Archive for the ‘Florida Law News’ Category
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Leading up to the State of the Union, we heard a lot of chatter that a proposed $25 billion settlement with the banks would be a selling point in President Obama’s speech.And maybe it would have been, had President Obama delivered the State of the Union. But clearly the person we saw last night addressing Congress was candidate Obama, who is a very different individual.
The State of the Union, at times, felt more like a stump speech that an address from a sitting president. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Obama finally sounded like someone willing to play tough with the banks with his ‘No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts’ line. Only time will tell if this is a true change in the President’s perspective, or if he’ll go right back to being the same man who handed out bailouts like candy.
We were glad to see Obama acknowledge that Wall Street was playing by its own rules, but he had a hand in allowing them to do so, so we hope he understands if we’re still a bit skeptical.
Right before the State of the Union, the Huffington Post broke the news that New York Attorney General Eric Scheniderman has been named to lead a new Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses, which could be a real game-changer. Like the editorial team at Oppenheim Law, Schneiderman has been a vocal critic of the aforementioned settlement.
He has been very tough on the White House’s foreclosure policies before, so maybe we’ll finally see the accountability and thorough investigation that we’ve been demanding.
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Tags: Attorney General, bailout, banking, barack obama, candidate, corner, Eric Scheniderman, Huffington Post, Jekkyl and Hyde, Obama, political, political positions of barack obama, president, presidential election, state of the union, tim geithner, timothy geithner
Posted in Florida Law News, Foreclosure Defense, Foreclosure Fraud, Obama | 2 Comments »
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the economy at Shaker Heights High School,Shaker Heights, Ohio, Jan. 4, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
We really haven’t seen President Obama insert himself directly into the housing crisis, but there are rumblings that he may do just that during Tuesday’s State of The Union address.
The fact is that is what homeowners have been clamoring for. A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll found 58% of Americans want the government to do more to help people keep homes.
According to HousingWire, Ohio senator Sherrod Brown told reporters today that there was evidence that Obama would address the robo-signing case which involves several major banks. A North Carolina congressman even said there were rumours that Obama would announce a settlement, something HUD secretary Shaun Donovan suggested last week was ‘very close’, as we mentioned in our Week In Review on Friday.
For the record, Obama’s press secretary refused to confirm any details, saying only that the President was “focused on the issue of housing”.
Between Dononvan’s comments and the recent white paper sent out by the Federal Reserve, it seems that more and more top government officials are finally realizing how important the housing market is to our economic recovery, not to mention their own political survival.
This is not news to us here at the South Florida Law Blog.
In the Huffington Post last September, Roy Oppenheim called housing the “thousand pound gorilla in the room” in the 2012 election, as many of the states with the highest underwater mortgages, such asFlorida, are also key electoral swing states. The pressure on Obama to be more aggressive on the banks is growing in Washington, and it’s about time.
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Tags: barack obama, foreclosure, gallup poll, housing and urban development, housing crisis, HUD, Huffington Post, president, President Obama, principal reduction, republican, Roy Oppenheim, shaun donovan, sherrod brown, state of the union, usa today, Wall Street Journal
Posted in Federal Reserve, Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Foreclosure Defense, Huffington Post, Obama, Roy Oppenheim, The Wall Street Journal | 3 Comments »
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Back when it debuted last April, we were somewhat skeptical that Florida’s Hardest Hit program could provide real benefits for the people it sought to help.
We called it a band-aid, and at least for some South Florida homeowners, it’s proving to be just that. The Palm Beach Post profiled several homeowners who were among the first to receive benefits from the program. Sheryl Stuart, a Jupiter homeowner whose business went under, applied for help through the mortgage relief program, and is about to see her payments end next month. Hardest Hit only entitles qualified homeowners up to six months of mortgage assistance.
Stuart told the Palm Beach Post that even though she’s found a new job, her salary won’t be able to cover her mortgage payment once she stops receiving aid from Hardest Hit. She’s frustrated that she’s about to be right back where she started when she applied for aid in the first place.
“In this economy, to think you can turn your life around in six months is totally ludicrous,” Stuart said in the article, “The working class is quickly slipping into a black hole.”
The truth is this program, however well-intentioned it might have been, is just not enough. What Hardest Hit is essentially doing is giving homeowners a nice seafood dinner, when they really need to learn how to fish.
It scratches the surface but for people like Stuart it might just delay the inevitable. Unless you’re giving homeowners a solid two years of payment relief, you’re not giving these people time to go back to school, improve their financial standing, and really turn their lives around.
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Tags: band aids, Florida's Hardest Hit, foreclosure, Foreclosure Defense, foreclosure relief, hardest hit, homeowners, kimberly miller, mortgage, mortgage payment, mortgage relief, Oppenheim Law, Palm Beach Post, Roy Oppenheim, sheryl stuart, South Florida Law Blog, Sun Sentinel
Posted in Federal Reserve, Florida Law News, Foreclosure Defense, Palm Beach Post, Sun Sentinel | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
via Freshome and Mashable
Finally!!!It’s a word that is being bantered about the hallways of Oppenheim Law all too often these days, and thanks to the Fed’s recent comments on the foreclosure crisis, it’s been thrown around at rapid-fire pace these last few days.
Through
a 26-page white paper which highlighted the “extraordinary problems plaguing the housing market”, officials at the
Federal Reserve have told policymakers on several congressional banking committees that the government must step up and take a more active role in fixing the mess that they themselves have helped create.
Up until now the Fed has kept their fingers out of the housing market, but even they now realize the far-reaching impact the foreclosure crisis is having on the overall economic climate. In the white paper they offer up several suggestions, such as reducing the barriers to converting foreclosed homes into rental properties, and loosening the grip on lending standards in order to help the market recover.
The Fed now wants harsher action from Congress on America’s top lenders, and Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin even told a conference at the Association of American Law Schools that the Fed “must impose penalties for deficiencies that resulted in unsafe and unsound practices.”
It must be time to check our subscriber list to the South Florida Law Blog, because it sure looks like our friends at the Fed are on it!
We’ve suggested for a while now that turning foreclosed homes into rental properties is an obvious and logical step. For years banks have collected homes like animals in Noah’s Ark, and now it’s time to put this inventory to good use. 60 Minutes showed us what happened when these homes go empty, so why not put good people in these homes! The government may not like the idea of becoming a landlord, but really isn’t it better than the alternative!! This mass inventory of foreclosed homes can be an asset for our government if more of them are rented out, instead of being a detriment.
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Tags: banking, congressional bank, economic history, economic history of the united states, economics, Federal Reserve, federal reserve responses to the subprime crisis, federal reserve system, finally, foreclosed homes, foreclosure, government, mortgage, policymakers, Real Estate, real property law, rental properties, subprime mortgage crisis, the little, us federal reserve, wakes, white papers
Posted in Federal Reserve, Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate | 4 Comments »
Thursday, January 5th, 2012
Banks will need to clean up their circus “act” in 2012 when it comes to
Florida foreclosure cases thanks to a series of stinging decisions handed down by the
4th District Court of Appeals that could be the gift that keeps on giving for Florida homeowners.
The court finally realized the banks must have the proper authority before they proceed in the foreclosure process. For years
I have been saying the banks have systematically been cutting corners in the foreclosure defense process by not having the requisite power to bring their cases.
In this most recent case,
Robert McLean vs. JPMorgan Chase, Chase, which was seeking to foreclosure on McLean’s Broward County home, claimed the note from the borrower was “lost, stolen or destroyed.” I call shenanigans on that claim. The truth is banks were in such a rush to move forward that they just never bothered to check their own paperwork.
McLean sought to squash the foreclosure because he said that
Chase ultimately could not prove they were the owner of the note. In fact the assignment of mortgage, which is a document which indicates that a mortgage has been transferred from the original lender, which Chase produced to the court was signed three days AFTER the first foreclosure complaint was filed by the bank.
The 4th DCA, in our eyes, had no choice but to reverse a lower court’s decision and side with the homeowner. As the saying goes, possession is nine tenths of the law, and in this case, Chase was left holding an empty bag. The court noted that if there was “substantial doubt about the note” that the bank should dismiss and refile the case, and it was clear from Chase’s lack of concrete proof that they had no legal standing in this case.
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Tags: 4th district court of appeals, banking, district court, Florida mortgage, foreclosure process, foreclosures, happy new year, homeowners, JP Morgan Chase, Oppenheim Law, Real Estate, real property law, robert mclean, robert mclean vs jp morgan chase, Roy Oppenheim
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Florida Supreme Court, Oppenheim Law, Roy Oppenheim | 3 Comments »
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
Continuing our list here’s Pt. 2 of our Top 10 stories for 2011 —
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.
#4 — Cracked! Humpty Dumpty, Chase and GMC, the Bank Fraud Foreclosure Crisis Continues to Fall!
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.
# 3 — Housing Market Poll: When Will Florida Recover?
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.
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Tags: 2011, bank fraud, banking, Florida, foreclosure, foreclosures, fraud, housing market, law blog, law review, mortgage, Oppenheim Law, property, Real Estate, Roy Oppenheim, short sale, South Florida, South Florida Law Blog, strategic default, top 10
Posted in Deficiency Judgements, Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Florida short sales, Foreclosure Defense, Foreclosure Fraud | 1 Comment »
Friday, December 30th, 2011
In our last blog we talked about the stories that resonated with Roy Oppenheim in 2011, but what stories mattered to you?
We reviewed the most popular stories on the South Florida Law Blog this year and came up with our list of the top 10 posts for 2011
# 10 — Florida Deficiency Judgments FAQs . . . By Popular Demand
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.
#9 — #Fail – Government Plan to Help #Florida Homeowners
At first glance, it looked like Florida foreclosure victims 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.
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Tags: 2011, deficiency, deficiency judgment, foreclosure, foreclosures, judgments, law blog, law review, loss mitigation, mortgage, mortgage loans, Oppenheim Law, Roy Oppenheim, short sale, South Florida, South Florida Law Blog, subprime lending, subprime mortgage crisis, top 10
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Florida short sales, Foreclosure Defense, Foreclosure Fraud, Roy Oppenheim | 1 Comment »
