Archive for December, 2012

Two-Faced Freddie Mac, The Fiscal Cliff and the Obamacare Real Estate Tax, 2012’s Top Headlines Continued

Friday, December 28th, 2012

Happy New Year

Continuing our recap of our most popular blogs from 2012…

#5 — Robosigning Settlement Proves Sky Was Falling! Chicken Little Was Right!

Yesterday’s robosigning settlement that all but one state ultimately signed off on, was far from perfect.

Let’s make that perfectly clear.

Depending on what you have read, you might be outraged, you might be relieved, you might be overjoyed. And the target of your wrath or sympathy might depend on your own personal perspective.

But make no mistake about it, yesterday was a day of reckoning, for me, and much more importantly, for the people I represent.

Read the full post here.

#4 — What I Tell Clients Who Receive A Foreclosure Notice

As a real estate attorney, I’ve had plenty of prospective clients come to my office after being served with a foreclosure notice. It is safe to say they are usually not in a good mood; they are usually scared.

And the truth is I would be too.Foreclosure can be a scary process for even the most legally astute homeowner.

When a homeowner walks into my office for that first time, there is one question that comes up almost every time. It’s a basic yet very essential question to anyone under the threat of foreclosure…

What do I do next?

Read the full post here.

#3 — Freddie Mac — Playing Two-Face to the American Homeowner?

Aaron Eckhart might have played Two-Face in the last Batman movie, but Freddie Mac seems to have settled into the role these days.

Non-profit ProPublica and National Public Radio allege that Freddie Mac, which was set up to make home loans more accessible, was in fact betting against homeowners.
(more…)

Economic Homicide, the Mortgage Interest Deduction and the Rule of Law: 2012’s Top Headlines

Wednesday, December 26th, 2012

Top 10Editor’s Note: As we head into 2013, I want to wish all of our readers a Happy New Year from everyone at Oppenheim Law. This has been our most successful year since the South Florida Law Blog was started in 2009. Our posts were seen by nearly 100,000 people, including our readers at Yahoo! Homes, where many of Roy Oppenheim’s blogs first appeared. For everyone who read or shared our content this year, a sincere thank you. Our mission is far from complete, and we look forward to sharing more commentary from the trenches in the New Year.

So without further adieu, here are the headlines that resonated with you over the past 12 months.

#10 — Obamacare, The Foreclosure Crisis and The Rule of Law

During the passing of the healthcare law, it seemed that the president assumed that the government had the ability to force people to buy a product from a private company that they did not necessarily want.

The mandate’s survival in the Supreme Court on a much narrower standard apparently leaves the question far from settled.

I felt that there was little, if any, constitutional analysis done by the president and his team when they decided to pass the mandate, except for the fact that they perceived a compelling need for it.

And that’s how the debate over the healthcare law reminded me of the legal debate during the foreclosure crisis.

Read the full blog here.

#9 — Mortgage Interest Deduction Will Be Capped, and That’s (Probably) a Good Thing

The fiscal cliff contains many, many moving parts, which sometimes tend to get lost in a sea of white noise. But behind all the political grandstanding and theatrics, there are real Main Street issues at play.
(more…)

Deconstructing The Black Magic of Securitized Trusts

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Below is an abbreviated version of an article written by Roy Oppenheim and Jacquelyn Trask, which was first published this week by Thomson Reuters. The longer version of “Deconstructing The Black Magic of Securitized Trusts” was published earlier this year by the Stetson Law Review.

Black Magic MoneyFrom 2003 to 2007, Florida saw the largest real estate boom in its history. Real estate sold at astonishing prices as people were sold a bill of goods known as the “American Dream.” But for many, that American Dream turned out to be the American Nightmare. From sub-prime mortgage lending and predatory practices by mortgage brokers, lenders and improper securitization of mortgages, this era of economic boom led to the largest crash in the history of the real estate market1, a crash from which Florida has yet to recover, and to which we have not yet seen the end. The full extent of the damage inflicted by these practices has not yet been felt, but millions of homeowners nationwide have suffered from financial crisis, foreclosure and bankruptcy. And what is worse yet is that the systemic fraud and illegal conduct of the banks has continued to pervasively infect court systems throughout the nation; further, the Florida court system has suffered from extreme abuse at the hands of the banks that have high jacked it and effectively turned it into a private collection agency for the banking industry.2

Mortgage securitization is perhaps one of the least understood areas of the real estate industry, and for good reason. With phrases such as mortgage bundling, securitized trusts, and tax-exempt structures known as Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits (“REMICS”), there are many terms employed to describe massive collections of bundled mortgages which were broken up and sold off in pieces. While this method of bundling mortgages was once looked at as perhaps the best thing to ever happen to the mortgage industry, allowing large scale investors such as pensions and retirement funds to own interests in mortgages in a way that was deemed “safe,”3 the securitization process has become a nightmare for the American homeowner fighting foreclosure. In fact, the securitization process has made it impossible in many, if not all cases where a mortgage is held in a securitized trust, to determine who actually owns a mortgage and note, a fact which until recently has done little to slow down the foreclosure rocket-docket.4
(more…)

HSBC Too Big To Jail, Too Big To Nail

Saturday, December 15th, 2012

Roy Oppenheim’s commentary was originally published on Yahoo Homes! and is being republished on South Florida Law Blog with their permission.

money launderingThe banks are too big to jail.

The Department of Justice, as much as they will try to tell you otherwise, believes it.

When push came to shove, prosecutors did not have the stones to do what is right, and what is absolutely necessary.

Wall Street has been given the road map to the land of Business As Usual. Just get as big as you want, do whatever you want, and have no fear of being caught. You will still be off-limits from criminal prosecution.

By choosing not to indict HSBC for money laundering, and instead handing them a nearly $2 billion settlement in order to defer prosecution, that is what the DOJ is effectively saying.

HSBC didn’t get handcuffs. They got a tax write off, otherwise known as the cost of doing business in today’s banking industry. Are we really supposed to call that a deterrent?

What’s troubling, and not the least bit ironic, is this is the same government that screams that homeowners who strategically default are creating a moral hazard.

That is exactly what federal prosecutors have done by not seeking an indictment. They have created a moral hazard on Wall Street, a slippery slope that will only get worse unless the DOJ reverses direction.

And this hazard will have a much greater impact on the real estate market than when a homeowner decided to walk away from a worthless underwater mortgage.

Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has repeatedly made the argument that it is wrong for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to offer principal reduction to someone who is behind on their mortgage because it will encourage other homeowners to engage in risky behavior in order to benefit financially.
(more…)


PHP/MySQL Components, WordPress Plugins, and Technology Opinions at TravisWeston.com

Bad Behavior has blocked 5580 access attempts in the last 7 days.