Archive for the ‘From the Heart’ Category

And the Winner is…South Florida Law Blog! Named Best Business and Tech Blog by Sun-Sentinel readers

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Winning! Best Business and Tech BlogSouth Florida voted, and Oppenheim Law’s South Florida Law Blog came out on top in the category of Best Business and Technology Blog in the 2nd Annual Sun-Sentinel Best of Blogs Awards.

Discussing topics like Florida foreclosure defense, homeowners’ rights, real estate tips and trends, and the economy, Oppenheim Law’s foreclosure defense attorneys interpret the latest news and translate what it all means to today’s homeowner.

Recent headlines include fresh topics like “Deficiency Judgments Haunting Return, Jason Lives Once Again,” “Budgetary Hardball Almost Forces Court Closures: Courts’ Reliance On Foreclosure Fees Exposed” and “Foreclosure Auctions are not eBay or Child’s Play. Novice Investors Beware!”

Over the past year, The South Florida Law Blog has broken down issues like South Florida home sales, national mortgage fraud, America’s job markets, and all the developments in foreclosure defense and short sales to help homeowners take advantage of these trends in areas the banks and the government clearly cannot.

“Homeowners need to be aware of how all of these trends can impact their greatest investment,” Oppenheim said. “We look forward to continuing to provide legal insight and practical analysis into these topics that greatly affect South Florida.”

Oppenheim Law is one of the leading Florida real estate and foreclosure defense law firms, founded in 1989. The firm has a 9.6 out of 10 rating from AVVO, the world’s largest legal directory, as well as the highest rating (A-V) conferred by Martindale Hubbell Law Directory, the most respected directory of lawyers and law firms in the U.S.

Poor Wall Street: Everyone Is Picking On Them

Friday, April 15th, 2011

AC 360 Podcast 4/14/2011Who would ever have thought that the most respected names on Wall Street would cheat the house by playing with a marked deck?

Dear Wall Street: We’re not in Vegas anymore! The Sin City “players” of Wall Street might be trading in the fancy hotel rooms for prison cells.

The SEC is now following the Federal Reserve and the Senate is chastising Wall Street for effectively causing the economic crisis. The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that they too will be joining the bandwagon and fining the major banks on Wall Street for fraudulently causing the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression. They follow on the heels of the Federal Reserve and the United States Senate in lambasting the “banksters”.

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Another One Bites the Dust…A Salute to Neil Barofsky

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Neil BarofskyThe government official who recently left office over the housing crisis is someone who actually fought for the people instead of laying the groundwork for a cushy job awaiting him in the private sector. Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for TARP resigned his post effective Wednesday, March 30. On his way out the door, he was still publicly arguing with the Treasury over the legacy of the $700 billion dollar Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”).

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com called Barofsky “easily one of the most impressive and courageous political officials in Washington” for his willingness to stand up to some of the most powerful people, institutions, and special interest lobbies in Washington and Wall Street.

On March 29, before his departure from office, he wrote a piece for the New York Times titled “Where the Bailout Went Wrong.” The piece, so vicious in its criticisms of the TARP program and politicians in Washington, prompted the Wall Street Journal to run excerpts from it along with their own commentary on the TARP fiasco.

Of the failed bailout Barofsky wrote:
“Two and a half years ago, Congress passed the legislation that bailed out the country’s banks. The government has declared its mission accomplished, calling the program remarkably effective ‘by any objective measure.’ On my last day as the special inspector general of the bailout program, I regret to say that I strongly disagree . . . Almost immediately [after passage], as permitted by the broad language of the act, Treasury’s plan for TARP shifted from the purchase of mortgages [that would have helped everyday homeowners] to the infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars into the nation’s largest financial institutions, a shift that came with the express promise that it would restore lending.”
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Roy Oppenheim on Real Estate Game Changers: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Oil Prices

Saturday, March 12th, 2011

Roy Oppenheim on latest disasters and real estate

For five years I’ve discussed the inevitability of Black Swan events that change everything overnight – game changers. Certainly, the earthquake in Japan and the subsequent rash of Tsunamis are reminders of that phenomenon as is the ongoing escalated strife and instability in the Middle East.

Not only have oil prices shot up, we now face a whole new set of issues and concerns from the devastation and dislocation in Japan caused by the sudden earthquake. Further, we will have to remain on edge for the next several weeks as aftershocks are felt in the Pacific Rim and the specter of additional quakes loom throughout the world. The Haiti and Chilean quakes were about a month apart last year, and quakes in Australia and New Zealand preceded this massive quake in Japan.

So you may ask, why is this relevant to me, my home and real estate prices? The answer is simple. In Japan, for example, some areas will have so declined in value that the properties may be close to worthless for years, while other areas spared the devastation may over-night double in value.

In the U.S. where certain communities have an excess supply of homes, I have always considered that part of our nation’s resources: an ark so to speak. God forbid, if America was to suffer the kind of devastation we are seeing in Japan, we will have the ability to move thousands of people quickly into homes that are vacant or abandoned. In fact, the latest estimates suggest 11% of all homes in the U.S. are currently vacant.
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