July 2010

As the real estate market tries to find a bottom, a new reality is setting in — similar properties will sell at different prices depending on how they’re sold.

An Illinois man facing foreclosure and repossession of his vehicle attempted to blow up a bank in southwest suburban Lockport Friday.

ATLANTA – It’s time to turn the table on landlords. They do background checks on you. We’d recommend you do background checks on them. Why? You could find yourself kicked to the curb after signing a lease. Shanitra Jones learned [...]

2010 has been a stressful year for the Petrowiak family of Fairmont. At the end of last year, they began to process of modifying their high interest home loan. After seeing an ad in the local paper, they contacted the [...]

You can help catch a thief. The city has launched a new program to immediately notify property owners when scammers try to steal their holdings with a phony deed or a bogus mortgage or lien.

Borrowers who walk away from mortgages they can afford to pay — making “strategic defaults” — are running increasing risks that they’ll be penalized for doing so.

Buyers willing to take a chance on the struggling housing market can purchase a repossessed home for an average of 27 percent less than a similar property not facing foreclosure. According to Realty Trac, which monitors foreclosure activity, in areas [...]

Scott Duncan and Lorae Fistor-Duncan acknowledge they are more than $28,000 behind on their home mortgage. But they never expected they might lose their home over $743.88 their lender says they owe on a home equity line of credit.

It’s a familiar scenario: a developer or owner is seriously underwater, past the point of return, and applies to the court to appoint a receiver to help. But as banks become more and more concerned about their balance sheets, and [...]

Mortgage fraud is a growing problem according to the Department of Consumer Affairs. Scammers are targeting homeowners behind on their payments. They claim to modify your loan. But they charge you up front, and have nothing to show for it. [...]

By LOU TISLER – Executive Director of Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Cleveland As if homeowners struggling to make their mortgage don’t have enough to worry about, June’s National Homeownership Month comes with a serious warning that could mean the [...]

Florida homeowners whose property is in foreclosure now have the option to negotiate first. As of June 1st, owners of homesteaded property in Florida can request mediation before deciding whether to walk away from their homes or take a shot [...]

Across the nation, homeowners have abandoned houses that are worth less than their mortgages. Now, in the case of one defunct mortgage lender, the property values have fallen so low that the bank doesn’t even want them.

At first blush, Suffolk County Acting Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Arlen Spinner (See Profile) seems an unlikely figure to strike fear in attorneys. The 50-year-old judge is physically unimposing, speaks in soft, measured tones and is unfailingly polite. He habitually [...]

The bank was willing to reset her mortgage to a fixed-rate for 30 years at the current appraisal of $240,000, but pointed to the outlier short-sale of a nearby home at only $170,000 to justify requiring she pony up $25,000 [...]

A recently implemented federal housing-market stimulus program designed to encourage short sales appears to be doing just the opposite, according to Phoenix-area real-estate agents, title companies and mortgage lenders. Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives, the fourth initiative to be launched under [...]

One-fourth of all homeowners now owe more than their house is worth. That’s 11 million Americans that are upside-down on their home loan. For many, the solution is simply to walk away.

Housing: America still has far too many underwater debtors labeled as “homeowners,” but Washington can’t bear to let them liquidate. Instead, it saddles taxpayers with ever-costlier bailouts. The federal government has tried just about every trick in the book to [...]

Are you sick of hearing Pro City Mortgage radio spots? Well, the good news is you won’t have to hear them anymore. The bad news is the company doesn’t have any money to continue operating. If you were promised a [...]