JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) the largest U.S. bank by market value, plans to offer $110 billion in loan modifications of mortgages with plans to expand its modification program within the next 90 days to help 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure.

In addition, Chase plans to forgo foreclosure proceedings on all real-estate loans while the changes are implemented in the next 90 days

The loan modificationoffer is also extended to clients of Washington Mutual Inc. (WAMU), who JPMorgan purchased this last month. Loan modifications may include interest-rate or principal reductions and for owner-occupied mortgages for homeowners who show a willingness to pay. Read the rest of this entry »

Millions of Americans are facing foreclosure and many have already suffered their foreclosure fates without ever even exploring options to save their homes. Most all homeowners just accept the fact that they have no other options but to leave and become a “renter” again.

What if you didn’t have to leave and all you had to do was “defend” your property rights by asking a simple question to who you may “think” is your lender. The question, “Mr. Lender, would you be so kind to produce the mortgage note that I signed when I bought the home with my original signature?”

Think of it like when you buy and sell a vehicle. Read the rest of this entry »

NACA, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America says Fannie Mae was bailed out by the government with taxpayer money, but now Fannie Mae is turning its back on the same people whose money bailed them out.

NACA is led by one of the most controversial and effective consumer advocates in the country, Bruce Marks. A man who has no problem getting in the billion dollar faces of these lending institutions and his protests have achieved phenomenal results in the mortgage industry for consumers and homeowners. Read the rest of this entry »

The FDIC and the US treasury are contemplating using around $50 billion from the recently passed bailout of the financial industry bailout to guarantee about $500 billion in mortgages. The “tentative” plan could include loan modifications that would lower interest rates for a five-year period according to Bloomberg.

The program would be run by Sheila Bair and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and could potentially guarantee around 3 million home mortgages. The plan had been scheduled to be announced Wednesday but was delayed because the details were still being finalized. Read the rest of this entry »

Millions of American homeowners are now underwater on their home mortgages and they are looking for a way out. In some areas like the Inland Empire of California, local homeowners have seen values drop 30-50% and many are making a “business” decision to walk away without ever exploring ways to save their home.

If you have decided to walk away from your home and think you have no other options but to bail on your underwater house, you may want to read this. Read the rest of this entry »

For almost a year, Luis Flores has been lobbying mortgage lender IndyMac Federal Bank FSB to cut his house payments. They have doubled since he refinanced his home loan in 2005 and he can’t afford them, Flores says.

“Every time I call them they say they can’t help,” said Flores, 31, a graphic designer and bartender in Contra Costa County, California, where one in every 146 homes is in foreclosure. “They tell you the solution is that they take Visa or MasterCard.” Read the rest of this entry »

With falling housing prices in nearly every market, the questions that homeowners are asking have shifted. Rather than asking “what is my home worth?”, they are now asking “Is my home worth it?”

The problems are affecting the entire country, with nearly 1 in 6 homeowners owing more than their home is worth.For homeowners who owe more on their loan than their home is worth, they are put in a precarious position. Reports suggest that nearly 12 million homes are “under water” Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, James Lockhart, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the government conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said that the two companies need to begin writing Read the rest of this entry »

As the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or the FDIC, Sheila Bair plays a powerful role in Washington. Appointed in 2006 by President Bush, Bair is an attorney who is at the epicenter of the US banking crisis.

Bair grew up in Kansas where she received her undergraduate degree as well as her law degree from the University of Kansas. Shortly after graduation, Bair took a staff position with Senator Bob Dole, who served as Senate Majority Leader. Rising to become the Research Directory and Counsel to the Senator, Bair gained prominence in Republican policy circles. Read the rest of this entry »

THE US Treasury Department needs to take the same kind of aggressive steps to ease financial strains on homeowners that it took to guarantee the investments of banks and financial institutions. The economy can’t turn around until the housing market stabilizes. That requires a timely plan to stem mortgage defaults and foreclosures. Read the rest of this entry »

House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank is warning Wall Street hedge funds and threatening to subpoena at least two hedge funds, Greenwich Financial Services and Braddock Financial  to testify next month after the funds warned mortgage servicing companies not to participate in federal loan modifications.

“Your decision is a serious threat to our efforts to respond to the current economic crisis, and we strongly urge you to reverse it,” the letter said.

The letter was co-signed by five other Democrat committee chairs: the capital markets, insurance and government sponsored enterprises sub-committee chairman Paul Kanjorski; the financial institutions and consumer credit sub-committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney; the housing and community opportunity sub-committee chairwoman Maxine Waters; the international monetary policy trade and technology chairman Luis Gutierrez; and the oversight and investigations sub-committee chairman Melvin Watt.

The threats came after Greenwich, Braddock and two other funds sent letters in August to mortgage companies expressing concern about the Bush administration’s Hope for Homeowners program, which began Oct. 1. Read the rest of this entry »

The facts are that when there is a world-wide crisis and potential solutions are proposed, not everyone will be happy with these proposals. Such is life. But when it comes to our economy and the mad dash to hold on to cash, many investors on Wall Street are not going to accept these proposals lightly.

Take for instance the bewildered and beaten down hedge fund industry. Read the rest of this entry »

De Las Mercedes, on October 20th, 2008 at 8:34 pm Said:

I am having a problem with Countrywide/Bank of America allowing me to apply for this program because I have not been delinquent.

I meet all the qualifications outlined by the Hope for Homeowners program; however, the home retention unit states that I am not eligible because I have not been late with payments yet.

I explained my situation and was told that I should try to short sale the property. My answer is I would like to keep the house. Do you have any suggestions??? Need Help???

EAE2MOM, on October 21st, 2008 at 9:10 pm Said:

I am having the EXACT same problem as De LasMercedes is with Countrywide. What do we do? Please help Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt  is upset with uncooperative lenders and mortgage servicers and says he is co-sponsoring a bill to give bankruptcy judges the right modify mortgages for homeowners. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department plan to stabilize banks is a positive step, but the federal government must do more to support individual homeowners, New York Superintendent of Banks Richard Neiman said on Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »

Sheila Bair, Chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Corporation (FDIC) is leading the loan modification charge in Washington and is gaining increasing support from Congress in her efforts.

Bair said in prepared remarks delivered before the Senate Banking Committee that the FDIC is working with the Bush administration to create a loan guarantee program that would serve as an incentive for mortgage servicers to modify home loan. This would be part of the financial rescue plan passed earlier this month gives the U.S. Treasury Department the power to use loan guarantees and credit enhancements to facilitate loan modifications and prevent avoidable foreclosures.

“The FDIC is working closely and creatively with Treasury to realize the potential benefits of this authority,” Bair said. Read the rest of this entry »

In contrast to Barack Obama’s own homeownership plan, John McCain has suggested a plan to involves more direct federal ownership of distressed mortgage assets. McCain’s plan, entitled the McCain American Homeownership Resurgence Plan, seeks to utilize the recently granted Treasury Secretary authority to use federal funds to help adjust mortgage terms for homeowners.

Simply put, the McCain resurgence plan would use funds authorized to the Treasury Secretary to purchase mortgages directly from mortgage providers. The plan would use tax payer money to buy home loans from banks, and would then re-negotiate the terms of those loans and replace them with more manageable, lower interest rate mortgages to ensure families can remain in their homes.

The campaign states that the plan will “eliminate uncertainty over defaults, support the value of mortgage (securities) and (help unfreeze) financial markets.)

Pre-foreclosure fight statement: “Lenders and borrowers alike were caught up in the speculative frenzy that has harmed the housing market. And it is not the responsibility of the American public to spare them from the consequences of their own bad judgment.” — McCain

McCain’s Foreclosure Fight Plan:

• Under the plan, these new home loans would take the form of Federal Housing Administration FHA fixed-rate loans that would be determined in a sliding scale to allow for continued homeownership.
• The McCain campaign estimates the plan would cost roughly $300 billion of the $700 authorized to the Treasury Secretary under the recent economic stabilization bill with the assistance of the Treasury Secretary, the FHA and the government sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

Turn on the TV today, and there’s a pretty good chance you’ll hear the line, “and I approve this message.” 

Yes, we’re in the heat of one of the most competitive Presidential campaigns in modern history, with more advertising spend than any previous election. While it is possible to gleam information from these ads, as well as following cable news, chances are that the candidate’s economic positions are less than clear at this point.

As a result, we wanted to provide you some insight into the candidate’s plans to address the housing market crisis, so you can make more informed political and economic choices going forward. 

Whether you are a homeowner facing foreclosure uncertainty, or you just want to make sure the economy gets turned around as quickly as possible, this is an important election for the future of this country.

As usual, we are advocating for you and are independent on the race itself - we know that our readers make smart, informed choices.

First, we want to take a look at Senator Obama’s economic plan to homeowners. Obama and Biden’s plan aims at both improving the flow of information to potential borrowers, as well as providing tax relief to certain mortgage holders.

Broadly outlined, there are four elements of Obama’s homeowner plan:

I) Give More Options to Homeowners Forced to Declare Bankruptcy

As part of Obama’s plan to assist distressed homowners, the Senator is proposing to allow bankruptcy court judges to adjust mortgage payments for those who are forced to declare personal bankruptcy. This plan aims to allow those who are bankrupt to have some breathing room so that they can work out of their current debt, while maintaining in their home in a modified payment plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Local officials are getting their first whiff of a direct benefit from the federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - and getting a little lightheaded.

Congress buried about $4 billion in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 specifically to assist state and local governments in addressing problems with abandoned or foreclosed homes. But only in recent days have Illinois communities learned they only have a few weeks to show how they will use $119.4 million coming directly to them. If they don’t figure out a plan by Dec. 1, Kane, DuPage, Lake and McHenry counties risk having all the help earmarked for them funnel back to state officials to use for their own foreclosure plans. Read the rest of this entry »

As residential and commercial real-estate markets falter, developers are increasingly turning to bankruptcy to stave off foreclosure on their troubled properties.

In the past, developers often filed for bankruptcy for the entire company, tying up all properties owned by their companies.

Changes to tax law and the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the past decade enable developers to deal with their troubled properties selectively and prevent other properties they own from being affected. Read the rest of this entry »

The Federal Deposit Corporation (FDIC) has a job to do and this job may be the biggest clean up effort by any government or non-government agency ever in the history of our country and quite possibly the world.

Their job is to clean up the toxic mortgages and assets left by failed banking institutions ceased by the the FDIC. The FDIC’s Division of Resolutions and Receiverships, which handles bank failures, already has a large office in Dallas Texas, but is anticipating many more failures and needs to prepare adequately for the avalanche of bank implosions to come.

There have been 15 bank failures since February 2007 following an uneventful two-year stretch. The last time the agency was hit hard with failures was during the 1990-1991 recession, when 502 banks failed in three years. Read the rest of this entry »

“The housing crisis is the fault of predatory lenders, irresponsible buyers and careless Wall Street investors. I’m particularly amazed that people (on Wall Street) who had all these sophisticated models and were trained to analyze all this stuff bought it and distributed these loans around the world,” said HUD chief, Steve Preston, in a town hall forum meeting in Seattle.

Preston took over the Housing and Urban Development agency (HUD) in June after leading the Small Business Administration.

The HUD Chief told the crowd that McCain’s plan “is troubling” and he had “grave concerns” in response to Republican presidential candidates plan to have the government pay the difference between the balances of troubled mortgages and what homes are now worth. Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s the housing market, stupid.” That’s what an increasing number of policymakers and economists are saying as they push for widespread mortgage modifications as a way to address a root cause of the financial crisis. With more than 1.5 million houses in foreclosure (three times the normal rate), and about 3.5 million other homeowners behind on mortgage payments, the idea of rewriting loan terms has broad appeal. As advocates contend, homeowners will keep their houses, and lenders as well as investors in mortgage-related securities will recoup more money than is typically netted in a foreclosure. As a bonus, property prices across the country may stabilize more quickly as fewer foreclosures weigh on the market.

In fact, mortgage lenders are jumping on the bandwagon. There were 79,000 such modifications in August, up 200% from a year ago, according to the industry-backed Hope Now Alliance. Read the rest of this entry »

HSBC Finance Corp. wanted a better mortgage modification mousetrap.At the beginning of the year, nearly a fifth of the Mettawa, Ill., lender’s real estate loan portfolio had been modified after becoming delinquent. Freezes on initial rate resets for another roughly $1.3 billion of adjustable-rate mortgages were due to lapse this year. And a bottom in home prices was still somewhere over the horizon.

In January it launched the Comet program, an enhanced version of its Foreclosure Assistance Program that looks for additional types of risk and helps the unit offer more modifications — in some cases, before the borrower even requests help. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re having difficulty paying your existing home loan in the context of changes in your income or in the market generally, there are a number of options to consider. You should never assume that your only route out is to lose your home - there are a number of possible solutions to help you stay in your home, and move to a more sustainable loan structure.

Ultimately, loan modification plans that can help you to meet gaps in your existing terms are determined by negotiations between you and your lending institution. Most lenders have loan negotiators who work with borrowers to negotiate new terms, or they may decide against re-negotiation in certain cases. Because it is in your lender’s and mortgage servicers best interests to help you stay active on your loan and there is an extreme mortgage crisis, an increasing numbers of lenders are considering loan modification plans on a wholesale basis. Read the rest of this entry »

Barney Frank and Maxine Waters are calling on the FDIC’s Sheila Bair to take the loan workout reins and lead the charge to put the brakes on our nation’s foreclosure epidemic. In a letter to President Bush today, they wrote that they were “very impressed” with Bair’s recent work at the failed Indymac with her loan modification program and and with helping struggling homeowners stay in their homes.

The key to addressing our current economic situation remains avoiding preventable foreclosures and pursuing sustainable loan modifications for troubled borrowers to keep them in their homes,” Barney Frank said. Read the rest of this entry »

She scrambled to renegotiate her loan and got trapped in a red-tape nightmare. The bank would not talk to her because she was not yet late on her payments.

“I ended up renting it out, my income was going down,” Ms. Formariz said. “I tried to hang on to it because I thought I was going to make up for it.”

Eventually, she stopped making payments.

“I tried to modify the loan, contacted the bank several times and each time they would take my information and say they would get back to me and they never did,” said Ms. Formariz, tears welling up. “Towards the end they said there was nothing they could do.” Read the rest of this entry »

“San Diego will become ground zero for mortgage fraud litigation,” a very happy Michael Aguirre, San Diego’s city attorney, said Wednesday.

San Diego, CA— All lawsuits filed across the nation against Countrywide Financial Corporation alleging
predatory lending practices were ordered today to be consolidated and heard in San Diego in the Southern Federal District Court. Lawsuits have been brought by the San Diego City Attorney’s Office, and Attorneys General of California, Florida, West Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois and Indiana.

The decision was announced today by the Federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) after a September 25, 2008 hearing in Boston to determine the appropriate venue for the Countrywide litigation. Read the rest of this entry »

Here on LoanWorkout.org, I have been writing about the American Nightmare and the resistance homeowners recieve from their mortgage servicers when reaching out for help. And until this “serious issue” in our mortgage and housing crisis is addressed and these mortgage servicers are held accountable, Main Street and plumber Joe will continue to drown in foreclosures.

Our country’s consumers were victimized coming into their homes via predatory lending and toxic mortgages. Now, they are being screwed as they leave and or get foreclosed on via predatory servicing.

Welcome to the American Nightmare!

Chicago Times:

Bottom line: The government and the political candidates can announce all the grandiose mortgage restructuring plans they can dream up. But in real life, it’s almost impossible for people caught in this trap to get out. Those mortgages aren’t sitting in the bank’s vault. They’ve been packaged, and sold, and some have even been sliced into pieces. (See story, next page.) Getting all those owners of the mortgage to agree to restructure the loan is more difficult than it was getting Congress to agree on a bailout plan. Only this delay will be even more costly to our finances, and our society. And that’s The Savage Truth. Read the rest of this entry »

HUD has released their Hope for Homeowners (H4H) approved lender list that you can access below.

HUD, “When contacting any of the HOPE for Homeowners lenders on the list, borrowers “are strongly encouraged to contact your servicing lender and any subordinate lien holders since their participation is vital for you to refinance into a HOPE for Homeowners mortgage.”

Click here to get the lender list directly from HUD.

Please feel free to report back your experiences with the Hope for Homeowners program or any of the lenders on this list here on LoanWorkout.org or visit our online homeowners forum at www.LoanSafe.org.

There is an open comment form below for you to let your voice be heard.

Good luck and keep up the good fight!

The Hope for Homeowers (H4H) program has been launched and as I have mentioned before here on LoanWorkout, I am very apprehensive as to what this will do for struggling homeowners on Main Street. The reason I am looking at the H4H so pessimistically is because it still leaves lender and mortgage servicer participation in the “voluntary” category and as most consumer advocates and homeowners will tell you, this is akin to beating your head against a steel wall.

Will homeowners finally get hope or is this just another foreclosure flop like the FHA Secure or Project LifeLine? Is the H4H the real deal or will Washington continue to tie the noose even tighter around homeowners necks as they approach the foreclosure gallows?

From HUD:

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 amends the National Housing Act to authorize a new temporary FHA mortgage insurance program called the Hope for Homeowners (H4H) Program. Under this Program, certain borrowers facing difficulty in paying their mortgages will be eligible to refinance into affordable FHA-insured mortgages. The H4H Program effective for endorsements on or after October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2011. Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barbara Boxer on Friday pressed for action from 21 banks and lenders that an advocacy group has accused of insufficient support for at-risk homeowners in California.

Boxer, D-Calif., sent letters to executives at the mortgage servicers urging them to participate in a federal program called Hope for Homeowners that provides financial backing to lenders who agree to renegotiate mortgages. Read the rest of this entry »

 More must be done, say loan modification specialists IBD spoke with.

Overloaded With Loans

“Really, we have a national catastrophe,” said Moe Bedard, president of Loan Safe Solutions, a mortgage-auditing firm in Corona, Calif.

Hard-hit by foreclosures, California is seeing a rise in efforts to help homeowners, but also a backlog. In July, the latest month for which data are available, 12,657 loans were modified, California Department of Read the rest of this entry »

FoxBusiness - Let me begin with the FDIC Chair Sheila Bair who is featured on the cover of today’s Wall Street Journal criticizing the federal government’s plan for failing to address homeowners at risk of foreclosure. Her comments could not be better timed. Thankfully someone within the economic team is saying what certain members of Congress and the American taxpayer were saying almost two weeks ago when they heard about the language of this rescue plan. If the route of the problem is housing, why isn’t it addressed in this plan?

Read more & watch the video from FoxBusiness

TRENTON (AP) ― Gov. Jon S. Corzine laid out a sweeping financial rescue plan for New Jersey on Thursday that includes immediate assistance for homeowners facing foreclosure, tax breaks for businesses, and plans to create jobs by jump-starting highway and school construction projects.

Corzine, the one-time head of the global investment firm of Goldman Sachs and now an economic spokesman for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, called a rare joint session of the Legislature to outline a multifaceted proposal to stimulate New Jersey’s economy and help residents and businesses through the national recession.

Read the rest of this entry »

TIME Magazine - All told, some 6.5 million families will lose their homes to foreclosure in the next few years, according to the projections of financial firm Credit Suisse.

Even so, the troubled U.S. homeowner is not among the priorities of those in Washington who are dishing out rescue funds. The Treasury Department plans to spend $250 billion of the $700 billion rescue package approved by Congress earlier this month on capitalizing banks. To the back burner went Treasury’s original plan to buy up distressed mortgage bonds, and along with it the idea that such purchases could be used to pressure banks into giving better loan deals to homeowners facing foreclosure. Read the rest of this entry »

As I have reported here on LoanWorkout.org many times before, the FDIC’s Chairwoman, Sheila Bair, seems to be the only ”caring soul” in Washington that seems to have a true “grasp” of the mortgage and housing realities (nightmares) here on Main Street. 

Over the past year I have reported and complained that these bailouts, bills and so called initiatives have done little if anything to “truly” assist struggling homeowners. It is painfully obvious that from the $700 billion tax payer bogus bailout to the $25 billion government gift to Bear Stearns, Wall Street continues to get golden parachutes and carrots and all the while, American consumers are up foreclosure creek without a paddle. Read the rest of this entry »

By Moe Bedard (Filed Under Stop Foreclosures Effectively)

This is the question of the day floating throughout the legal blog sphere and I wanted to elaborate on this subject that we have covered extensively here “first” on LoanWorkout.org in the past.

In federal court, written proof of who holds the mortgage must be presented at the time the foreclosure is filed. In county common pleas courts, proof must be presented before a judgment is issued.

Our past “missing note” and “illegal foreclosure proceedings” blog posts focused in the great State of Ohio and the honorable Federal Court Judges, Boyko, Rose and O’Malley decisions that sent shock waves throughout online legal communities everywhere. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Kielsel, an attorney and fellow blogger in Los Angeles, Ca. is reporting that the the FDIC is giving Indymac borrowers who have negative ammortization mortgages AKA Pay Option ARM’s till Friday October 24th to seek a loan modification or to take legal action against Indymac. Read the rest of this entry »

The FDIC Board of Directors today adopted an interim final rule, effective immediately, to simplify the deposit insurance rules for accounts held at FDIC-insured institutions by mortgage servicers.

Under the FDIC’s current rules, accounts maintained by a mortgage servicer comprised of principal and interest payments made by borrowers are insured based on the ownership interest of each lender (or investor) in those accounts. Over the past several years, securitization methods and vehicles Read the rest of this entry »

By Moe Bedard

If you find yourself in a difficult real estate situation where your home and loan is underwater, don’t fret, a short sale might just be the answer to help cure your mortgage woes.

In today’s market,it is imperative that you take a step back from all of the noise to reflect upon your situation.

At each point in your financial history, you made the decision that you believed would best help you realize your goals. Because nobody has perfect foresight into our future income, or the property market generally, it is only natural to come to re-evaluate your current debt situation. One option for home owners are short sale negotiations, which may allow you to sell your home to satisfy the existing loan. Read the rest of this entry »

After she was laid off two years ago, Rosemarie Cino tried talking to her mortgage lender when she fell $8,000 behind on her mortgage despite her jobs walking dogs, cleaning swimming pools and driving for Federal Express.

“They didn’t even want to talk to me,” said the Islip resident, who has two dogs. “They were like, ‘Pay or we’re taking your house.’ They asked about what I spend on food. When I said I had to buy dog food, they suggested I get rid of my dogs.” Read the rest of this entry »

In an op-ed piece in the Chicago Sun-Times explaining his decision, Sheriff Tom Dart said that “too many times,” his deputies have arrived at foreclosed properties to find tenants who have indeed paid their rent. But the property owner hadn’t paid the mortgage, leading banks to foreclose on the property.

LoanWorkout.org has covered the new scam called “predatory renting” over the last year and it is finally getting more media attention. This has been going on all year and I should know, my landlord is being foreclosed on by Washington Mutual and it wasn’t until I confronted her (after weeks of dodged calls) that she admitted it. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking back over the last year, I can’t help but notice the ridiculous amount of clever names used by our government and other consumer advocates in relation to homeowner foreclosure assistance and relief.

The latest Hope for Homeowners program has met little fan fare on this blog because quite frankly, I feel it is just the same ole BS help that makes it only voluntary for lenders and servicers to cooperate and help struggling homeowners.

From the HUD website:

Voluntary Lender Participation

FHA will continue to offer lenders an alternative to foreclosing on borrowers. Similar to FHA Secure’s recent expansion, lenders will be encouraged to write-down the outstanding mortgage principal balances to 90 percent of the new value of the property. In many cases, reductions in principle will cost lenders less than the losses associated with foreclosure.

The success the success of Hope for Homeowners and the others to come before it depends on the lenders willingness and mortgage servicer cooperation to take 10 percent less than the appraised value of a home. Read the rest of this entry »

Mortgage industry milking homeowners before foreclosure, critics say

“I have had people in the [servicing] industry tell me that their best customer is the one who is always 30 days late,” said Howard Glaser, a former official at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the president of the Washington, D.C.-based Glaser Group, a mortgage industry consulting firm.

“If you can keep the borrower on the hook and paying late fees, that is where the profit is in servicing,” Glaser said. “Otherwise, if everybody is paying on time, there isn’t a tremendous amount of profit.

Moe Bedard, president of Loan Safe Solutions, a California-based mortgage auditing and loan processing firm, said there is so much money to be made on delinquent loans that servicers are willing to risk that they will lose servicing fees on the percentage of homes that do go into foreclosure. Read the rest of this entry »

In a move to follow in the footsteps of the recent Bank of America $8.4 billion predatory lending settlement, the State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group is adding pressure and much needed media attention on the mortgage servicing crisis.

In a letter signed by Iowa Attorney General Thomas Miller on behalf of the State Foreclosure Prevention Working Group and officials in Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, the group is calling for a nationwide loan modification program and threatening litigation if mortgage servicers do not cooperate. Read the rest of this entry »

HUD will assess civil money penalties against uncooperative mortgage servicers for failure to engage in loss mitigation with struggling homeowners. The letter does not specify the damages a servicer would incur. However, this is a step in the right direction and I applaud HUD for making a move to hold servicers “somewhat” accountable.

TO: ALL HUD-APPROVED MORTGAGEES 

SUBJECT:   

The purpose of this Mortgagee Letter is to provide information regarding the Civil Money Penalty that will result in Treble Damages for a mortgagee’s failure to engage in loss mitigation.

Treble Damages may be assessed when a mortgagee fails to engage in loss mitigation.  On April 26, 2005, the Department published a final rule, “Treble Damages for Failure to Engage in Loss Mitigation”, Read the rest of this entry »

Supreme Court Denies Petition for Writ Of Certiorari of Couple Seeking Return of their Home taken under the Color of Law as the Trial Court lacked jurisdiction to Render Judgment as a Matter of Law.

Cleveland, OH, October 6, 2008- The US Supreme Court announced on October 6, 2008, that it denied the Davet’s Petition for Certiorari.

The Davets’ unrelenting and determined challenge as pro se litigants to stop the unlawful foreclosure of their home began in 1996 and has been widely reported in the national press for their willingness to pursue their claims.

See, e.g., Amir Efrati, The Courthouse: How One Family Fought Foreclosure, WALL STREET JOURNAL (12/28/07) at page A-1:

Mr. Davets’ case is believed to be the longest residential foreclosure of its kind in the history of Cuyahoga County, which is at the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis currently enveloping Ohio and many other parts of the country. Read the rest of this entry »

Forbes magazine just came out with an article titled, “America’s Luxury Foreclosure Capitals” and California had a disturbing 24 of the top 25 troubled luxury foreclosure spots and nine of them were in Orange County (The OC) with the City of Laguna Niguel topping the list.

This sector of our foreclosure crisis will grow considerably in 2009. Especially once well to do Californians run out of time on their negative amortization mortgages that are ticking time loan bombs.

Forbes:

Just because a neighborhood is full of swimming pools and luxury cars doesn’t mean the guy around the corner is making his mortgage payments.

Hell, I bet 75% of these mortgages made in these zip codes were some type of Alt-A or subprime hybrid product. It wouldn’t be hard to find quite a few Southern California ex-mortgage professionals that will testify to the fact that many of these homes and condos were bought and refinanced with negative amortization loans, AKA Read the rest of this entry »

“Today, I’m announcing the biggest loan modification in American history,” California Attorney General Jerry Brown said at a press conference Monday morning. “Bank of America settled because their new entity, Countrywide, was guilty of massive irregularities.”

Thanks to the California Attorney General and 10 others states AG’s massive $8.4 million settlement, Bank of America has now become the new poster child for predatory lending and deceptive mortgage practices. A title once held by the lending giant of the sea, Countrywide Home Loans.

When you gobble up a massive portfolio of predatory loans and then merge with the biggest predator, you become the biggest predator. There is no degree of separation between the two because they are one.

Countrywide Financial and all its toxic glory is now Bank of America. Read the rest of this entry »

“Countrywide’s greed turned the American dream into a nightmare for thousands of Californians who now face foreclosure,” said state Attorney General Jerry Brown, who led the negotiations for the states with Lisa Madigan, th