August 2010

The Tampa-St. Pete-Clearwater area had over 35,000 foreclosures during the first six months of the year–that’s a six percent increase over last year. Saturday, in Tampa, a workshop was held to help struggling homeowners get help with their mortgages.

If you are looking for free mortgage help, here are some safe links below to get educated on the loan modification or foreclosure process. You can also join our forum at www.LoanSafe.org/forum where there are over 33,000 member homeowner helping [...]

Resolutions of distress through sales rather than loan modification have increased to 48 percent of all workouts by dollar volume in the first half of 2010, up from 43 percent in 1H09. More importantly, the dollar volume of resolutions has [...]

Bobbie Vivar is sick and tired of the way lenders are dealing with struggling homeowners like her. It took her two years to get a loan modification approved by her lender, Bank of America. But before she could begin paying [...]

‘Extend and pretend’ likely to save many from foreclosure The number of troubled Sacramento-area properties continues to grow. That’s clear from an analysis of commercial mortgage-backed security loans in the region, which shows delinquencies almost doubled in the past year [...]

The Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America has postponed its South Florida visit, which was scheduled to begin Aug. 13. The nonprofit Boston-based group, also known as NACA, holds 5-day, around-the-clock sessions for struggling homeowners where it helps modify loans with [...]

Millions of homeowners are trapped in a bizarre real estate limbo, living in houses but no longer paying for them, waiting and wondering if someone will help them – or throw them out. Some are victims of their own economic [...]

Lulu Muze and Kirkton Kelly consider themselves lucky. One year ago, the Silver Spring, Md., couple found themselves in dire straits. Like millions of Americans nationwide, they were heavily in debt and at-risk of losing their home. But, on Sat., [...]

Image via Wikipedia WASHINGTON — Former shareholders of fallen mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp. are in line to recoup a fraction of their investments now that a Los Angeles judge has approved a settlement worth more than $600 million settlement. [...]

Hickory – A mortgage company will pay more than 100 Hickory-area families $26,000 each for its role in a loan scheme. The state attorney general’s office says the lender worked with mobile home dealers to give borrowers loans they could [...]

Tatum said one afternoon in back March she received a call that she thought would make her task a little easier. The company, National Consumer Counseling, had contacted her promising to help her modify her loan.

At some point, everything stops falling. Sometimes things hit bottom with a bone-crunching thud and just lay there in a heap. Sometimes they bounce back up at least part of the way. The U.S. housing market is in the latter [...]

Florida‘s purported largest foreclosure law firm filed thousands of documents to take people’s homes that contained deceptive and intentionally ambiguous information, according to a proposed class action lawsuit.

The number of California hotels falling into foreclosure rose again through the end of June, according to Irvine-based hotel brokerage firm Atlas Hospitality Group. From March to the end of June, another 21 hotels in the state were foreclosed on [...]

“[Santiago Pineda] was so convincing,” said Gena Ramirez, a Denver homeowner. “We kept even telling [Pineda] we have kids to take care of. He promised us that in our situation he can work [put the loan with the bank].” Santiago [...]

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)–The delinquency rate on Federal Housing Administration mortgages continued to show improvement in the second quarter, a sign the agency may yet avoid a taxpayer bailout.

Realtors Say Crooks Claim They’re Helping You JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Northeast Florida Association of Realtors issued a scam alert on short sales. People are claiming to help and taking advantage of people in rough housing situations. A short sale [...]

Federal probes of the collapsed mortgage-bond boom are shedding light on how Wall Street firms sometimes created securities and sold them to one set of investors, while advising others to bet against them.

Back in February, we reported on foreclosure auction websites run by Florida municipalities that sometimes fooled unsavvy bidders into thinking they were buying a home, when they were really purchasing a worthless second lien. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today [...]

Renters are getting caught in the middle of the foreclosure crisis. More than a third of foreclosed properties are rental properties.

A Howell businesswoman admitted Friday to charging customers money upfront for loan-modification services, but she denied failing to perform the services promised and denied pocketing any money. The Michigan attorney general’s office had initially charged Michelle Rene Garbuschewski; her Howell [...]