October 2010

Widespread criticism — and federal and state investigations — of big banks’ use of inaccurate paperwork when foreclosing and their reluctance to ease payments for borrowers has created an opportunity for smaller companies to take on more of the lucrative [...]

Rogelio Huerta and Maria Soto did everything they were supposed to do to reduce the monthly mortgage payments on their Bellwood home. Facing a cash crunch because his work hours were cut, they sought help from PNC Mortgage while they [...]

The foreclosure process in the US is slowing, enabling delinquent borrowers to stay in their homes for months after they stop making mortgage payments, according to one of the largest lenders. Freddie Mac, one of the two government-owned entities that [...]

Some of the most popular web searches online includes the word “mortgage”  and “refinance”. So many people are struggling to make ends meet, that the government has started a program to help. The “Save the Dream” tour, run by the [...]

Area law firms are reshuffling attorneys and drafting advisories to assist clients as multiple federal agencies and all 50 state attorneys general conduct probes into faulty foreclosure documents that have landed mortgage servicers and banks — and even law firms [...]

Thousands of foreclosures across the city are in question because paperwork used to justify the seizure of homes is riddled with flaws, a Daily News probe has found.

One side accuses banks and their robo-signers for fraud; the other blames deadbeat borrowers. Who’s right? How should we think about the foreclosure mess? Right now, two grand narratives are battling for supremacy. On one side, expressed via editorials in [...]

Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB), which are controlled by the U.S. government, together own or guarantee more than half of the $11 trillion of U.S. home mortgages. Allegations that some banks used shoddy paperwork in processing foreclosures has [...]

Ms. Sweetland, 47, tried such a sale this summer out of desperation. She had lost her high-paying job and drained her once-flush retirement savings, and her bank, GMAC, wouldn’t modify her mortgage. After seven months of being unable to pay [...]

Can the Frauds be Foreclosed? The assertion that the SDIs cannot be resolved because of their size is unsupported. Very large institutions have already been resolved both in this country and abroad. The “too big to fail” (TBTF) doctrine has [...]

Peggy Merrill of Albany didn’t start out to be an activist. She doesn’t consider herself one now. Still, she is actively trying to bring attention to what she believes are serious problems connected with banks administering the federal Home Affordable [...]

Image via Wikipedia While much of the focus lately has been on problems with home foreclosures, the greater threat to financial firms like Bank of America is likely to come from potential liabilities related to billions of dollars of mortgage-backed [...]

FBN’s Connell McShane on a government investigation into the mortgage industry.

FOXBUSINESS – Mayfair Industries’ Michael Adler argues mortgage modifications do not help reduce rising foreclosure rates.

WASHINGTON — Major U.S. banks are facing a double whammy from the subprime mortgage debacle: They’re under siege over their mishandling of home loan foreclosures and confronting mounting investor demands that they repurchase billions of dollars in failed mortgage securities.

About a month after Washington Mutual Bank made a multimillion-dollar mortgage on a mountain home near Santa Barbara, Calif., a crucial piece of paperwork disappeared. But bank officials were unperturbed. After conducting a “due and diligent search,” an assistant vice [...]

DALLAS – Frustrated homeowners, fed-up former employees, and complaints that keep pouring in. All of this even after the Texas Attorney General sued one mortgage servicing company and demanded it and 29 others halt foreclosures. After FOX 4 first reported [...]

In 2002, an accountant in Boca Raton, Florida, named Joseph Lents was accused of securities-law violations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Lents, who was chief executive officer of a now-defunct voice- recognition software company, had sold shares in [...]

The paperwork mess muddying home foreclosures erupted last month. But the legal strategy behind it traces to a lawyer’s gambit in 2006 that has helped keep one couple in their home six years beyond their last mortgage payment.