Federal officials and mortgage loan servicing companies have been patting themselves on the back for putting half a million struggling homeowners into trial mortgage modifications.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Treasury Department sent a news release last week touting that the “new milestone” was reached ahead of the Nov.1 benchmark that the Obama administration set.

“The goal of 500,000 trial loan modifications by November 1 initially set in July pushed servicers to ramp up program implementation and sustain a faster pace of modifications; trial modifications are now being issued at a faster rate than new homeowners are becoming eligible,” according to the press release.

Sounds great, right?

But the bigger question is: how many of these trial modifications will actually keep people in their homes in the long-term? In other words, what percentage of homeowners who were offered trial modifications will re-default?

Research has shown that a good number of homeowners who received loan modifications in the past ended up falling behind on mortgage payments within months.   

A troubling report from the Office of the Comptroller of Currency revealed that half of the loans modified in the first quarter of last year became delinquent again within six months.

Will these modifications provide different results? Only time will tell.