From the category archives:

American Nightmare

Lenny Dykstra sues Chase for bad mortgages

by Moe Bedard

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lenny Dykstra filed a $100 million lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co alleging he was fraudulently induced into borrowing more money than he could afford, leading to the former star baseball center fielder’s bankruptcy.

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Octomom with 14 kids is in foreclosure for home she just bought

by Moe Bedard

Yes, Octomom, Nadya Suleman  is in foreclosure for a home she just purchased in Orange County, CA last year. In a March 2009 article it stated that she bought the home with a down payment of $110,000 from her father.  Suleman was unemployed and also on food stamps at the time. 

Octomom had claimed to have new opportunities to make [...]

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Struggling Californians who get short sales or loan mods may face huge tax bills

by Moe Bedard

With less than a month until tax filings are due, struggling Californians who received mortgage modifications or lost their homes in short sales or foreclosures last year face the prospect of huge state tax bills. That’s because legislation that would prevent their canceled debt from being treated as

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OneWest Bank offers family a loan modification after they evicted them

by Moe Bedard

Last year, Paulette fell ill.Medical expenses swamped them. They tried to renegotiate their home loan with IndyMac Mortgage Services. Instead, IndyMac began foreclosure.
The Steltons now rent a home.

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Nicolas Cage is a one man real estate bubble that went pop!

by Moe Bedard

Cage bought this Tudor mansion in Bel Air, Calif., in 1998 from Tom Jones for $6.47 million. The house, which Dean Martin owned before Jones, has six fireplaces, including one in a bathroom. Cage put it on the market at $30 million a year ago, but recently cut the price to $17.5 million. It is [...]

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Homeowners worn out while attempting a loan modification

by Moe Bedard

Donna McCartney made phone call after phone call and wrote letters about her family’s deteriorating financial predicament and their inability to make their mortgage payments.

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Ohio man losing home and job shoots co-workers then commits suicide

by Moe Bedard

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The man who shot two co-workers inside an Ohio State campus building before committing suicide on Tuesday morning learned last week that he was getting fired.
Nathaniel Brown was already struggling to keep his home from going into foreclosure, 10TV’s Maureen Kocot reported.

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Higher end homeowners feeling the foreclosure pain

by Moe Bedard

However, foreclosure stories defy classification and stereotype. They include families experiencing job loss or medical expenses, or even people who have fallen behind a few payments and who are awaiting evaluation for modifications but for whom the bank has pushed forward with foreclosure proceedings anyway.

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Are lenders stringing along homeowners?

by Moe Bedard

A bad economy has served up hard times for Alice Rivera. She lost her job three months ago. She lost her home this week.
“They’re just, ‘we’re taking your house away and that’s it,’” said Rivera.
 
Rivera tried to get help from Bank of America, who holds the note to her house.

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18 month loan modification fight ends in foreclosure for struggling mother

by Moe Bedard

With bills mounting and four mouths to feed, the single mother started to fall behind on her mortgage. Her disability checks and what little child support she was getting weren’t enough to pay all the bills.
She spent 18 months working on a mortgage loan modification before bank officials “reneged on what they’d previously told me.”

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The loan modification nightmare continues

by Moe Bedard

The complaints have a common tune. Homeowners say the banks are giving them the runaround — either by pledging to modify loans and then not following through, as with the Davis family, or by signing them up for the trial period and then leaving them in limbo.
“This is an epidemic problem,” said Stuart Rossman, director [...]

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Video: Mother is going crazy trying to obtain a loan modification

by Moe Bedard

A mother of two special-needs children is at her wit’s end trying to get her home loan modified, hoping she’s not another statistic in a years-long foreclosure nightmare.
Watch the KCRA video here.

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Woman sues Bank of America and Wells Fargo over loan modification program

by Moe Bedard

“The bank hasn’t listened. They have been very threatening all along,” she said. “I would call them and say I’m willing to pay exactly what I owe. Just make it a little bit easier. It’s a tough economy right now.”
Frugoli and her attorney have filed suit in Brockton Superior Court against Wells Fargo.

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Mortgage scammer commits suicide before prison sentence begins for mortgage fraud

by Moe Bedard

Police say a Palm Desert businessman who pleaded guilty to taking part in a $150 million mortgage scam has hung himself.
47 year old Christopher Oetting was found dead in a home on Sagewood Drive in Palm Desert Tuesday, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Deparment.  He was heading to federal prison in just a few [...]

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Mother Fights Foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

Mandy’s paperwork shows Wells Fargo granted her a temporary modification in July 2009. She says she had a new job by then and paid all the modified payments as agreed. Then, a mix-up happened.
“They told me I called them on December 8th and canceled my modification,” Mandy said.

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73 Year Old Bank Robber Was Just Trying to Pay Off Mortgage

by Moe Bedard

A 73 year old bank robber said he only did it because he wanted the money to pay off his mortgage.
Times are tough for anyone, but robbing a bank to pay off your mortgage is certainly not recommended. That didn’t stop one pensioner in Florida from raiding three banks in order to get enough money [...]

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Foreclosure Nightmare Mentally Affecting Countless Americans

by Moe Bedard

MERCED — Three weeks ago, a retired telephone company worker named Ethelda Lopez watched as her dream retirement home was auctioned on the lawn outside the county courthouse in downtown Merced.
“When I heard my address, it was so disheartening,” she said. For six months, she had made hundreds of calls to her mortgage company, federal [...]

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Non-profit housing exec quits saying he lost faith in the Obama administration’s loan modification program

by Moe Bedard

Randall Guerra, a veteran of the housing industry, was executive director of the Community Housing Council in Fresno, which uses the federal Making Home Affordable program to try to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure.
But “Making Home Affordable is not working,” said Guerra, who quit Jan. 29 after 18 months on the job. “I had a [...]

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Lenders start going after foreclosed homeowners for monies owed

by Moe Bedard

Former homeowners may still be on the hook if there’s a difference between what they owed on their mortgage and what the bank could sell it for at auction. And these “deficiency judgments” are ticking time bombs that can explode years after borrowers lose their homes.
It can even happen to people who got their bank [...]

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2010 Housing Crisis Will Be Even Uglier

by Moe Bedard

The housing report card is ugly. In the past two years, the housing market has lost an estimated $4.9 trillion dollars, as 59 million homes have declined in value.
Nearly 1 in 4 homeowners — 10.7 million households nationwide — are underwater on their mortgages. They owe more than their home is now worth.

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