Posts Tagged ‘Oppenheim Law’
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, March 21st, 2012
Over a year ago I felt compelled to call out The Wall Street Journal after a particular column really got under my skin.
It’s time to call them out once more. Not for another column, but rather, a lack of one.
In October 2010 their column “The Politics of Foreclosure” made light of the plight many of my clients have undergone, and shrunk the foreclosure crisis down to a mere inconvenience for a few Washington insiders.
You and I, of course, know different.
And as the crisis grew wider and wider, and the expansiveness of the banks fraud became even more apparent, The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board continued to be a haven for outdated ideas, protection of the status quo and disgust for anyone trying to do good by the American homeowner.
When the AG settlement was first announced back in February, the Wall Street Journal called it a ‘bank job’ worthy of the Barker gang.
I found it disturbingly amusing that a settlement that was basically little more than a public spanking for the banks angered them so. The settlement didn’t land a single banking executive in jail, yet the columnists at The Wall Street Journal still treat the banks as the victims in the housing crisis.
The crisis, you know that the banks basically created.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board still believes the banks didn’t illegally foreclose on a single homeowner, something I personally know not to be true.
Either their editorial board is remarkably stupid or just ignorant.
And so I shouldn’t be all that surprised that they have been silent after the Department of Housing and Urban Development released audits that laid out how pervasive the culture of fraud was amongst our nation’s lenders.
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Tags: bank fraud, bank jobs, columns, dow jones & company, economics, foreclosure, foreclosures, mass media, mortgage, Oppenheim Law, politics, Real Estate, real property law, reminder, Roy Oppenheim, The Politics of Foreclosure, The Wall Street Journal, wall street, Wall Street Journal, wall street journal editorial board, wall street journal opinion
Posted in Foreclosure Fraud, Mortgage Settlement, Robosigning, The Wall Street Journal | No Comments »
Friday, February 24th, 2012
Photo by The-Lane-Team
Banks need to get their massive foreclosure backlog off the books. There are over 368,000 cases in Florida. I get that.
Getting these properties into the hands of families who can afford them, that is what I want to see. It’s needed to jump start the economy, and no one wants to see the banks out of the neighborhoods more than me.
But it can’t be allowed to happen on the backs of other homeowners plain and simple. Lenders have tried to thrust these homes back onto the market before, and that’s why they just shelled out $25 billion.
The banks were penalized for being unethical, untrustworthy and fraudsters, and it doesn’t look like they have learned their lesson.
Yet a series of proposed bills now making their way through the Florida House and Senate offer banks unjust control over the foreclosure process, all in the name of getting abandoned homes back on the market.
The Senate version, which would create the “Florida Fair Foreclosure Act”, was passed by a judiciary committee earlier this week by a 5-2 vote. There is a similar bill making their way through the House.
But are they really ‘fair’ to homeowners? Absolutely not.
These bills are being pushed by banking industry shills. They make it easier for lenders to foreclose, and allows them to do so faster.
Have the politicians in Tallahassee learned nothing from the settlement? The $25 billion isn’t even in the mail, yet some are back to their old tricks, turning a blind eye to the plights of their constituents and denying them due process.
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Tags: abandoned, abandoned homes, acting, banks, deficiency, deficiency judgment, Florida, Florida fair, Florida Fair Foreclosure Act, Florida foreclosure law, Florida House, florida houses, Florida Senate, foreclosure, foreclosure process, foreclosures, homeowners, house, mortgage, Oppenheim Law, personal finance, politicians, property, Real Estate, real property law, Roy Oppenheim, senate
Posted in Florida Fair Foreclosure Act, Florida foreclosures, Florida Law News, Foreclosure Defense, Foreclosure Fraud | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
If there was anything positive that came out of the prolonged discussions between the states and the banks on the mortgage servicing settlement, it was that banks were reluctant to go full steam ahead in the foreclosure process while talks were ongoing.
But even before the settlement was announced, we saw signs that pointed to more foreclosures in 2012.
According to RealtyTrac, there were 24,783 foreclosure filings in the state of Florida in January, a 14% percent rise from January 2011, the first year-over-year increase in over a year.
Now that the settlement has been agreed to, the training wheels are off.
It’s petal to the metal folks. One thing that the settlement does for the banks is provide them a blueprint for how to proceed in the foreclosure process without getting their fingers stuck in the cookie jar.
Which means borrowers will once again have to defend themselves just as rigorously as they did pre-robosigning.
I’ve been asked if the settlement changes my advice to homeowners, to which I reply, ABSOLUTELY NOT!
You must continue to stand your ground. If you are in foreclosure or about to enter foreclosure, I will say what I have always said, you must fight the banks and force them to kick you out of your home.
The settlement may have changed the rules for the banks, but it shouldn’t change the rules for you, the homeowner. The banks will not transform into wonderful and charitable companies just because the settlement might penalize them.
Make no mistake about it, they will continue to come at you and come at your hard.
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Tags: banking, economics, foreclosure, foreclosure process, foreclosures, homeowners, Loan Modification, loss mitigation, mortgage, mortgage services, mortgage settlement, mortgages, Oppenheim Law, personal finance, Real Estate, real property law, realty trac, robosigning, Roy Oppenheim, settlement, short sale, stand your ground, subprime mortgage crisis
Posted in Bank Fraud, Foreclosure Defense, Mortgage Settlement, Principal Reduction, Robosigning, Roy Oppenheim, Underwater Mortgage | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
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!
I’ve seen press releases from the states, plenty of summaries, and an extensive statement from Attorney General Eric Holder. So there are details that are out there. But the document itself?
Right now Waldo is easier to find.
No formal agreement has been filed with the courts and we hear it may not even be completed!
And according to my friends at the Crew of 42 Blog, Congress hasn’t seen a copy of it either.
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.
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Tags: agreement, Attorney General, copy, foreclosure, mortgage, mortgage settlement, Oppenheim Law, Roy Oppenheim, settlement, waldo, waldo robosigning
Posted in Foreclosure Defense, Mortgage Settlement, President Barack Obama, Robosigning, Roy Oppenheim | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 10th, 2012
Yesterday’s robosigning settlement that all but one state ultimately signed off on, was far from perfect.
Let’s make that perfectly clear.
Depending on what you have read, you might be outraged, you might be relieved, you might be overjoyed. And the target of your wrath or sympathy might depend on your own personal perspective.
But make no mistake about it, yesterday was a day of reckoning, for me, and much more importantly, for the people I represent.
Yes, the banks got a slap on the wrist and the money they are trickling back to the homeowners won’t make up for the systemic fraud these lenders engaged in, and make no mistake it was fraud at the highest level.
I wish I could personally put the handcuffs on each CEO who allowed robosigning to occur.
But here’s the silver lining, now we have a reengaged President, who is anxious to see the job done. We have Eric Schneiderman on the case, and he is going full-speed right at the banks.
They may have not gotten the flogging they deserve, but I am optimistic that they surely will.
Conservatives can blame the borrowers all they want, and certainly not all were faultless. But the banks were the grown-ups here, they should have known better. They had the chance, in the midst of the housing boom, to stop, take a breath and take a look back at what they had done.
They didn’t.
The truth is no amount of money would have been enough. And since we can’t put the banks in jail, they got what was in essence a very public shaming. And people’s eyes were opened. What you have now learned, can not be unlearned.
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Tags: barack obama, chicken little, eric schneiderman, federal investigation, Oppenheim Law, president, President Obama, reckoning, robosigning, robosigning settlement, Roy Oppenheim, settlement
Posted in Bank Fraud, Big Banks, Eric Schneiderman, From The Trenches, President Barack Obama, Robosigning, Roy Oppenheim | 6 Comments »
Monday, February 6th, 2012
Courtesy: New York Giants
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.
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Tags: 4th and inches, ally financial, Attorney General, Bank of America, banking, banks, Citigroup, economics, Eric Scneiderman, foreclosed homes, foreclosure, foreclosure crisis, housing crisis, JP Morgan Chase, kamala harris, mortgage, national football league, new England Patriots, New York Giants, Oppenheim Law, Real Estate, real property law, robo, robosigning settlement, Roy Oppenheim, settlement, Super Bowl, Wells Fargo
Posted in Eric Schneiderman, Florida Law News, Florida real estate, Foreclosure Fraud, robosigning settlement | 4 Comments »
