States are taking settlement money right from under us!
It’s pretty hard to find a single housing advocate or foreclosure defense attorney, myself included, who didn’t find the national mortgage settlement to be, at the very least, flawed.
It may have been a necessary step to getting the housing market back on track, but we know that it didn’t come close to compensating homeowners who had been illegally kicked out of their homes, and in the end, the banks are getting off remarkably light for their robosigning crimes.
Which is why what a multitude of states are doing with some of the banks money is downright revolting.
Part of the settlement included $2.5 billion that was given outright to the states. Florida took in just over $334 million.
The settlement calls for these dollars to be used to “to avoid preventable foreclosures, to ameliorate the effects of the foreclosure crisis, to enhance law enforcement efforts to prevent and prosecute financial fraud, or unfair or deceptive acts or practices and to compensate the States for costs resulting from the alleged unlawful conduct of the Defendants.”
But much like much of the settlement overall, there is nothing in this language that has any real measure of enforcement. Some states are flat out ignoring these instructions and doing whatever they want with the money they are getting off the backs of good honest homeowners. (more…)
But listening to the justices attack Amanda Lundergan, Roman Pino’s attorney, while seemingly going much easier on Bruce Rogow, the bank’s very well-respected lawyer, was at best, discouraging.
It’s common for the justices to try to poke holes in an attorney’s case, and it does not always mean that you can predict what their decision will be.
But with the thousands surely watching Thursday’s hearing, I was hoping the Court would have been a little more sensitive to the perception that they were most certainly creating, that the banks already have this one in the bag.
As a whole I found the Supreme Court judges flippant to the obvious fraud that Bank of New York has brought before the court in this case.
And for the Court to downplay the importance of that fraud, and what it means to the integrity of the judicial system, was offensive.
If you were an average homeowner watching yesterday’s hearing, I am pretty sure you came away with a feeling that the playing field is not level, and there are two different sets of rules for the banks and for the rest of us.
That is truly unfortunate.
The Supreme Court has to be above the fray, and they must not abdicate their responsibility to police their own system.
Which is exactly what would happen if the Court allows the phony documents, the fraudulent backdating, the bogus notes and assignments to be brought before them without penalty. (more…)
The banks are terrified they might actually be held accountable for their actions!
If you haven’t already heard, there is a monumental case that was heard Thursday morning in theFlorida Supreme Court, and every single homeowner should be paying close attention to this case.
Missing documents, fraudulent assignments, fraudulents notaries, and forged documents, and a bank once again trying to shuffle it’s dirty deeds under the rug like loose dirt.
So Bank Of New York’s lawyers tried to re-file with a new assignment, one which was fraudulently backdated (AKA robosigned).
The bank’s original lawyers, by the way, were from David J. Stern’s office.You know their story.
When our good friend and colleague Tom Ice, Pino’s lawyer, challenged the documents, Bank of New York suddenly decided they didn’t want to foreclosure anymore, dropped their lawsuit and scurried back into their hole.
End of the story??
Not even close. Ice continued to dog Bank of New York like a pitbull, because he, believe it or not, also thinks the banks need to actually be held accountable! (Remarkable I know.)
He tried to have the voluntary dismissal overturned, so that Bank of New York could face sanctions for the forged documents they tried to use to swindle Roman Pino and the court. (more…)
It’s been one of my mantrasfor years, and it’s a statement that is again reverberating across the country thanks to The Sun-Sentinel’s 3-part series “Bad Neighbor Banks”.
The grass no longer gets cut,the garbage accumulates, and before too long you end up with widespread blight not just in urban neighborhoods, but suburbia as well.
It’s the reason why I fight so hard to keep people in their homes. You and I are just better off when you have homeowners, vested in their houses and the neighborhoods they live in, keeping up their homes.
In the Sun-Sentinel’s series there is example after example of banks not doing even the most basic of maintenance. And their argument is usually, ‘It’s not our job’.
A bank has no investment in the neighborhoods you live in, beyond their own bottom line, and the banks have all but admitted it.
So I ask you again, why would you ever want a bank as a neighbor?
The numbers don’t lie. The Sun-Sentinel found 10,300 code violations in bank-owned homes in South Florida since 2007. In the cities they tracked 40 percent of bank-owned homes were cited last year.
So chances are you are living next to one of these eyesores. And I’m betting you’re not too happy about it. (more…)
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondiis now asking for the public’s input on what she should do with the $300 million the state will be receiving directly from the national mortgage settlement.
She is openly soliciting your suggestionsthrough her website from now until May 14th. As a foreclosure defense attorney and one of the people on the front lines of the housing crisis, I have more than a few ideas.
So Pam, please consider this my open letter to you and your office.
First and foremost, here is what you should NOT do with the money. Don’t throw it at principal reduction. It will have virtually no impact on Florida’s communities, it would be like throwing the money into quicksand.
So far, Florida’s efforts to offer financial relief to homeowners have just fallen flat.
What you need to do Ms. Bondi, is use the money to make systemic changes to Florida’s housing market.
First, give the money to your towns and cities to clear out Florida’s foreclosure blight. Blight caused by the abundance of abandoned homes the banks own, but refuse to take care of.
Ms. Bondi,despite what your boss says, banks are the problem and you need to get them out of your cities and towns. Give your local governments the ammo to do it. (more…)
Maybe you weren’t convinced the first time I told you the era of the short sale was finally upon us.
I can’t blame you for thinking that banks were acting irrationally when it comes to the foreclosure process.
But Lender Processing Services just offered up the most convincing numbers to date that short sales are no longer just some pie-in-the-sky dream for distressed underwater borrowers.
In January short sales made up 23.9 percent of home sales, while foreclosure sales made up 19.7 percent of all home purchases.
Of course that means that over half of all real estate closings are for distressed homes.
A year before, the percentages were skewered in the opposite direction. In January 2011, 16.3 percent of home purchases came through short sales, and 24.9 percent were foreclosures.
Why are the banks now convinced, as I was long ago, that going through the long and harrowing process of a foreclosure is not their best option?
The proof is once again in the numbers. On average, foreclosed homes sold for 29 percent less than non-distressed properties in January.
Homes sold via short sale? They went for 23 percent less. Here in Florida, LPS says short sales have outnumbered foreclosures since July.
That means short sales are a better deal for the banks, plain and simple.
The truth is banks don’t want to own these properties, they certainly can’t handle maintaining these homes, and they just end up laying waste to neighborhoods by hanging on to them. (more…)
I said after the foreclosure settlement was announced that banks had been given the green light to rev up their foreclosures engines, and in South Florida at least, I’m being proven right.
RealtyTrac’s numbers from last month show dramatic year-over-year increases in both new foreclosure filings (85%) and repossessions (39%) in Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties, compared to March 2011.
In Florida overall, new foreclosure cases were up 58 percent. Nationally however, new filings dropped 12 percent from last year, however they rose 7 percent from February.
Since the sunshine state has one of the largest foreclosure backlogs in the country, it really shouldn’t surprise you that the numbers skew so heavily against Florida.
The settlement has emboldened banks to become more aggressive in seeking to foreclosure, and the numbers certainly back that up.
More back and forth this week from Edward DeMarco, who despite announcing that principal reduction could save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 1.7 billion dollars, seems unwilling to venture far from his previous stance on loan modifications.
He said in a speech this week that a new analysis does show writing down the value of some underwater mortgages does have the potential to lower foreclosure rate and save both GSEs substantial money, but he’s still downplaying the significance of principal reduction.
While he has eased up on his previous refusals to even entertain the idea of modifications, he still seems fixated on the risk of strategic default, which he feels could wipeout any potential savings. (more…)
