June 2010

In an effort to put a clamp on rising home foreclosures in Illinois, a workshop will offer guidance to financially struggling homeowners worried about making a mortgage payment or have recently fallen behind on their mortgage payments. “The sooner you [...]

Unlike the dizzying solutions usually offered to homeowners facing foreclosure, a new program starting this month is sanctioned by the state courts and will cost homeowners nothing. The program will reach out to troubled homeowners in Sarasota and Manatee counties, [...]

Problems plague the Home Affordable Modification Program, centerpiece of the nation’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention effort. Shortly after Michael and Elisha VanHorn moved to Matthews from New York in 2007, he began struggling to breathe. By last May, he could [...]

Charles and Roberta Ferraris are trying to do the right thing — to pay their debts and meet their obligations like they were taught by their parents. Money’s been tight since Charles got laid off from his casino job and [...]

Two local businessmen will have to pay more than $3 million for defrauding a disabled woman out of her home in a so-called “foreclosure rescue scam,” the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled.

FRESNO, Calif. — A generation ago, a house was more than a house. It was part of the “American dream.” And foreclosure was a horrifying but unlikely prospect for families who plunked down their savings and took out mortgages to [...]

OAKLAND, Calif. – Legislation that would help prevent avoidable foreclosures and deter irresponsible lender and servicer behavior passed out of the California Senate today, 21-12. “Simple fairness dictates that no one should lose their home while they are in the [...]

San Francisco, June 02, 2010 — Continuing its effort to protect the public from lawyers who take advantage of distressed homeowners, the State Bar prosecutor’s office has secured orders of involuntary inactive enrollment for Southern California attorneys Eric Douglas Johnson [...]

A Brookline, MA. attorney, who was the focus of a 2006 I-Team investigation, has been convicted in a mortgage scheme. Kathy Curran has more. Wathc the video: http://news.yahoo.com/video/bostonwbz-15750588/i-team-attorney-convicted-in-mortgage-fraud-scheme-20136681

A federal grand jury indicted Jim McConville last month for mail and wire fraud. Property records show that his real estate scheme may have earned him more than $10 million. McConville is still on the run from the FBI, but [...]

In the next few weeks, Arizonans who have fallen far behind on house payments will have more access to an effective means of avoiding foreclosure. Principal forgiveness is an often-requested but seldom-approved method of reducing the mortgage—and monthly payments—so struggling [...]

Issues to be discussed will include how to avoid and fight foreclosure, the loan modification process, debt management and crisis budgeting. Counselors will also be available during the event for individual consultation.

As families across the country try to weather our current financial storm, some are being scammed out of money and even their homes. This increasing trend is known as loan modification scams and anyone with a mortgage can become a [...]

NEW YORK (CBS) ―  The “short sale” is one option that is gaining a lot of momentum among buyers and sellers. For homeowners who can no longer pay their mortgage, there is an alternative to bankruptcy and foreclosure. The “short [...]

The Deputy Attorney General Abby Kuzma will be at the WorkOne Center in Vincennes on Thursday, June 3 to hold a free mortgage foreclosure prevention workshop that is open to the public.

High school teacher Deanna Deneen thought she and her husband Jeff would retire and grow old in the two-story colonial house they bought on Bashford Manor Lane in 2003. Now she calls the house “the albatross that hangs around my [...]

REDWOOD CITY, CA (KGO) — A Redwood City homeowner is thankful to have a home. She contacted 7 On Your Side just weeks before her house was scheduled to be auctioned, and the foreclosure that’s been averted.

Never forget the physicists: For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. As the housing market blew up, millions of homeowners fell into foreclosure, and homeownership rates sank to the lowest level in a decade, you might have thought [...]

It’s hard not to be both amused and angry after reading this story by David Streitfeld in yesterday’s New York Times about homeowners who are intentionally not paying their mortgages but are not facing foreclosure because…well…their mortgage servicer isn’t foreclosing [...]

More than 68,000 trial mortgage modifications through the U.S. Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program became permanent in April, an increase of 13 percent from March when about 60,000 converted, reported Hope Now, a private alliance of mortgage servicers, investors, mortgage [...]

As mortgage delinquencies and home foreclosures continue to rise, SPEA Professor Ashlyn Nelson talks about the growing public concern that federal government interventions may not have been enough–and the end of the crisis is nowhere in sight. Bailing Out Underwater [...]

If you can’t afford to make your mortgage payment because you’ve lost your job, or it has ballooned beyond what you can afford, then foreclosure might be your only option. That’s understandable. Although some people might complain that such borrowers [...]

Homeowners behind in their mortgage payments because of a mountain of medical debt may be among those eligible for some relief under a new Cook County program.

The chief executive of Moody’s Corp. says his company’s inaccurate ratings of mortgage-related investments were “deeply disappointing” but investors shouldn’t rely on ratings to buy or sell securities.

A proposed California law, SB1275, seeks to prevent similar situations by requiring lenders to give a decision on loan modifications before starting foreclosure proceedings.