancing."

LAWRENCE WHITE, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY STERN

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS:

"Any start that tries to get at the foreclosure problem is a good start. There are some instances -- until you go case by case you don't know -- where the amount of writedown that would have to happen is so great that the situation is better off with a foreclosure and finding a new occupant.

"Short of that, there's a lot of social gain to avoiding foreclosures, avoiding the transaction costs of foreclosures, which are substantial, and avoiding the social and neighborhood costs of foreclosure that are also substantial.

"I keep on being an optimist and I keep on being wrong. But I think the combination of the stimulus package and the efforts at dealing with foreclosures will mean that maybe by the fall we see a bottoming out of housing prices.

ANDREW BEKOFF, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, LPB CAPITAL LLC,