Archive for the ‘Florida foreclosures’ Category

Landmark Foreclosure Case Goes Before Florida Supreme Court; Has Banks Terrified

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

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 the Florida Supreme Court, and every single homeowner should be paying close attention to this case.

To watch a replay of the oral arguments, please click here.

The case is Roman Pino vs. Bank of New York. It involves all the customary fraud I have seen in countless cases.

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.

When Bank of New York first tried to foreclose on Pino, a regular working guy from Greenacres who fell behind on his mortgage when his business dried up, there was no assignment of mortgage.

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.
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‘Bad Neighbor Banks’ Take Hold In South Florida

Friday, May 4th, 2012

Fish-Eye Lens

  • Banks make bad neighbors.

It’s been one of my mantras for 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”.

Thanks to the Sentinel, 60 Minutes, and the National Fair Housing Alliance, we are seeing the hard data that back up my assertion that banks, once they foreclose and take control of a property, just leave them to rot.

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.

“The bank itself has no economic interest or ownership stake in the properties,” a spokesman for Deutsche Bank told the Sun-Sentinel.

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.
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An Open Letter to Pam Bondi

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

Florida Attorney General Pam BondiFlorida Attorney General Pam Bondi is 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 suggestions through 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.

Florida’s Hardest Hit program just hasn’t worked, and even recent changes to the program’s requirements will not help it reach enough people.

Move The Banks Out of Your Cities

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.

I’ve long told my readers that banks are bad neighbors, and the Sun-Sentinel now has the numbers that make my case.

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.
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Era Of The Short Sale Has Arrived. Hallelujah!

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

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.

For the first time in the US, LPS says there were more short sales in a single month then there were foreclosures.

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.
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