Today’s housing market needs a dramatic overhaul and it’s been long overdue for a fix. So we don’t have the time to be contemplating moral hazards anymore.
So I’m OK with President Obama extending mortgage assistance to owners of multiple homes.
Borrowers who qualify for HAMP can have their monthly payments reduced through lower interest rates, longer mortgage terms and forgiven principal.
Landlords can apply for loan modifications for up to 4 mortgages as long as they rent out the homes or plan fill them, according to Bloomberg, who says about 700,000 landlords might qualify.
This has angered some, who are saying the administration is rewarding speculators who may have caused the housing market to collapse, and should focus solely on those who haven’t been able to pay their mortgages because of financial hardship. In a dream world, they would be right.
The problem with that notion is while speculators may have played a role in the housing market collapse, I still lay most of the blame squarely on the banks. You might say a so called ‘house flipper’ was only buying homes to pad their bottom line, to which I respond, what exactly do you the banks were interested in?
They were the ones engaging in rampant fraud, not the speculators.
I must again go back to this 60 Minutes piece about abandoned homes rotting their neighborhoods from the inside out. Banks response to these vacant properties has been to walk away from homes and allow them to go to waste. (more…)
But after a moment of reflection and enlightenment, I have this to say to my friends in Tallahassee.
Bring it On!
That’s right! Pass the Bill.
My phoneshave not stopped ringing these days, as more and more clients are getting ready to lawyer up.
That’s right this bill will only increase the value I bring to my clients each and every day for without an attorney the Legislature will make sure that the “Florida Fair Foreclosure Act” is fair… for the banks … but not for you.
They will make sure that without counsel that you will be stripped of your right to defend your home. Without counsel the new law will ensure that you will go through a legal system that will resemble a steam roller.
It makes me laugh that the Legislature is entrusting the banks to not commit fraud once again. Because the honor system worked so well the last time.
But its sad that the Legislature is interfering with the independence of the judiciary by telling the courts what to do and how to do it.
Please, please try your best to pass the Florida Fair Foreclosure Act, because all you’ll be doing is making sure I’ll have a new stream of clients to defend, and more importantly be able to help the economy by hiring more people. (more…)
Banks need to get their massiveforeclosure backlog off the books. There are over 368,000 cases in Florida. I get that.
Getting these properties into the hands of families who can afford them, that is what I want to see. It’s needed to jump start the economy, and no one wants to see the banks out of the neighborhoods more than me.
But it can’t be allowed to happen on the backs of other homeowners plain and simple. Lenders have tried to thrust these homes back onto the market before, and that’s why they just shelled out $25 billion.
Yeta series of proposed billsnow making their way through theFlorida HouseandSenateoffer banks unjust control over the foreclosure process, all in the name of getting abandoned homes back on the market.
The Senate version,which would create the “Florida Fair Foreclosure Act”, was passed by a judiciary committee earlier this week by a 5-2 vote. There is a similar bill making their way through the House.
But are they really ‘fair’ to homeowners? Absolutely not.
Have the politicians in Tallahassee learned nothing from the settlement? The $25 billion isn’t even in the mail, yet some are back to their old tricks, turning a blind eye to the plights of their constituents and denying them due process. (more…)
The clock may have run out on this year’s Super Bowl (Way to go Giants!!) but there’s still a few minutes left in this year’s REAL grudge match, the Banks vs. the Attorney Generals.
It’s 4th and Inches, the score is tied, and it would be nice to avoid overtime.
Today we could learn whether the much-discussed robo-signing settlement with Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Ally Financial and CitiGroup will come to pass, and in what form.
With California AG Kamala Harris returning to the negotiating table, the deal looks closer than ever to being sealed. Harris, who represents the state with the largest amount of foreclosed homes, has rightfully been hesitant to sign off because her state has the most to gain, or lose, from this deal.
We were initially very hesitant to see this deal go through ourselves, but the time has come for it to put to bed.
Why?
Because we feel the deal in its current form does a lot. Does it help every single homeowner who’s underwater? Of course not. There is no deal that will.
But here is who it does help. The homeowners who have fought to keep their homes from day one, who were at the forefront of these legal challenges against the banks. Much of what we have learned about robo-signing and the lack of standing banks had to bring foreclosure, would not have come to light without these crusaders, and its time they got a reprieve.
In theory it also helps the responsible homeowners, the ones who paid their mortgages on-time and whose homes went underwater through no fault of their own. They too need to be rewarded. (more…)
We here at theSouth Florida Law Blog decided to clock in a few hours this weekend, because if we didn’t we’d probably fall behind President Obama’s new man-in-the trenchesEric Schneiderman.
President Obama only announced this new investigative unit during Tuesday’s State of the Union, yet the “check”, or in this case the subpoena, is already in the mail.
If you were skeptical that Obama was still interested in the status-quo when it comes to the banks and doing business, may we present Exhibit A.
Eric Schneiderman is turning himself into a modern-day Elliot Ness.
You remember Ness don’t you?
The federal agent whose team of “Untouchables” couldn’t be bought off and helped bring down Al Capone?
Schneiderman too has the era of a man who will not be co-opted. If anyone can stay above the fray and not be reeled in by the banks and their money, he can.
Investigation Going After Cause of Housing Crisis
Schneiderman has stood up to the President before, openly opposing the settlement agreement that we here at the South Florida Law Blog have railed against. And now he is Obama’s point man for placing blame and creating accountability for causing the worst economic crisis in the US since the Depression.
Elliot Ness
The Huffington Post is reporting that outside of claims directly relating to robo-signing fiasco, the banks will not be released from the threat of prosecution for the vast majority of securities-related crimes. (more…)
We’re finally starting to catch our breath, with the substantial amount of news we’ve seen come down the pipeline in the housing market this week.
President Obama’s State of the Union, and the apparent collapse of the federal government’s settlement with the banks have been our focus this week, and rightfully so. But there’s been lots of other stories that have crossed our desk this week, some big, some small, but all important.
Most of our attention has been on the President this week, but we’ve also been keeping our eyes of the Republicans as well. With the Florida GOP Primary just days away, the candidates have been descending on Florida as expected. Foreclosure, which has been long absent from the GOP discussion, has become a more focal issue this week.
Unfortunately, it feels like much of the talking points have focused on the candidates blaming each other for causing the housing crisis, and less on what they plan to do to fix it.
This excellent piece in The Street details all the remaining Republicans comments on foreclosure. They all have suggested a hands-off approach, and appear to be under the misguided notion that the market will correct itself on its own. Gingrich and Paul have made one-note villains out of the Dodd-Frank Actand The Federal Reserve, respectively.
Romney’spast comments about market correction have come back to haunt him as he tries to pass himself off as sympathetic to the homeowners’ plight. Frankly we don’t feel like any of the Republican candidates are looking out for the homeowners. (more…)
Like the characters in "The Blair Witch Project", the banks are running scared!
Well what a wild week it has been. When we came to work on Monday we feared President Obama would put the housing crisis to bed without ever holding the banks’ feet to the fire.
The settlement with the banks, which we have blogged about ad nauseam this week, seemed as sure as a chip-shot field goal.
But thanks to President Obama’s suddenly get-tough approach, as evidenced by his State of the Union speech, we’ve seen the banks’ kick go wide-right and now all bets are off.
Can There Be Real Change In Mortgage Industry?
Now we are not completely sold that things will play out exactly as homeowners would like, this is of course the federal government we’re talking about, but for the first time we have a true sense of optimism. The President may finally be seeing things our way, and we want to throw our full support behind him.
There is no doubt cages have been rattled in the mortgage industry, and nerves have been frayed. If Obama’s plan to re-write the foreclosure rules didn’t have some kind of teeth, then we doubt we’d be seeing the type of reverberation thorough the media and the top echelons of government that we’ve detected in the last few days.
Banks Are Fearful of Settlement Collapse
The settlement could be falling apart at the seems, at least JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon thinks so. He told CNBC this morning that Obama’s announcement to investigate the packaging and servicing of mortgage loans could stop the settlement cold. (more…)
Homes need to be occupied. 
