“Housing Angels,” an Arizona-based operation, appear to be onto something smart.

The program connects distressed homeowners with cash-laden investors (referred to as “Angels”), facilitating short sales to avoid foreclosure situations. But the sale is only temporary.

That’s because the “Angels” then rent the properties back to the original owners at reduced price. And when the homeowners are back on their feet financially, they have the opportunity to buy back their homes for much less than what they originally owed.

It’s a “win-win” solution that AZFamily.com illustrates in the following example:

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Losing a home to foreclosure can be devastating.

Heaping helpings of financial stress and truckloads of uncertainty about what the future holds can break people down and even tear apart families.

U.S. News and World Report today provides seven helpful tips to help distressed homeowners cope under these emotionally-charged circumstances.

Check them out:

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It’s no secret that the $75 billion government-sponsored loan modification program, Making Home Affordable, has fallen short of expectations since its introduction two years ago.

As of the end of Jan. 2011, there had been about 550,000 permanent modifications made nationwide, according to the January Housing Scorecard. That’s good news for some, but bad news for many when compared to the program’s original goal of preventing 3 million to 4 million foreclosures.

The Treasury Department recently admitted that the foreclosure prevention program will probably never attain the original goal that it set back in 2009.

Based on this lackluster performance, there is a movement among Republicans in the nation’s capital to put an end to Making Home Affordable, which they say would save about $1.4 billion and result in 100,000 fewer loan modifications subsidized by taxpayers, according to NASDAQ.com.

In fact, there is a bill currently on the table that would do just that and it is expected to be voted on later this week.

But White House officials are basically saying don’t waste your time because President Obama would never let that happen. Why?

Because Making Home Affordable “is still benefiting tens of thousands of borrowers every month” and it is “important to the nation’s sustained economic recovery.”

Stay tuned to see how this stalemate unfolds.

For ore information and details on the various foreclosure prevention programs offered under Making Home Affordable click here.