September 2010

A complaint from an underwater homeowner shows companies are still breaking the law by charging upfront fees for loan modification services. Elverta homeowner Wade Mann, 52, contacted News10 two months after signing a contract with Mitigation Review in Roseville. Mann [...]

John Jenco said he was struggling with his $2,400 monthly mortgage payment, but wasn’t behind when he entered a trial loan modification with Bank of America last January.

Despite industry and government efforts to make short sales – transactions in which the lender agrees to accept less than the mortgage amount owed by the homeowner – easier and more quickly accomplished, improvements are coming up, well, short.

Shelly Coker has been begging for help. The 38-year-old entrepreneur called her bank in March 2009 when her pay was cut and her ex-husband, who pays child support for their son, lost his job. She asked them to reduce her [...]

Senior lenders to New York’s Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village apartment complex won their bid to stop a foreclosure sale sought by investors including Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP. State Supreme Court Justice Richard Lowe in Manhattan agreed to [...]

Two years after they were taken over by the federal government, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac face a new challenge: The mortgage-finance giants are becoming two of the nation’s largest home sellers at a time when the housing market shows [...]

<center><object height=”288″ width=”470″><param name=”movie” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” value=”http://www.fox11az.com/v/?i=103005729″ /><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always” /><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” /><param name=”AllowFullScreen” value=”true” /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” src=”http://www.fox11az.com/v/?i=103005729″ AllowFullScreen=”true” allowScriptAccess=”always” height=”288″ wmode=”transparent” width=”470″></embed></object></center>

A foreclosure-prevention workshop, sponsored by the Hope Now Alliance and NeighborWorks America, is planned for this month in Escambia County. The workshop is 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 25 in the Expo Hall of the Pensacola Interstate Fairgrounds, 6655 [...]

NEW YORK (TheStreet) – Top banking executives said this week that it may take years for the country to see a full-fledged housing recovery — and that a government rescue program may actually be hindering progress. The housing market recently [...]

(AP)Mortgage giant Fannie Mae’s latest survey suggests Americans have become more cautious about home buying, though most believe the market has bottomed out. The Fannie Mae National Housing Survey shows 47 percent of Americans believe home prices will remain steady [...]

Well, folks, they’re back. I just received a mortgage refinance solicitation letter that made me want to throw up. The words at the top of the letter, in giant calligraphy, boast, “Mortgage Reduction Notice.” The next line, in bright red [...]

In the “By The Way” section of your short sale closing package, the lender may leave the door open to pursue the debt at a later date.  As a law firm that handles short sales, we do quite a few [...]

First loan modifications, then short sales … now it’s the short refi. Officially known as the FHA Short Refinance Program, it’s the latest band-aid in Obama’s bailout plans aimed at resuscitating Florida’s underwater homeowners facing foreclosure. Oppenheim Law helps homeowners [...]

A national financial consulting firm has warned that the real estate market is increasingly vulnerable to a new kind of mortgage fraud based on manipulating short sales.

When Eric Peterson buys foreclosed homes through courthouse trustee sales these days, the majority of borrowers are still living in the home rent-free, waiting to be evicted. That is a dramatic change from last year, when most properties were vacant [...]

The slide in U.S. home prices may have another three years to go as sellers add as many as 12 million more properties to the market. Shadow inventory — the supply of homes in default or foreclosure that may be [...]