Just like Waldo, a copy of the mortgage settlement is awfully hard to find.
The dust has finally settled on last week’s mortgage settlement.
It dominated the news cycle once the details of the agreement broke. I spent the bulk of my day a week ago talking to the media and weighing in on it’s significance.
But there is one clear question that I haven’t heard anyone been able to definitely answer yet.
Has anyone seen the darn thing, in it’s entirety? I sure haven’t!
Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings is quoted in Crew of 42 as saying he wasn’t concerned that he hadn’t seen a copy and that he trusts his attorney general.
Color us slightly more skeptical.
A website was set up explaining the details of the settlement the day it was announced, but where the actual settlement is supposed to be it just says coming soon.
For a government that prides itself on being transparent, this just can not stand.
President Obama may be reengaged and all signs point to him being back on the side of the homeowner, but there are plenty who remain unconvinced and this doesn’t exactly help. (more…)
For 5 years now we’ve been a huge champion of the short sale. We’ve been banging and banging away at the banks because they didn’t share our opinion.
There has long been an institutional reluctance among our nation’s lenders to embrace the short sale, but it appears they are finally coming around.
According to Corelogic’s most recent numbers, short sales accounted for 9 percent of all residential transactions last November.
In January of 2008, they represented only 2 percent. That’s a 350% increase in the amount of homes sold at short sale.
Hallelujah.
It may have taken them a while, but the banks are finally letting go of the arcane notion that foreclosing on a delinquent borrower is always the best option for them.
The short sale has and will always be a much better alternative for the banks. In many cases, when modification isn’t an option, a short sale is better for the existing homeowners as well.
It’s good for the banks because it’s the fastest way to bring down their massive backlog of foreclosures.
Now that more and more foreclosures are lingering in the courts, banks now realize its the simplest way to get these homes back on the market, sometimes in just a few months.
They may not get back the full value of the home but their losses are about 15 percent less than if the home was foreclosed on, according to Bloomberg News.
It’s good for the borrower because they can walk away, legally, with little or no debt at all. Some banks are even offering cash incentives, as much as $35,000 in some cases, to entice homeowners to sell back their homes. (more…)
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 Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Ally Financial and CitiGroup will come to pass, and in what form.
With California AG Kamala Harris returning to the negotiating table, the deal looks closer than ever to being sealed. Harris, who represents the state with the largest amount of foreclosed homes, has rightfully been hesitant to sign off because her state has the most to gain, or lose, from this deal.
We were initially very hesitant to see this deal go through ourselves, but the time has come for it to put to bed.
Why?
Because we feel the deal in its current form does a lot. Does it help every single homeowner who’s underwater? Of course not. There is no deal that will.
But here is who it does help. The homeowners who have fought to keep their homes from day one, who were at the forefront of these legal challenges against the banks. Much of what we have learned about robo-signing and the lack of standing banks had to bring foreclosure, would not have come to light without these crusaders, and its time they got a reprieve.
In theory it also helps the responsible homeowners, the ones who paid their mortgages on-time and whose homes went underwater through no fault of their own. They too need to be rewarded. (more…)
With details of the proposed $25 billion settlement with the nation’s largest banks over the robo-signing fiasco now out in the public eye thanks to the Associated Press, we feel a large sense of disappointment.
There’s no question that this deal will change the mortgage industry for the better. Some homeowners will even have a much better chance of being able to restructure their loans when facing foreclosure under this deal.
No One’s Getting Their Keys Back
Yet, there are many out there who are going to feel little comfort with this agreement. Here’s what the deal is NOT going to do. It’s not going to put people who’ve lost their homes (again because of deceptive foreclosure practices) back in those houses, or give them any real financial security.
According to the deal, about 750,000 Americans, which by the way is about
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…)
Finally!!!It’s a word that is being bantered about the hallways of Oppenheim Law all too often these days, and thanks to the Fed’s recent comments on the foreclosure crisis, it’s been thrown around at rapid-fire pace these last few days.
Through a 26-page white paper which highlighted the “extraordinary problems plaguing the housing market”, officials at the Federal Reserve have told policymakers on several congressional banking committees that the government must step up and take a more active role in fixing the mess that they themselves have helped create.
Up until now the Fed has kept their fingers out of the housing market, but even they now realize the far-reaching impact the foreclosure crisis is having on the overall economic climate. In the white paper they offer up several suggestions, such as reducing the barriers to converting foreclosed homes into rental properties, and loosening the grip on lending standards in order to help the market recover.
The Fed now wants harsher action from Congress on America’s top lenders, and Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin even told a conference at the Association of American Law Schools that the Fed “must impose penalties for deficiencies that resulted in unsafe and unsound practices.”
It must be time to check our subscriber list to the South Florida Law Blog, because it sure looks like our friends at the Fed are on it!
We’ve suggested for a while now that turning foreclosed homes into rental properties is an obvious and logical step. For years banks have collected homes like animals in Noah’s Ark, and now it’s time to put this inventory to good use. 60 Minutes showed us what happened when these homes go empty, so why not put good people in these homes! The government may not like the idea of becoming a landlord, but really isn’t it better than the alternative!! This mass inventory of foreclosed homes can be an asset for our government if more of them are rented out, instead of being a detriment. (more…)
As 2011 got underway we were presented with a fascinating yet disturbing report by the Florida Association of Court Clerks called “Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases”. It brought these horrible practices into the harsh light of day.
“What we got from this is the state has had the opportunity to see where the laws have been broken,’ Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock said at the time, “and frankly, it is in large part thanks to the work of the defense attorneys.
We cited April Charney from the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Peter Ticktin and many others wonderful attorneys who have taken bank officers’ depositions, challenged judges rulings and fought the good fight for the Florida homeowner.
Somewhere along the line, the overly ambitious bankers on Wall Street had the “great idea” of slicing and dicing the interest of the Promissory Note and literally severing it from your Mortgage. Why? Convenience,expediency, and, arguably, greed. And much like Humpty Dumpty after his great fall, the banks couldn’t bring the mortgages and their corresponding Notes all back together again. The banks were accused of fraud and perjury trying to do just that.
If Americans are right, 2012 will finally be the magic year for the housing market. Over 2,000 adults were polled by Trulia and RealtyTrac , and the majority, 22 percent, said most Americans think the housing market will fully recover in the new year. A mere 10 percent thought a recovery would happen this year, while nearly a quarter of those surveyed predicted a bumpy road until 2015 and beyond. (more…)
