South Florida Law Blog

Homes need to be occupied. That is the bottom line. 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. According to Bloomberg, the administration will open up the […]

In my last blog I railed against the Florida Fair Foreclosure Act, which is making its way rapidly through the Florida Senate as the session winds down. I said it’s being pushed by banking industry shills and should die a quick death. So of course it was passed by the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee by a 6-4 vote and […]

Banks need to get their massive foreclosure 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 […]

There were two players conspicuously absent when last week’s $25 Billion settlement was unveiled; two players that absolutely should have been front and center. What are their names? If you’ve followed the housing crisis as closely as we have, then you probably know. Our old and unwanted cousins Fannie and Freddie. Their omission from the settlement was perhaps its biggest […]

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 […]

Freddie Mac’s Regulator ‘Completely Puzzled’ by Allegations of Conflict If Edward DeMarco is puzzled by the outrage over the revelation that Freddie Mac was investing in securities that paid off if homeowners couldn’t refinance, then call us puzzled by his puzzlement. Either he’s a bold-faced liar or he is just plain dense. Does he really not get it? DeMarco, the […]

I have to give Suze Orman credit. One thing that’s taken a huge hit in the housing crisis is people’s credit scores. I’ve seen it with plenty of good responsible homeowners. The reality is that most people who overextended themselves during this financial crisis did so because they had good credit scores. In fact when I used to ask people […]

We here at the South 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 trenches Eric Schneiderman. The New York Attorney General, only days into his appointment as the head of the newly-formed Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group has already issued subpoenas to 11 financial […]