Posts Tagged ‘south florida real estate’
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 »
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
The South Florida Law Blog believes it will be at least 2016 before Florida’s housing market fully recovers, but a new study shows many Americans are far more optimistic.
The results are in, and it appears the majority of those surveyed believe 2012 will be the magic year for the housing market. Trulia and RealtyTrac recently polled 2,034 U.S. adults aged 18 years and older to find out when most Americans think the housing market will recover. 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.
Despite recent reports that foreclosures have slowed and sales in Broward and Miami-Dade are trending up, Florida is not out of the woods yet. As special guest and Florida real estate developer, Pat Sessions, pointed out during our talk show From The Trenches, the market has yet to bottom out here in Florida.
As always, the South Florida Law Blog continues to share and comment on the latest in real estate news.
Tags: Broward sales trending upward, foreclosures, foreclosures slowed, from the trenches, housing market, housing market recovery, Oppenheim Law, Pat Sessions, RealtyTrac, recovery, Roy Oppenheim, south florida real estate, Trulia, when will the housing market recover
Posted in Foreclosure Defense, From The Trenches, Infographic, International News, Roy Oppenheim | 6 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 »
Saturday, May 7th, 2011
Orlando’s got the Florida real estate Magic and Miami has the Heat!
Reports are in that Miami and Orlando are dragging Florida out of recession, but for now only Orlando is performing above its economic weight class.
The Miami Herald reported this week that while Orlando represents just 14 percent of Florida’s 7.2 million-person workforce, it accounts for 46 percent of the Sunshine State’s 44,000 new jobs last month, eighty percent of which came from the tourism industry.
Given the city’s abundance of theme parks, brand new “Medical City” popping up with the opening of the University of Central Florida’s new medical school and strong video game industry, it’s no surprise Orlando outperformed its economic class.
Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner told reporters Thursday during his annual review of Florida’s economic outlook that Orlando is “certainly coming out ahead of the other large metropolitan areas in this recession.’’
Here in South Florida, Miami is doing its part to reverse the economic slide the state has weathered over the last three years as well. In the last 12 months, South Florida added 1,100 jobs in the finance sector alone. “Companies are hiring,’’ said Jaap Donath, vice president of research for the Beacon Council, Miami-Dade’s economic development agency. “They’re hiring across the board.’’
While Orlando has certainly grown by leaps and bounds, it’s important to keep the numbers in perspective. The South Florida metro area’s $253 billion economy is more than twice the size of Orlando’s, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. The smaller the economy and workforce, the easier it is to show big gains. Additionally, Miami has been sheltered from the brunt of the economic freeze due to its frequent interactions with booming South American consumers.
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Tags: economic news, Medical City, Miami, miami herlald, Oppenheim Law, Orlando, Real Estate News, recession, Roy Oppenheim, south florida real estate, University of Central Florida
Posted in Florida foreclosures, Florida real estate, Foreclosure Defense, Miami Herald | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 29th, 2011
Financial Times Headline: Caution urged on US bank foreclosure fines
Who gets the golden ticket? We all remember the deserving Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of the eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka. In the end, Charlie gets the Chocolate Factory and the golden ticket.
This week’s Financial Times writer Tom Braithwaite reported a story: Caution urged on US bank foreclosure fines. The story focuses on how banks will be fined for failures that led to the foreclosure debacle. BUT…there is some sympathy and sugar coating happening. It seems regulators are pressing to avoid “dangerously large” penalties, according to one of the top officials participating in fractious settlement talks.
John Walsh, acting comptroller of the currency, told the Financial Times that he supported financial penalties for mortgage servicers, led by Bank of America and Wells Fargo, whose shoddy paperwork and improperly signed affidavits caused the repossession of delinquent borrowers’ homes to come to a grinding halt.
Here’s another BUT….
But the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has differed with some state attorneys-general, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which all want a more far-reaching settlement, with $20b in fines and at least some of the money used to reduce the debt owed by struggling homeowners.
The fact is this: if the government goes too light on banks; it will be an invitation for banks to continue to skirt the law and continue to believe that they are not just too big to fail, but too big to be regulated or stopped.
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Tags: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Financial Times, foreclosure fines, Foreclosure Fraud, foreclosures, Oppenheim Law, Roy Oppenheim, south florida real estate, The Fed, The Federal Reserve, Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Posted in Financial Times, Florida foreclosures, Foreclosure Defense, Foreclosure Fraud, Roy Oppenheim | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
Weston is Number One! Zip codes with good schools, high paying jobs are topping list.
Some areas of South Florida are finally seeing the first steps of a tentative recovery. As reported by the Sun-Sentinel, ten zip codes in Broward and six in Palm Beach County are seeing higher home prices.
33327, in Weston, saw the largest price increase from February 2010 with a 9.3% increase. The areas that have had a price recovery have generally been close to good schools or high paying jobs. While only a few zip codes are showing signs of recovery, the news is nevertheless good for all of South Florida. As an area that was one of the worst hit by the real estate crisis, we are now seeing a recovery before the rest of the country. Prices are still low in other areas because foreclosures and short sales make up the majority of sales.
Every recovery has to start somewhere and it seems to be starting in our own back yard here in Weston.
There is a large backlog of these “distressed” loans and the only way property values are going to go up in the rest of South Florida is if they are cleared out. This is what is happening right now and is the first step on a long road to recovery.
This news comes on the heels of reports that traffic to real estate websites increased 27 percent during the month of February – the largest jump since the first half of 2009. This combined with news that single family home sales across South Florida also went up in February and an encouraging job market leads Oppenheim Law and Weston Title to believe that the economy here in South Florida is showing signs of life after all.
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Tags: House Keys, Oppenheim Law, Paul Owers, Real Estate News, Roy Oppenheim, south florida real estate, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Weston, Weston Title, Zillow
Posted in Florida real estate, Roy Oppenheim, Sun Sentinel | No 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 »
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.
