From the monthly archives:

November 2009

Senate Blocks Credit Card Interest Rate Freeze Bill

by Moe Bedard

The bankers win, yet again. What, did you think otherwise? Stop, you silly little screwed consumer. No one is in Washington lobbying for your little a$$. So what the hell did you expect to happen? Real help, credit relief and regulation? LOL….  Take your debt medicine and learn your banking history lessons!
I am not saying this stuff [...]

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Homeowners in Their 20’s More Likely to Bail on Underwater Mortgages

by Moe Bedard

“Why would I keep paying on a $250,000 loan?” he asked. “I would not ever buy a house again.” (We tried to follow up with this guy, but his number had been disconnected.)
Statistics don’t exist because no one declares their reasons for walking away, but a handful of papers have suggested that there’s something to [...]

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New Jersey Sees 14.5% Increase in Foreclosures

by Moe Bedard

That means that almost one of every seven mortgages in the state was in trouble. The nationwide percentage of delinquent or foreclosed mortgages was a record 14.4 percent, up from 10 percent a year earlier.
The rise in unemployment is the main driver behind the rise in foreclosures, according to Jay Brinkmann, the mortgage bankers’ chief [...]

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1 in 7 US Home Loans in Foreclosure or Delinquent

by Moe Bedard

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A record one in seven U.S. mortgages were in foreclosure or at least one payment past due in the third quarter, according to fresh data signaling the recovery in the housing market will be tepid at best.
U.S. mortgage delinquency rates and the percentage of loans that entered the foreclosure process also [...]

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Foreclosures Will Rise Through 2010

by Moe Bedard

Home foreclosures are likely to keep climbing through all of next year despite stabilizing housing prices in some areas, a major lender group said Thursday as it reported that the level of delinquencies and repossessed homes had jumped to a record.
One in seven U.S. home loans was past due or in foreclosure as of Sept. [...]

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Many Americans in Home Loan Limbo

by Moe Bedard

The number of Americans in mortgage limbo keeps growing.
These are the people who are far behind on their payments but are still waiting for their loan servicer to start the foreclosure process. LPS Applied Analytics, a research firm in Denver, reported that 3.4% of U.S. households with mortgages – or around 1.9 million –  are [...]

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Why Loan Modifications Take So Long and What to Do

by Moe Bedard

Q: I went under contract to buy a house six months ago. This is a short sale, and I understand that multiple lenders are involved. But I have been more than patient. What can I do?
I can’t seem to get anyone to listen to me. Don’t the banks want this to work out?
A: I’m sure [...]

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Few Getting Loan Modifications

by Moe Bedard

Only a tiny percentage of troubled homeowners have received permanent modifications under President Obama’s foreclosure prevention plan, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the $75 billion effort.
Fewer than 5% of the trial modifications on loans owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac were converted to long-term adjustments as of Sept. 30, according to the mortgage finance [...]

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Ohio Among States Least Helped By Fed Foreclosure Plan

by Moe Bedard

A new study shows that Ohio is one of the states least helped by President Barack Obama’s plan to help borrowers in trouble. It’s a distinction the state can hardly afford. Ohio has long been one of the worst hit states in the country’s foreclosure crisis. ideastream®’s Mhari Saito reports.
According to the US Treasury, just [...]

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Life After Foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

Van Zalingen said renting might be a smarter choice for some current homeowners.
“Foreclosure isn’t the end of the world. If your payment is unaffordable and your house is worth a lot less than what you owe the bank, consider renting an apartment for less and walking away. You can use that extra money to take [...]

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Greenleaf Legal Services: DRE says they’re operating illegally and they need to be stopped

by Moe Bedard

Authorities said Greenleaf’s website falsely advertises it’s “approved” by the Department of Real Estate.
“They’re not approved to do loan modifications,” said Commissioner Jeff Davi of the Department of Real Estate. “It’s false, misleading and completely inaccurate. And we are going to ensure that it gets off his website as soon as possible.” 
Greenleaf never registered with [...]

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Steve Dilbert & MFI Miami: In regards to you placing blame on homeowners

by Moe Bedard

Here is an open email discussion with MFI Miami and Steve Dilbert forwarded to me by a very concerned consumer advocate. Her name is Krista Railey and I came to know her when I started writing about Green Credit Solutions. She began sending me emails and we exchanged information about the various scams we know about.
She [...]

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MFI Miami: Are Steve Dilbert & Green Credit Solutions Partners in Loan Modification Crime?

by Moe Bedard

Are MFI-Miami and  Steve Dilbert really a front for illegal loan modification scams?
For years I have volunteered and offered free foreclosure prevention and loan modification information on and off the internet. In doing so I have had many mortgage copy cats, critics and internet haters. Some of these very same people have made it a business to go [...]

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Florida Attorney General Sends Big Banks a Message

by Moe Bedard

TALLAHASSEE, FL – Attorney General McCollum today sent a letter to the Florida executives of Bank of America, JP Morgan/Chase, Wells Fargo and Wachovia, calling upon the bank executives to provide homeowners with a fair and efficient loan modification process. The Attorney General also requested the executives meet with him to discuss the banks’ responsibility [...]

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Florida Residents Fleeing the State for Greener Pastures

by Moe Bedard

“Florida’s population is shrinking — a disturbing trend for a state that has built its economy, and structured its state budget, on the assumption that throngs of new residents will move to its sunny shores each year,”
Later this month, Rick and Connie Desrochers will join a migration out of Florida that began before the housing [...]

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Counseling Helps Homeowners Avoid Foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

Troubled homeowners who receive housing counseling are 60 percent more likely to avoid foreclosure and have their mortgage payments lowered significantly than borrowers who navigate the process themselves, according to a study to be released Wednesday.
The study, by the D.C.-based Urban Institute, examines the effectiveness of the government-funded National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling program, established in [...]

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FTC Rules Against Michigan Realtors

by Moe Bedard

Realcomp, a National Association of Realtors (NAR) affiliate, failed to release discount real estate listings to its own and other public Web sites and made these listings unavailable on default searches from their database. By restricting access to these listings, the FTC said the company narrowed consumer choice and harmed competition. Realcomp is now required [...]

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FBI Addresses Homeowner Foreclosure Theft

by Moe Bedard

The FBI- Foreclosure theft, as well as mortgage fraud, have become growing problems since the collapse of financial markets last year.
Newburg addressed a crowd of about 60 people, mostly real estate agents, at Tuesday’s presentation. The FBI’s Detroit office handles large-scale mortgage- and foreclosure-related complaints through a hot line.
He said there’s no one set way [...]

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Government Foreclosure Plan Causing Much Confusion

by Moe Bedard

For help she turned to “Making Home Affordable,” or MHA, the Obama administration’s program to help homeowners facing financial hardship, refinance their mortgages and avoid foreclosure.
For the Shrauners, it sounded like the perfect solution: a chance to cut their payments and keep their home.
But it wasn’t that easy. They would soon find that confusion over [...]

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New York Goes to Bat for Struggling Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

The state Legislature has passed a bill that
will give New York state homeowners and renters more protection during foreclosures.
It will expand the mandatory 90-day pre-foreclosure notice to all types of home loans — not just subprime mortgages — so all homeowners are given information and time to take action.
Gov. David Paterson introduced the bill. It [...]

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Philadelphia Knows How to Protect Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

In most American cities, that probably would have been the end of the story: another home turned into distressed bank inventory by the national foreclosure crisis. But in Philadelphia, under a program begun last year to try to keep people in their homes, Mr. Hall entered the courtroom with a reasonable chance of hanging on.
Under [...]

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Homeowner: NACA is really not the organization I thought they were

by Moe Bedard

NACA Member & Struggling Homeowner: “NACA will not return my calls, respond to my e-mails and when I go by the office they will not see me. The employees are so unprofessional. They actual sit there and talk to the people like they are kids.”
This is another unsolicited complaint about a non-profit called the Neighborhood [...]

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Main Street to Wall Street: “We want these swine prosecuted!”

by Moe Bedard

Bloomberg - 
Today, he is disgusted when he thinks about “what Wall Street has done to average, honest, tax-paying, no-loopholes citizens,” and says it makes him ill when he considers that Congress is letting taxpayer-assisted financial outfits get rich “without producing anything of real value to our society.”
Haugaard, one of dozens of readers who e-mailed me [...]

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Will FHA Make it Through “This” Depression?

by Moe Bedard

That hasn’t come without cost. As the FHA filled the void left by the private sector, it has assumed the risks of those loans. And now that a growing number of people have stopped paying their mortgages, the FHA has had to pay out more in claims that it forecast. The agency has just $3.6 [...]

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Loan Modification Scammer Receives 12 Years in Prison

by Moe Bedard

This has to be the longest prison sentence that I have seen for scamming homeowners and scammers really should take notice.
You know the old saying, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime?” For some reason I just do not think that these little creepy mortgage and real estate scammers do not analyse their crimes deep [...]

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Barney Frank Going to Bat for Unemployed Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

“These are people who are very responsible, very thoughtful. They got a home, it’s above water, they’ve got equity, but they’re unemployed, and you can’t afford mortgage payments on unemployment,” said Frank, D-Mass.
Rep. Barney Frank said Monday he is pushing a proposal to use some of the interest the government collects from the financial industry [...]

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Foreclosures Hitting Blacks and Hispanics Hard

by Moe Bedard

Black and Latinos are at a disproportionate risk in the ongoing foreclosure crisis because they are more likely than whites to have higher-cost mortgage loans and face higher unemployment rates, a report says.
The report from the William C. Velasquez Institute called on the federal government to take steps, including reforming bankruptcy laws and expanding eligibility [...]

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Colorado State Investigating Loan Modification Firms

by Moe Bedard

Division of Real Estate investigators are looking into how loan modification companies charge clients. Charging up front for services that haven’t been rendered is against state law.
“We have dozens of investigations going on right now into loan modification companies for the very same issues that are presenting to this family,” Urban told CBS4.
They also warn [...]

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Nevada Loan Modification Company Files Suit Against Law Makers

by Moe Bedard

A law firm active in Henderson and Las Vegas is suing the state over rules requiring licensing of non-attorney employees working on mortgage loan modifications.
Cogburn Law Offices LLC filed suit last week in Clark County District Court against the Department of Business and Industry, Division of Mortgage Lending.
Court records indicate the law firm won a [...]

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Underwater Homeowners Should Bail in Rental Life Rafts

by Moe Bedard

Homeowners who are significantly underwater with their mortgages should consider walking away from those, according to Brent T. White, an associate professor at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law.
In a paper titled titled “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis,” White writes most [...]

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Can a lawyer “really” help you with a loan modification?

by Moe Bedard

Should homeowners who want to obtain a loan modification from their lender hire an attorney to help them achieve that goal? Attorneys say their services can be helpful, but lenders counter that such services are an unnecessary expenditure of money that would be better applied to overdue mortgage payments.
“Lawyers can be and have been very [...]

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“I’d love to say there is an end in sight, but the end is not near.”

by Moe Bedard

“People are desperately out of work and in danger of losing their homes,” said state Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora. “I’d love to say there is an end in sight, but the end is not near.”
“You can never catch up,” she said. “I’ve been trying to work something out with the mortgage company and they are [...]

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Commercial Real Estate Blood Bath to Begin

by Moe Bedard

Commercial real estate — including shopping centers, office buildings and industrial property — will hit a low point in 2010 not seen since the Great Depression, according to a national survey of real estate executives.
Values and rents will plunge, and vacancies and defaults will soar across all types of commercial property before the market rebounds [...]

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22% Increase in California Foreclosures for October

by Moe Bedard

Foreclosure repossessions in California increased 22.24% from September to October, according to data released by ForeclosureRadar.com.
Last month’s foreclosures increased 20.95% from October 2008. October’s foreclosures were 42.56% below California’s peak month of July 2008, but since then, the inventory of real estate owned (REO) properties has grown 131.36% in California.
“While we continue to see a [...]

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The Faces of Loan Modification

by Moe Bedard

“This went on for months,” she said. “I would return their calls saying I was undergoing a mod. They would say they didn’t know anything about it and to call their loss mitigation department. I would call loss mitigation and they would say that yes, my records showed I was under the three-month period and [...]

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Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure May be the Way Out

by Moe Bedard

In order to be eligible for a D4L, or Deed for Lease, you must go through a DIL, short for a deed in lieu of foreclosure.
These terms become relevant when your house is underwater — the market value is less than what you owe. You have attempted to sell your home without success, and your [...]

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Actor Nicolas Cage Loses 2 Homes to Foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

Even Academy Award winners are suffering from financial woes this recession. Actor Nicolas Cage lost two homes in New Orleans worth a total of $6.8 million in a foreclosure auction Thursday.
Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions Bank purchased Cage’s 1140 Royal Street property in the French Quarter appraised at $3.5 million for $2.3 million. The bank, which has [...]

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No Mortgage Help for the Unemployed

by Moe Bedard

There’s no help out there for people who are out of work and are just trying to hold on to their homes,” said John Schmitz, 62, of Thornwood, who has been unemployed from the world of finance for almost a year and has nearly exhausted his pension to keep current on his mortgage. “It’s so [...]

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California Banks Began to Implode

by Moe Bedard

Rod Brown, president of the California Bankers Association, said that despite this novel and helpful move, more bank failures probably lie ahead.
“At best we are only halfway through this thing,” he said.
Anderson said his firm has a ranking system that considers 29 out of California’s 297 banks in danger of failure over the next year. [...]

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Does FHA need a bailout?

by Moe Bedard

WASHINGTON – The Federal Housing Administration, which propped up the collapsing housing market last year, acknowledged yesterday that it has drained its cash reserves to dangerously low levels, heightening concerns that it might need a taxpayer bailout.
The agency, which guarantees loans for many first-time homebuyers, could be hit if housing prices lose ground or if [...]

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Monitored Mortgage Workout (MMW) Program Introduced in California

by Moe Bedard

State Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, wants to allow homeowners who have been served a notice of default to enlist the help of a state-appointed monitor to negotiate lenders with the goal of lowering monthly payments.
The mortgage mediation bill, CA AB 1588 titled the “Monitored Mortgage Workout (MMW) Program” would mandate mediation between borrowers and [...]

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Mass. Attorney General & American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. Reach an Agreement

by Moe Bedard

Attorney General Coakley’s Office Reaches Affordable Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention Agreement with Mortgage Servicer
Purchaser Will Provide Affordable Loan Modifications to 8,000 borrowers
BOSTON – Today, Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office announced that it has entered into an agreement with Texas-based American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. (“AHMSI”) that will provide significant benefits to approximately 8,200 Massachusetts [...]

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Are honest loan modification companies being unfairly targeted?

by Moe Bedard

Earlier this year, legislation was passed creating strict regulations for loan modification companies in Nevada. The hope was that the new rules would weed out the companies which have been scamming homeowners.  
But are the rules penalizing honest companies?     
News 3’s Dan Ball spoke with a loan modification company owner who says he’s been trying to follow [...]

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K.N.C. Financiera Inc.: California DRE Files Cease and Desist

by Moe Bedard

The California Department of Real Estate has issued an order to “desist and refrain” to the operators of K.N.C. Financiera Inc., a Bakersfield company that was marketing loan modification services even though its leaders did not have real estate licenses, according to the state.
The two principals of the company “at no time” have been licensed [...]

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Trial Modifications Are Criminal

by Moe Bedard

The Obama administration is busy touting the burgeoning success of its mortgage modification program. Unfortunately, it’s a farce: Out of one side of his mouth, the President touts a dedication to the besieged middle class, while from the other, lauds a loan modification program which steals money from struggling homeowners in favor of banks –  [...]

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