Posts Tagged ‘Florida Foreclosure Defense’
Friday, June 10th, 2011
All the top headlines from popular topics around the web: that’s AllTop.
And now the South Florida Law Blog is listed on this popular directory of top news sources. Fresh off the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best of Blogs Awards, Oppenheim Law is proud to announce we are part of the feed to the AllTop Real Estate topic: http://real-estate.alltop.com/
What is AllTop?
The website helps users answer the question, “What’s happening?” Alltop prides itself on providing aggregation without aggravation, according to its homepage.
The “online magazine rack” collects the latest headlines from the best sites and blogs. Topics include celebrities, fashion, sports, politics – and real estate. The South Florida Law blog is in good company alongside news giants such as The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC and The New York Times and local blogs from Hanoi to Chicago.
The selection process for Alltop is “highly subjective and judgmental”, not based on an algorithm, as with search engines, so to be included is a special honor. South Florida Law Blog fans are now able to subscribe and view the latest real estate news and commentary alongside their other favorite blogs.
About Alltop and Guy Kawasaki
Named “the granddaddy of blog discovery tools” by Mashable, Alltop was founded by former Apple evangelist and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. Kawasaki is a renowned public speaker and best-selling author of 10 books including his latest, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. Although he’s been described as a business legend, Kawasaki says that being a legend shouldn’t be your goal in life: “What you should do is create a great product or service…the goal is to change the world…if you do that, maybe you’ll be a legend.”
Tags: Alltop, Florida Foreclosure Defense, Florida Real estate blog, Guy Kawasaki, legal blogger, Oppenheim Law, real estate lawyer, Real Estate News, Roy Oppenheim, South Florida Law Blog, South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best of Blogs
Posted in AllTop, Best of Blogs Awards, Florida Law News, Foreclosure Defense, Roy Oppenheim | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
Nearly 40% of homeowners who took out a second mortgage are underwater on their loans, but the news surrounding second mortgages isn’t all doom and gloom for Floridians, says Florida foreclosure defense attorney Roy Oppenheim.
Second mortgages refer to any loan taken out on a property that is subordinate to the first mortgage, and include home-equity loans or lines of credit.
According to data from CoreLogic and The New York Times, homeowners with a second mortgage are two times more likely to be underwater on their property. CoreLogic’s data also shows that homeowners with second mortgages are facing deeper levels of negative equity in their homes – $83,000 compared with $52,000 – than borrowers without second mortgages.
The bright side is that Oppenheim Law is seeing massive principal reduction on second mortgages through loan modifications, according to Oppenheim. It’s becoming common for the Florida foreclosure defense law firm to negotiate up to 80% in principal reductions of second mortgages, a far greater percentage than first mortgages.
A vast majority of first mortgages were cut up, bundled and sold to investors as mortgage backed securities, the process that played such an enormous role in the Florida real estate crisis. On the other hand, nearly three-quarters of second mortgages are still held by the banks that made the original loans.
The good news for Florida homeowners is that these banks are beginning to treat second mortgages similarly to consumer credit card debt, accepting minimal “pay offs” to settle up with homeowners.
Homeowners who are willing to negotiate a “short payoff” can have tremendous success reducing their second mortgage principal by 50% to 80% and then paying off the remaining balance in cash. Banks are even starting to solicit Florida homeowners with second mortgages to make initial offers for 40% to 50% reductions, which Oppenheim Law is then able to negotiate to as much as 80%.
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Tags: CoreLogic, Florida Foreclosure Defense, Florida Foreclosure Defense Attorney, Florida short sale, Loan Modification, Oppenheim Law, Roy Oppenheim, second mortgages, short sale, south florida real estate, The New York Times, underwater homeowners
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Florida short sales, Foreclosure Defense, International News, Roy Oppenheim, Short Sales, strategic default, The New York Times | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011
As a tribute to Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday today, his song “The Times They Are A-Changin” captures the spirit of the social and political upheaval happening in today’s Florida courts. Despite a swollen pipeline of more than half a million pending foreclosure cases, Florida’s appellate courts are starting to send a clear message that banks will not succeed in trampling the Constitutional rights of homeowners.
The times they are a-changin’. And it’s about time.
Florida District Courts of Appeal are ruling in favor of homeowners when procedural due process has been violated as well as in cases where the trial court improperly granted summary judgment in favor of a bank based on lawyers’ assertions that have no evidentiary support on the record.
Recent decisions from the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th District Courts of Appeal can provide hope to homeowners and South Florida foreclosure defense attorneys that banks will be forced to start playing by the rules, or risk having their judgments reversed on appeal.
For example, the 5th DCA reversed a summary judgment decision in favor of a bank last month for a lack of evidence on the foreclosing bank’s standing to sue. The Court of Appeal found that documents submitted at trial contradicted the bank’s mere allegations that it was the holder of the note, and therefore allowed to foreclose.
“Taken together, these decisions are powerful evidence that Florida’s appellate courts are increasingly receptive to foreclosure defendants’ complaints that some trial courts are not holding foreclosure plaintiffs to the requirements of Florida Civil Procedure – and perhaps that they are also paying attention to the widely reported improprieties in the mortgage lending industry,” said Dan Bushell, a South Florida appellate attorney, on his blog, Florida Appellate Review.
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Tags: Appellate Courts, Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan 70th Birthday, court system, deficiency judgment, District Courts, Florida Foreclosure Defense, foreclosure, Foreclosure Defense, Oppenheim Law, Roy Oppenheim, South Florida foreclosure defense attorney, south florida real estate, summary judgment, The Times They Are A-Changin
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Foreclosure Defense, Roy Oppenheim | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
As Florida real estate slowly pulls itself out of the foreclosure fraud files; there is finally a government agency standing up to the bully of banks!
The IRS.
Last week, Reuters News Service published an exclusive article exposing yet another way the banks have been defrauding taxpayers. This time it wasn’t directly through improper lending practices, robo-signing or bad assignments of mortgage.
Now, the IRS discovered that banks acting as servicers for “REMICs”, otherwise known as Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits, have been claiming tax-exempt status on the income they generate under favorable tax code provisions.
So what is a REMIC? A REMIC is a passive entity where mortgages are pooled and securitized into investments. Generally, the investors in REMICs are large funds, pension plans, and 401ks.
Not only did the banks failed to comply in any manner with the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code that allow this favorable tax treatment, they have apparently decided to ignore the IRC altogether.
So what does this mean for taxpayers?
It means that the banks have been systematically ignoring IRC provisions, thinking the IRS is too sheepish to enforce the law. These entities, as a result of the actions of the banks servicing the mortgages, have failed to pay billions of dollars in taxes, and robbed the government, and thus the American people, of that money.
The reason that REMICs were afforded this massive tax break is due to the fact that they are meant to be vehicles for passive investing, and as such they have rules for strict compliance that require that all mortgages passing into a REMIC must be transferred into a trust within 90 days of trust formation.
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Tags: Florida Foreclosure Defense, Florida foreclosures, Florida real estate, Florida short sales, foreclosure crisis, Foreclosure Fraud, government agency, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, Oppenheim Law, Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits, REMICS, Reuters, robo signers, Roy Oppenheim, taxpayers
Posted in Reuters | 2 Comments »
Sunday, April 17th, 2011
There is an interesting practice developing at our nation’s big banks. Borrowers who are in or nearing foreclosure are being offered thousands of dollars to short sale their homes. Some are even being offered $35,000 to get rid of their homes, and quickly. This situation presents an intriguing insight into the way banks are thinking at the moment. Banks would rather pay you and take a loss rather than foreclose on homes.
Do such offers signify that banks have learned their lesson and are trying to get out of sub-prime loans, or are they looking to just prevent further losses? Perhaps the answer is that the banks are concerned about existing home prices. Bank of America’s chief economist, Mickey Levy, while speaking privately, spoke of the concern that the 1.8 million bad loans in the nation will drive down the market if they go into foreclosure. Such fears help explain why the banks are desperate to avoid foreclosing on homes. They don’t want the rest of their loans to become vulnerable: the more foreclosures, the more house prices fall, therefore, the value of the banks’ loans go down and more people want to walk away from their homes, causing the banks even more losses.
In the end, this situation is a win-win. Not only do banks protect home prices, but they stand to get back more money quicker from a short sale than a foreclosure and the good publicity would be a nice change of pace for their PR departments. Homeowners in trouble are also helped because they can get out of their houses with some cash in their pockets and get on with the rest of their lives.
Tags: deficiency judgment, desperately seeking short sales, FL short sales, Florida Foreclosure Defense, Florida foreclosures, Florida short sales, foreclosure, How to stop a foreclosure, Oppenheim Law, Roy Oppenheim, Short Sales
Posted in Deficiency Judgements, Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Florida short sales, Foreclosure Defense, Roy Oppenheim, Short Sales | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 9th, 2011
The Florida Court system, including judges, nearly faced mandatory furloughs and unpaid vacations due to an emergency shortfall in its budget. Court employees faced up to 30 days of unpaid vacation through the end of May. The reason for the short fall was the precipitous drop in foreclosure filings, which generated the fees the courts relied upon for the majority of their budget. With the huge numbers of foreclosures in years past, the estimated revenue from the foreclosure fees meant that the Florida legislature allocated less money from the general state funds to the courts. This reliance on foreclosure filings fees resulted in the courts seeming a bit too amenable to the big banks and the rushing through of foreclosures that would have benefited from more scrutiny. Knowing that the courts were not examining the documents carefully, big banks were able to forge the required paperwork on a massive scale. The forging continued until the document mill scam was uncovered.
With the major banks virtually halting all of their foreclosures due to the document mill scandals, the fees have dried up and now we can see the impact of the courts falling asleep at the switch. The tremendous irony in the matter is that the failure of the courts to properly scrutinize fraudulent foreclosures, leading to the halting of new foreclosures and the drying up of the courts’ fees, would have lead to new foreclosures. Only this time, court employees would have been processing their own foreclosures. According to the Sun-Sentinel, most of the hardship of the court furloughs would’ve been felt by low income employees who are already struggling to make ends meet.
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Tags: Florida Foreclosure Defense, Florida foreclosures, mortgage fraud, Oppenheim Law, Real Estate, Roy Oppenheim, South Florida Business Journal, south florida real estate, subprime bonds, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Weston Title
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Foreclosure Defense, Foreclosure Fraud, Roy Oppenheim, Sun Sentinel | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
Reporting on the winning and losing headlines, South Florida Law Blog brings you the break down and what this means to the Florida homeowner.
While South Florida is #1 for mortgage fraud and foreclosure settlement talks between banks and the Obama administration appear futile at best, this week’s new was not all doom and gloom.
Check out Oppenheim Law’s and Weston Title’s picks in the week’s winners and losers for Florida foreclosure, real estate and the economy.
Winners
Pending home sales up 18% in Miami-Dade
Pending home sales rose 18 percent in Miami-Dade County over the course of the past month, according to new data released today by the Miami Association of Realtors.
Pending home sales, which include single-family home and condominium unit sales, were also up 3.24 percent month-over-month in March, the figures show.
“Increased pending sales reflect the existence of pent-up demand and should result in strengthening home values as distressed housing inventory continues to be absorbed,” said Jack Levine, chairman of the board of Miami Realtors.
Hiring Shows Growing Strength
The American job market is starting to show some muscle, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The jobless rate, our most politically salient measure of economic health, edged down to 8.8% in the fourth consecutive monthly decline despite the fact that more Americans entered the job market.
“It’s a very solid report that shows the labor market gaining momentum,” said David Greenlaw, an economist with Morgan Stanley in New York.
The public sector remained a weak point, as local governments shed 15,000 jobs last month in an effort to close budget gaps, but many other sectors showed strong growth, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Tags: Florida Foreclosure Defense, Florida foreclosures, mortgage fraud, Oppenheim Law, Real Estate, Roy Oppenheim, South Florida Business Journal, south florida real estate, subprime bonds, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Weston Title
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Florida short sales, Foreclosure Defense, Foreclosure Fraud, Roy Oppenheim, Short Sales, South Florida Business Journal, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Weston Title & Escrow | No Comments »
