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. (more…)
There are quite a few people who advocate principal reduction as the best way to get out of the housing crisis. Their arguments were succinctly laid out and analyzed in an Atlanta Federal Reserve white paper.
Advocates of such a policy argue that it would be cheaper for banks to reduce the principal of a loan to the current value of a house because people who have positive equity in their homes are much less likely to default on their loans. The policy would also help homeowners because they would get to stay in their homes. It seems like a win-win situation, except it isn’t.
As a recent New York Times article illustrates the difficulty with large scale restructuring programs is that banks don’t know who really needs the help and who is trying to take advantage of the situation.
Ms. Rula Giosmas was not one of the people who needed help, yet she got it anyway. For her lender, the modification amounts to an avoidable loss. The lack of knowledge in who can pay and who can’t is the reason why banks are wary of initiating large scale modification programs: not all underwater borrowers will default on their mortgages.
It still remains economically advantageous to foreclose on the defaulters and continue to collect the full loan amounts from the people who can and will pay. The banks also worry that if they do initiate large scale modification programs, it will encourage people who can pay to miss payments simply to qualify for the principal reduction. Such a problem is called moral hazard, where there are incentives to perform badly. The last thing that banks want is to encourage people to default. (more…)
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. (more…)
Foreclosure or loan modification? Banks say foreclosure; homeowner says loan modification. CBS4 interviews foreclosure defense attorney Roy Oppenheim for the CBS Miami news broadcast tonight at 11:00 ET. Oppenheim, along with Chief Consumer Investigator and “4 Your Money” host Al Sunshine discuss the current Florida foreclosure crisis, focusing on why banks would rather foreclose on your home than consider a loan modification.
Oppenheim and Sunshine come together again to discuss the depths of the South Florida foreclosure crisis. In the below clip, the pair examine the dismal real estate climate in Florida last summer:
No stranger to fighting the banks, foreclosure defense attorney and award-winning legal blogger Roy Oppenheim specializes in helping families fight foreclosures, while using his South Florida Law Blog to openly decry fraudulent foreclosure practices and ask: Why isn’t Wall Street in Jail? Veteran investigative reporter Al Sunshine has received numerous honors for his reporting, including the Miami Police Department Accuracy and Fairness Award (1976), the Florida Academy of Trial Lawyers Media Award (1991) and the Dade County Trial Lawyers Association Award (1992).
After a few years of torrential storms blowing against the housing market, residential real estate in the Sunshine State is breaking through the dark clouds. Although the forecast calls for scattered rain showers in 2011, the media is starting to report rays of light that signal a recovery.
Consumers are definitely shopping—and they are buying even if it is for good deals.
On the shopping front, an Experian Hitwise webinar reveals traffic to real estate web sites is up 27 percent in February. That’s the highest gain since the first half of 2009. Although rentals are the key beneficiary, it still bodes well for investors trying to rent property and hold on until property values rise.
But consumers are also buying single-family homes and condos across Florida, and specifically in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Seems that confidence is starting to slowly come back even if prices are not moving much.
Home and condo sales rose in Florida rose during February, according to the Florida Realtors. Existing home sales increased 13 percent in February with a total of 13,701 homes sold statewide compared to 12,164 homes sold in February 2010. And February’s statewide sales of existing condos rose 29 percent compared to the previous year’s sales figure. Meanwhile, Florida’s median sales price for existing homes last month was $121,900. A year ago, it was $124,500 for a 2 percent decrease.
The Miami Association of Realtors and the Southeast Florida Multiple Listing Service is also reporting good news. Single-family homes and condominiums sales in Miami-Dade County increased 22 percent in February compared to a year earlier. One stand out on the condo front is Canyon Ranch in Miami Beach, where 46 units have sold since October 2010. Ft. Lauderdale posted an 8 percent month-over-month gain in February even as housing inventory declined. (more…)
The foreclosure case was before the court because the defendant had brought a motion to dismiss the foreclosure with prejudice. The judge, having previously become annoyed with the bank and the bank’s counsel, had requested that there be an order to show cause. The judge was questioning the pleadings and wanted the foreclosure mill representing the bank to come forward and prove that they had not been involved with any inappropriate conduct.
The judge was clearly upset and said to the banks’ attorneys:
Counsel, this is all speculation. What we are here about is lawyers practicing law correctly. Lawyers reviewing the documents they submit to the court and making sure that they are correct before they are submitted. “It’s not my fault”, “this is a clerical error” and “the dog ate my homework” isn’t going to do.
The court went on to question what kind of supervision is going on at the foreclosure mills and whether the named partners were in any manner setting up the proper systems to ensure that quality work was being produced. The court specifically stated that legal work being dished out in a factory-like fashion may “be okay for you, but it is not okay for the court.”
The judge further questioned whether the attorneys gave legal counsel to their clients, stating: (more…)
“Not a single financial executive has gone to jail”…that is how Producer Charles Ferguson rocked the Oscars by starting his acceptance speech for winning best feature documentary for “Inside Job,” a film about the 2008 financial system meltdown. How appropriate.
Meanwhile, Florida real estate is no red carpet winner when it comes to the housing market. Oppenheim Law announces its real estate webinar streaming live Wednesday March 9th at 6 pm, designed to help Florida homeowners use today’s economic conditions to their advantage and fashion their own bailouts.
In this timely workshop, Oppenheim shares fresh insights, including:
How the rising price of oil will affect the American job market, and in turn affect the housing market.
What these trends mean for Florida foreclosure defense and how homeowners can use these events to their advantage to engineer and structure a short sale.
The impact that a sluggish start to the national “selling season” will have on a local level.
Why home prices will continue to drop in the months ahead.
Florida real estate is not immune to the financial system melt down or the recent world events, according to Florida Foreclosure Defense Attorney and Legal Blogger Roy Oppenheim.
As revolutionary tremors continue to spread through the Middle East and actual tremors rocked New Zealand with a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, Oppenheim Law offers insight on how these international events could impact Florida’s real estate market as well as sharing the latest legal trends in foreclosure defense and short sales strategies. (more…)
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.
