From the monthly archives:

October 2008

JPMorgan Chase Announces $110 Billion Loan Modification Program

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Missing Mortgage Notes and Deceptive Mortgage Servicing: Wall Street Shell Game 101

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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NACA Shines Media Spotlight on Fannie Mae Foreclosure Follies

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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FDIC and US Treasury Prepare $500 Billion Loan Modification Plan

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Principle Reductions: Wipe Out Your 2nd Mortgage With Bankruptcy

by Moe Bedard

Millions of American homeowners are now upside-down on their home mortgage 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 [...]

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California Faith Groups Fight Banks on Foreclosures

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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America Underwater: Growing Number of Homeowners “Upside Down” on Mortgages

by Moe Bedard

With falling housing prices in nearly every market, the questions that homeowners are asking have shifted. Instead of asking “what is my home worth?” they are now asking “Is my home worth it?”
These problems are affecting the entire country, with nearly 1 in 6 homeowners owing more than their home is worth. For homeowners who [...]

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Let’s Use Fannie to Clean Up the Mess It Made

by Moe Bedard

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

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The Woman Who May Lead the US Out of the Mortgage and Housing Crisis

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Still waiting on Main Street

by Moe Bedard

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.

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Wall Street Hedge Funds Vs. Homeowners & Barney Frank

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Hedge Funds Balking at Loan Workouts

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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No Hope for These Homeowners Part 1

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Loansafe.org TV

by Moe Bedard
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U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt is Co-sponsoring Bill to Give Bankruptcy Judges the Right to Modify Mortgages

by Moe Bedard

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.

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N.Y. regulator urges more support for homeowners

by Moe Bedard

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.

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FDIC Chairwoman Says Loan Modification Plan Being Developed

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Foreclosure Fighter McCain Says, “Buy Home Loans From Banks and Re-negotiate the Terms to Keep Families in Their Homes.”

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Foreclosure Fighter Obama Says, “Allow Bankruptcy Court Judges to Modify Mortgage Payments”

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Unexpected foreclosure help causing unexpected headaches

by Moe Bedard

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. [...]

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Developers use new laws to stave off foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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FDIC to Sign Major Lease in Orange County

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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HUD Chief Questions McCain’s Bold Mortgage Plan

by Moe Bedard

“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 [...]

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Key to the Crisis: It’s the Housing Market, Stupid

by Moe Bedard

“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 [...]

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Why Wait? HSBC is Modifying Some Loans Before Clients Ask

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Improving Terms on your Debt: Recent Loan Modification Programs

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Frank and Waters Call For FDIC’s Bair to Lead Country’s Loan Workout Efforts

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Broken Big Time

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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7 lawsuits against mortgage lender Countrywide to the Southern District of California

by Moe Bedard

“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 [...]

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Trapped in American nightmare

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Hope for Homeowners List of Lenders

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Hope for Homeowners: Will it Help You?

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Calif.’s Boxer urges more help from mortgage firms

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Home-Loan Help Lags, As More Borrowing Goes Bad

by Moe Bedard

 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 [...]

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Bair, “Permanently modify it, get people in a mortgage they can afford.”

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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NJ Gov. Corzine Wants Foreclosure Mediation

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Homeowners Ask: Hey, Washington, a Little Help?

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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FDIC’s Sheila Bair Criticizes the Federal Government for Failing to Protect Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Does Your Lender Have the Right to Foreclose on You?

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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FDIC Gives Indymac Pay Option ARM Borrowers Till Next Friday to Seek Mortgage Relief

by Moe Bedard

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.

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FDIC Simplifies Coverage Rules for Mortgage Servicing Accounts

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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Real Estate Short Sales the Right Way with Loan Safe

by Moe Bedard

By Moe Bedard
If you find yourself in a difficult real estate situation where your home and loan is upside-down, 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 [...]

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Local foreclosure SOS being heard

by Moe Bedard

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, [...]

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Cook County Sheriff Takes Stand Against Predatory Renting

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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The Year of Foreclosure Prevention Flops

by Moe Bedard

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 [...]

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