As 2011 got underway we were presented with a fascinating yet disturbing report by the Florida Association of Court Clerks called “Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases”. It brought these horrible practices into the harsh light of day.
“What we got from this is the state has had the opportunity to see where the laws have been broken,’ Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock said at the time, “and frankly, it is in large part thanks to the work of the defense attorneys.
We cited April Charney from the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Peter Ticktin and many others wonderful attorneys who have taken bank officers’ depositions, challenged judges rulings and fought the good fight for the Florida homeowner.
Somewhere along the line, the overly ambitious bankers on Wall Street had the “great idea” of slicing and dicing the interest of the Promissory Note and literally severing it from your Mortgage. Why? Convenience,expediency, and, arguably, greed. And much like Humpty Dumpty after his great fall, the banks couldn’t bring the mortgages and their corresponding Notes all back together again. The banks were accused of fraud and perjury trying to do just that.
If Americans are right, 2012 will finally be the magic year for the housing market. Over 2,000 adults were polled by Trulia and RealtyTrac , and the majority, 22 percent, said most Americans think the housing market will fully recover in the new year. A mere 10 percent thought a recovery would happen this year, while nearly a quarter of those surveyed predicted a bumpy road until 2015 and beyond. (more…)
Some of Oppenheim Law’s most popular videos and blog posts this year were on the topic of deficiency judgements. Understanding deficiencies and the Florida rules which pertain to them are key to avoid getting a deficiency judgment.
The unpaid mortgage debt associated with a residence is a deficiency. A bank can foreclose and force a judicial sale of a home if the mortgage borrower fails to pay the associated mortgage debt. The deficiency is the difference between the proceeds from the sale and the remaining mortgage loan balance. A deficiency can also result from a short sale, which is an alternative to foreclosure.
The rules pertaining to deficiencies differ from state to state. In Florida, if the bank is successful in obtaining a deficiency judgment, it will be recorded in the public records and collectable for up to twenty years. To avoid the possibility of getting a deficiency judgment, before deciding to walk away from your home, hiring a good foreclosure defense attorney is necessary.
At first glance, it looked like Floridaforeclosurevictims were finally getting the help they need from the feds. Reading the fine print it looks like if we had to describe this in one tweet word: #fail. (more…)
Just as Oppenheim anticipated, this year we’ve seen how big this foreclosure mess really is. There were numerous investigations, and a self-imposed moratorium on foreclosures during parts of 2011, resulting in a massive backlog of cases.
It was ludicrous, as Bank of America officials first said, that they would only need 60 days to review their inventory of files.
“It took them virtually a year to figure out that they were doing were just not kosher and had to stop,” Oppenheim explained.
There were several huge financial settlements offered to the banks over their illegitimate foreclosure practices, but the majority just did not stick. Judges told them the settlements were unacceptable and did not go far enough. With various attorneys general and the IRS among the agencies getting involved, these cases are nowhere close to settled.
“The banks literally got their hand not just caught in the cookie jar, but the lid was slammed on it, and everyone got to see the hand just hanging there,” said Oppenheim.
2011 is leaving us with a still unstable market, so people are looking for tangible investments, Oppenheim continued, and with the dollar still weak, Florida real estate is not a bad deal. When you add the fact that there is an excess of distressed properties, prices are not expected to rise anytime soon. he said.
Now every year there is an X-Factor, and this year it was Occupy Wall Street. It was a movement no one really saw coming, and despite some right-wingers attempts to limit Occupy as a fringe movement, Oppenheim said, there is no question the message of Occupy has resonated with middle America. (more…)
The world is upside down again: Banks are walking away while homeowners are staying to fight for their neighborhoods.
That’s what the team at Oppenheim Law realized after watching 60 Minutes’ latest piece on the foreclosure crisis. This time Scott Pelley focused on a neighborhood in Cleveland where officials has resorted to tearing down what were once perfectly good homes.
Why? Because the banks that control the homes have been acting as terrible irresponsible neighbors. The end result is too many neighborhoods are littered with abandoned properties, many of which have been stripped to the bone by thieves. As many as 25 percent of these homes are now empty, according to Pelley. These neighborhoods, of which there are far too many, have fallen into a state of disrepair, where a total tear-down is the only option.
You don’t have to be underwater to get splashed
Probably the most disturbing revelation to come out of the 60 Minutes story was the foreclosure crisis has impacted all homeowners, regardless of whether they are in danger of losing their homes or not. In fact their homes didn’t even need to be underwater to feel the pinch of the housing mess.
With countless homes now empty and transformed into eyesores, those who remain are seeing their property values sink faster than the Titanic. People are left with homes that are virtually worthless and unsellable, so even if they wanted to buy a home somewhere else, it’s unlikely they could. (more…)
The Oppenheim Law editorial team found this ironic: A drug dealer has more constitutional rights to protection from the government in his home than your average homeowner in foreclosure.
In a case being appealed to the United States Supreme Court, the Florida Supreme Court recently held that because the “home” has a long standing history of receiving additional constitutional protect
Interestingly enough, the U.S. government, through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, is the single largest investor of residential mortgages. So what this really means is that the government can steal your house through bad loan paperwork and fraudulent foreclosure practices, but the local drug dealer is safe from a sniff by Franky the Drug Sniffing Dog.ions, using a drug sniffing dog outside the front door of a drug dealer’s house constituted an illegal search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Yet this same court has allowed banks and investors to use the lower courts in Florida as their own private collection agency.
This is yet one more example of the absurd turn that this country has taken during the real estate crash and subsequent foreclosure crisis, putting the government into the position of protecting the sanctity of a home owned by a drug dealer violating criminal laws, while stripping the same protections from one who is just down on his financial luck, in part due to the banks themselves.
The English belief that “every man’s house is his castle” formed the basis of the Fourth Amendment, and yet now has been convoluted to only protect criminals from prosecution, while leaving homeowners in foreclosure high and dry against a system that steamrolls their constitutional rights in the interest of protecting big banks, Wall Street, and now Uncle Sam. (more…)
Foreclosure fraud files are nothing these days. The latest secret reports from the Federal Reserve are hard to fathom for most people including myself. The report reiterates the notion that our nation ever so quickly resembles that of a crony capitalistic third-world regime. ThankstoBloombergMagazine, however, we now have a better picture how, as a country, we all have been played for a sucker. Especially the state of Florida being listed as one of the top foreclosure states.
So, it is no wonder Bloomberg had to mount a legal fight under the Freedom of Information Act before the Federal Reserve would turn over their scathing files. While the narrative is not necessarily new, the facts are beyond our wildest imagination.
Scheme, Scam and Shame
Simply put, the Federal Reserve loaned the largest banks in the United States and abroad $7.7 trillion – that’s right in 2008 and allowed the banks to buy U.S. Treasury bonds that netted the banks a neat little profit of $14 billion. To give some perspective here the $7.7 trillion equals three quarters of the gross domestic product of the United States for any one year or is three times the total aggregate consumer debt of all people living in the United States.
Federal Reserve Drive Thru Window – Banks Only
Now if you or I had tried to show up at the Fed’s “discount window” – that is what the facility is called where the largest banks received their $7.7 trillion, – we would never have even found the window to begin with. And should we have found the window we would have found that it is only open to the largest banks in the world. (more…)
How ironic that a second grade teacher gets in trouble for telling her class that Santa isn’t real, but the Federal Reserve and big banks think it’s OK to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret?
Truths – What we didn’t know
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day.
Bankers took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy.
No one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $14 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Taxpayers (that means you!) paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.
The total numbers are staggering: $7.7 trillion of credit—one-half of the GDP of the entire nation. $460 billion was lent to J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley alone—without anybody other than a few select officials at the Fed and the Treasury knowing.
Consequences – What we now know
The loans didn’t help to stimulate the job market in anyway — Unemployment rate increased by almost 50 percent, to a nationwide average of 10 percent (even higher in Florida!!)
In fact, some of the $14 billion profit from the bailout (an amount that was previously unknown to Congress) was used by the banks to lobby our politicians for new regulations, in order to prevent another bailout! Some was used to directly line the pockets of elected officials as campaign contributions.
Continuing our list here’s Pt. 2 of our Top 10 stories for 2011 — 
