Posts Tagged ‘finance’
Friday, April 27th, 2012
Survey: Mortgage Foreclosure Scams Surge
Not only is America’s foreclosure crisis still going strong, it now comes with even more fraud and deception.
With heightened media coverage surrounding the recent national mortgage settlement and refinements to government assistance programs, experts say selling “the schtick” has only become easier for criminals. But there are red flags consumers can watch out for when trying to determine whether or not an organization is legit.
First, homeowners should never have to pay anything up front for a loan modification or information on how to negotiate with their lender, says Roy Oppenheim, whose Florida-based law firm Oppenheim Law has handled more than 1,000 mortgage and foreclosure fraud cases over the past 5 years.
“If you’re paying upfront to a non-lawyer who’s claiming they can modify your loan, that’s a big scam,” Oppenheim says.
Read More from US News and World Report
Short Sales Soar as Home Foreclosures Fall
The foreclosure crisis isn’t over, but a new trend in real estate sales could be the light at the end of the tunnel for many borrowers and lenders. Short sales, which occur when homeowners sell their homes for less than what they still owe, outpaced foreclosures for the first time ever in January,according to a new report from Lender Processing Services, Inc.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced this month that mortgage servicers will be required to review and respond to short sale offers within 30 days and make final sale decisions within 60 days. The new requirements, which take effect in June, have kept lenders busy expanding and training the staff needed to catch up with growing short sale demand.
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Tags: american homeowner preservation, banking, defense attorneys, economics, finance, foreclosure, foreclosures, home foreclosure, in the news, law firm, laws, lawyers.com, loss mitigation, MERS, mortgage, mortgage foreclosure, national mortgage, oppenheim, Oppenheim Law, personal finance, Real Estate, real property law, Roy Oppenheim, senior partners, short sale, tv reports, us news and world report, usa today
Posted in Mortgage Scams, Oppenheim Law: In The News, Roy Oppenheim, Short Sales | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
“Let me be frank. Our banks earn profit too easily. Why? Because a small number of large banks have a monopoly.”
Sounds like something I would have said. Or something our president SHOULD be saying.
Except here’s the thing. The elected official quoted isn’t talking about our own corrupt banking system.
The quote above came from the prime minister of China. And he’s talking about his own country’s state-run banking companies.
Wen Jiabao, during a recent broadcast of China’s state-run radio, said his banks need to be broken up to fix his country’s economy.
If China, a country not exactly known for embracing capitalism, wants to break up its banks, does the US have any other choice but to follow suit?
I believe our nation, as a people, is duty bound to do so.
I’m saying it. The Dallas Fed has said it. Even Bruce Springsteen has said it. And now the prime minister of China has said it.
When banks are not only ‘Too Big To Fail’ but too big to compete, we the people must step in and break them up.
There really is no other choice. It’s pretty shocking that China has come to that conclusion before us. In fact it’s an absolute disgrace.
The idea that it’s OK for the TBTF banks to continue operating at the size they now do is a fallacy and it’s a notion that’s only been propounded by the banking industry to basically preserve the status quo.
Just shows you whose pockets many of our politicians are in.
Only when we have competitive, nimble, smaller banks that are able to seize new opportunities as they arise are we going to be able to compete on the world stage.
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Tags: at&T, bank, banking, banking companies, banking in the united states, banking industries, banks, banks system, break up, breaks, china, dallas fed, economy of the united states, Federal Reserve, federal reserve system, finance, large banks, monopoly, politicians, real estate market, standard oil, steel, subprime mortgage crisis solutions debate, too big to fail, Wen Jiabao
Posted in Big Banks, Too Big To Fail | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Excuse me Jamie. Mr. Dimon, hello?
Do you really still think we’re fools?
How else can you explain your half-hearted apology over JP Morgan’s part in the robosigning scandal?
The CEO of JP Morgan Chase made some efforts towards reconciliation in his annual letter to shareholders, which is now out for all to see.
But it’s clear that Jamie Dimon is still delusional and suffers a full blown case of pass-the-buck disease, for which, apparently, there is no cure.
In the section titled “The Mortgage Business — The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” (He should have just left out the first two) Dimon admits to JP Morgan Chase’s shareholders that his companies ‘servicing operations left a lot to be desired’
He adds his company ‘made too many mistakes’ and that the it was ‘not our finest hour’.
What’s sarcasm!
Let’s be honest, it was your worst hour and your lasting legacy.
Here’s the problem Mr. Dimon. You didn’t just make a mistake. If I forget to buy milk on the way home, that’s a mistake. Your company, your officers and your top executives all suborned fraud forgery and perjury, all federal crimes.
Robosigning was more that just, as you put it, ‘paperwork errors’.
Everyone from the tippy-top of your company on down, encouraged this kind of illegal activity to happen, in fact it became part of the operating procedures of your company! You just farmed it out.
Why not just own up to the homeowners, the taxpayers and your shareholders. You’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar, I can still see the bruise.
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Tags: bank, banks, ceo, chase, dimon, explanation, finance, foreclosure, investment, investment banks, j. p. morgan, jamie, jamie dimon, jp, jp morgan, JP Morgan Chase, jpmorgan chase, morgan chase, offers, primary dealers, robosigning, shareholder
Posted in Robosigning | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
Man I just love it when the banks eat their own!
It’s even better when they start using MY arguments to do it. The very same arguments I’ve used to defend my clients.
The essential problem is this, securitized trusts, the ones your homes were bought and sold into, weren’t always mortgage-backed!
I’ve long had questions about the validity of these REMICs, and now the banks are making my case for me! Thanks guys!
HSH Nordbank AG is now suing Barclays N.Y. after they bought $46 million in residential mortgage-backed securities from them.
Investigators for HSH Nordbank claim that none of the 2,000 mortgage loans they sampled had actually been assigned into the trusts when they were sold.
So if they tried to foreclose on some of these properties, it made it very difficult for them to do so, the lawsuit alleges.
Had they realized the mortgages weren’t properly assigned, they never would have bought the securities in the first place, HSH Nordbank’s lawyers say.
As I’ve always said, it goes back to making the banks prove who owns your mortgage. HSH Nordbank basically is admitting that they couldn’t do exactly that! Now this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.
I blogged about a similar lawsuit involving AIG and Bank of America last year. But the banks, it seems have, clearly have not learned their lesson.
According to the lawsuit, Barclays overstated the value of these loans in order to sell them off. It’s being alleged that these loans did not meet the underwriting standards of the mortgage securities that HSH Nordbank was buying into.
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Tags: bank, banking, banks, barclays, eric schneiderman, finance, fixed income securities, german banks, hsh nordbank, hsh nordbank ag, mortgage, mortgage backed security, mortgage loan, mortgage loans, mortgage security, mortgage-backed securities, mortgages, REMICS, residential mortgage backed security, rmbs working group, securities, securitization, structured finance
Posted in Eric Schneiderman, Foreclosure Defense, REMICS, Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, Securitized Trusts | No Comments »
Friday, March 23rd, 2012
Banking officials, as a general rule, are old school. They are very resistant to change, and usually refuse to think outside of the box.
Over the years I’ve seen the banks hold little to no regard for the customers they serve. Their philosophy has essentially been ‘You can’t pay your mortgage, then out on your butt you go!’
Forget that they’ve screwed people, or caused the worst recession in 80 years.
Forget that homeowners often have good reasons for not being able to pay. Banks have had very little heart and even less common sense.
So I was blown away by Bank of America’s new test program, called “Mortgage to Lease”, which was unveiled this week. In a few select markets, BofA will give about 1,000 customers facing foreclosure the chance to stay in their homes by turning them into renters.
Bank of America will offer these borrowers the opportunity to have their mortgage debts forgiven, and instead of kicking them to the curb, BofA will lease these homes back to the borrower for up to 3 years for less than the market rental rate.
No more mortgage, no more property taxes or homeowners insurance! And people can stay in their homes! Imagine that!
Turning foreclosure properties into rentals is an idea I’ve long advocated. It only took Bank of America a few years to listen to me!
I was wondering why now, what finally turned Bank of America over to my way of thinking?
I could tell you that Bank of America’s small heart grew three sizes like the Grinch’s, but we all know that’s not true.
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Tags: america, bank held, Bank of America, banking, borrower, causes of the financial crisis of 2007 2009, finance, foreclosure, homeowners insurance, lease, leasing programs, MERS, mortgage, occupy our homes, personal finance, program, project, project x, projects, Real Estate, real property law, renter, subprime crisis background information, test, testing
Posted in Bank Of America, Mortgage to Lease, Renters | 1,038 Comments »
Thursday, March 15th, 2012
After you read the information in these audits, chances are you'll be screaming too!
Well what do you know.
Earlier this week I blogged about the mortgage settlement documents and their stunning lack of detail on the frauds committed by the banks during the days of robosigning.
I was frustrated because it seems like the complete recklessness of the banks was being whitewashed in order for the settlement to go through.
Turns out I was just looking in the wrong place.
Just as the Department of Justice announced that the mortgage settlement had been filed in court, Housing and Urban Development released the results of a series of stinging audits, one for each lender in the settlement.
It was HUD’s investigation that helped lead to the settlement in the first place.
The settlement is hundreds and hundreds of pages. Most of the audits were around 10 pages long. Yet there is more harsh truth about how far the banks went to rob people of their homes in those select pages than in the entire settlement.
So what’s in these audits that is so damning?
Facts. Numbers. Witness Statements. And just how far the banks went keep the lid on how pervasive robosigning was
In other words, plenty to make your skin crawl. There’s no whitewashing here.
In Bank of America’s case, their attorneys interfered with HUD’s investigation, refusing to allow some of their employees to answer questions, sometimes stopping them mid-sentence.
Ally Financial’s attorneys made 18 current employees plead the fifth and blocked them from talking to investigators.
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Tags: ally financial, auditing, audits, backroom, banking, banks, Citigroup, department of housing and urban development, document, exposed, finance, foreclosure, housing and urban development, HUD, investment, jpmorgan chase, mortgage settlement, newly released, release, settlement, Wells Fargo
Posted in Mortgage Settlement, Robosigning | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
In the weeks after the mortgage settlement was announced by the Federal Government, I waited under baited breath to the see it in its entirety.
Almost every week I read a different report stating the documents to finalize the settlement were about to be filed in court.
And as each reported deadline came and went, I grew more and more skeptical.
Would the banks manage to sneak some last minute releases in? Would the lofty figures promised to beleaguered borrowers be diminished?
The good news, now that documents have been completed and released to the public, is that the answer to both questions is a sound no.
The banks are not getting any get-out-of-jail-free cards, claims against MERS and the securitization process are still very much on the table.
On the other hand, did I learn anything new about the massive frauds perpetrated by the banks? Not really.
There are pages listing what the government has now labeled as “Unfair, Deceptive, and Unlawful Loan Practices”.
The settlement does say that the banks violated federal laws, that they wrongfully denied modification applications, and overcharged for ‘forced place insurance, among other misdeeds.
It even finally acknowledges that the banks engaged in robosigning.
But these are things that my clients and I have long known.
If you’ve read the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times, or any thorough news story on the housing crisis, there’s little in the mortgage settlement’s pages that will surprise you.
And that’s thoroughly disappointing. What the government has presented to the public is a complete white-washing of the robosigining and “fraudclosure” scandal. It acknowledges that the banks committed certain indiscretions yes, but I couldn’t find one concrete example, not one thorough examination of how it occurred.
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Tags: bank, banking, consumer fraud, crimes, economics, federal government, filing, finance, financial economics, financial institutions, foreclosure, foreclosure settlement, foreclosures, insurance, MERS, mortgage, mortgage settlement, mortgages, securitization, settlement, vast, veils
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Foreclosure Fraud, Mortgage Settlement, Robosigning | No Comments »
