From the category archives:

American Nightmare

If they want my home they will get it over my dead body

by Moe Bedard

Submitted by a Homeowner Via Email to Me: I will take further action as necessary to keep my home. If they want my home they will get it over my dead body.

Dear Mr. Marks and Mr. Bedard,
Please feel free to use the attached documents and share the information therein as well as this email to [...]

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Sewer Rats: A By Product of Foreclosures

by Moe Bedard

American cities are on the verge of a rat invasion, warns small-mammal biologist and self-described “rat pack” member Dale Kaukeinen (in college “all the good animals were taken,” he says) in a new study. And redemption, it turns out, is both personal and political.

“The problem of rats is just a symptom of a declining and [...]

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Michigan Foreclosures Were Illegal

by Moe Bedard

Detroit — Tens of thousands of Wayne County foreclosures — and potentially hundreds of thousands across the state — are unlawful because sheriffs did not follow state law when they conducted foreclosure auctions, an attorney said Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Bloomfield Hills attorney Paul Nicoletti filed a proposed class-action suit in federal court seeking to set aside [...]

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Realty Trac Accused of Deceptive Advertising

by Moe Bedard

Realty Trac is Accused of Bait and Switch With Monthly Foreclosure Service
Maria Casanova, an assistant professor of economics at UCLA, toyed with the idea earlier this year of buying a foreclosed property near the Westwood campus. She signed up for a prominent listing service called RealtyTrac.
Casanova, 31, canceled her subscription not long after. Yet a [...]

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Homeowners Walking Away Becoming More Common

by Moe Bedard

“I’m walking away from my house,” says Sakson, 57, who stopped making payments about six months ago on her home in Pennington, N.J. “The bank can have it.”
What Sakson did is called a strategic default, or a voluntary foreclosure, and it’s fast becoming a major challenge to the government’s $75 billion effort to keep distressed [...]

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Banks & Collection Agencies Go After Foreclosed Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

“I thought this was finally over, but it’s one of these things where there’s no end in sight,” said Lane, a 65-year-old biotech executive who fell on hard times after losing his job and coming down with cancer.
Massachusetts homeowners who’ve lost properties to the state’s foreclosure crisis are finding that their troubles don’t necessarily end [...]

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Video: A Trip in Loan Modification Hell

by Moe Bedard

Sometimes loan modifications can be a real pain, others believe that trying to get a loan modification is a form of hell on earth. This video shows you why they lose faxes constantly and who is really in charge of the banks.
Watch this video and decide for yourself.

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Unemployed and Trying to Save the American Dream

by Moe Bedard

SPRINGDALE — Homeowners who lose their jobs and collect unemployment income now have a better chance to modify their mortgages, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
Until recently, unemployment income was not utilized when calculating a loan modification, leaving distressed homeowners with few options.
Because income is the basis for mortgage modification or loan qualification, unless a [...]

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Desperate Americans Flood Emergency Help Hot Lines

by Moe Bedard

She can feel what the callers on the other end of the line are feeling. Recently it’s been tearing, gripping, throat-tightening.
Giselle Sanchez and 12 other call center operators spend all day answering questions about where to find help. Sometimes it’s help with the rent. Other times it’s help steering away from suicide.
These call-takers are the [...]

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More Details on Loan Modification Beating and Torture

by Moe Bedard

More disturbing details are  coming out in regards to the  beating, torture and robbery of two loan modification agents. Apparently the victims and the suspects were actually doing business together in a loan modification referral scheme that involved some California Realtors.

This is actually quite common in California for licensed real estate agents to be involved in some type of [...]

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Fed Says Recession Almost Over and Unemployment to Continue. Huh?

by Moe Bedard

The U.S. housing market faces a “difficult” return to normal because government-sponsored enterprises own or guarantee most mortgage lending while alternative sources have disappeared, said an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
“Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae now own or guarantee an overwhelming share of originations,” bank senior economist John Krainer [...]

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Man Fights Chase Mortgage After Wifes Death

by Moe Bedard

Little said he mailed paperwork to JP Morgan Chase seeking a loan modification, but that the bank said he did not qualify. He will be three months behind on his payments in November.
Chase officials said they could not discuss Little’s case specifically because of privacy laws, but that the bank has sent him more papers [...]

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Debtors Revolt: The Banks Do Not Care!

by Moe Bedard

The debtors revolt is gaining steam as the few lenders left in our country send out millions of letters raising the rates on their clients credit cards. Many of these people are now following Ann Minch’s lead and telling their credit card companies to take their cards and shove them where the sun don’t shine.
While this is a [...]

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Main Street’s Animosity Towards Banks Increasing

by Moe Bedard

The bankers were criticized yesterday by U.S. Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, who told protesters more regulation of the financial services industry is required.
“We need to ensure that the robber barons that are responsible for this recession don’t get away with creating it and then declaring themselves a dividend,” Durbin [...]

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NACA Employee: Did you know that NACA’s employees are abused?

by Moe Bedard

Submitted unsolicited to LoanWorkout.org by a NACA Employee – Sure NACA can help restructure your home loan and they maybe able to stop a foreclosure or auction. Huh! you should here some of the horror stories for the 10’s of thousand who don’t get help?
Oh and the employee’s include some people who are not qualified [...]

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$500 Homes in Detroit Not Selling: What’s next, free homes?

by Moe Bedard

When foreclosed homes do not sell at auction, the aucioneers lower the price to entice potential home bidders. When the price goes as low as it can go, do they then just give these unsalebale homes away?
My prediction in the next two years is that certain areas of the country such as Detroit, Michigan will actually give homes away to qualified [...]

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Nevada Loan Modification Companies Still Think it’s the Wild, Wild West

by Moe Bedard

What if you had a home modification law that everyone ignored? In its 2009 legislative session the State of Nevada passed a law requiring loan modification companies to be licensed. The law, which recently took effect, not only required a license but the companies were also required to post a $75,000 surety bond. It seemed [...]

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Will Main Street Recover?

by Moe Bedard

Meanwhile, back on Main Street U.S.A., the picture is drastically different. Unemployment has doubled in a year, to 9.8% in September, and there are about six unemployed Americans for every job opening. Home foreclosure-related filings—including default notices, foreclosure auctions, and bank repossessions—are on pace to reach about 3.5 million this year, up from more than [...]

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Lack of Good Lawyers Adding to the Foreclosure Crisis

by Moe Bedard

Unlike similar legal fields such as bankruptcy, foreclosure is rarely a full-time practice and is often handled by real estate attorneys or legal aid services agencies. Still, more than 3 million property foreclosures were filed in the U.S. last year; South Florida is expected to see more than 150,000 this year compared to fewer than [...]

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Real California Unemployment Rate at 19.6%

by Moe Bedard

Beyond the marginally attached, who are included in U-5, involuntary part-time workers are included in U-6. The larger the difference between U-6 and U-5, then, the higher the incidence of underemployment. Oregon and California posted the largest gaps between their U-6 and U-5 rates, +7.8 and +7.6 percentage points, respectively. These two states also had [...]

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Homeowner Continues to Live Payment Free for One Year

by Moe Bedard

It’s been almost a year since Horatio Bernard effectively lost his Baltimore row house to foreclosure and roughly 15 months since he last made a payment on his primary mortgage.
And yet to his amazement and those following his story, Bernard continues living in the home with his ailing mother without any sign of an eviction [...]

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Bailed out bankers live like kings as the people on Main Street live like slaves

by Moe Bedard

Perks keep rolling at rescued banks – From jets to country club fees, CEOs’ fringe benefits rose 4 percent last year
Meanwhile on Main Street, many of the good people are losing their homes, jobs and families. Too depressed to think logically and too beat down to fight back in court, many are defeated mentally and [...]

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Wall Street outrage continues

by Moe Bedard

PRESIDENT OBAMA is far too absent of outrage over Wall Street’s continued abuses. As a candidate, he railed against its “greed and irresponsibility.’’ He had more to say in his first month in the White House, after finding out that Wall Street firms were still paying $18.4 billion in bonuses despite bringing America to its [...]

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Foreclosures lead to more homelessness

by Moe Bedard

Foreclosure does not come out of nowhere. Homeowners facing foreclosure always know at least several months in advance that their time is up. When these individuals realize that their home will be foreclosed on, they should begin making other arrangements. They should be seeking out rentals that they can afford or trying to get friends [...]

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California joblessness continues to soar

by Moe Bedard

A separate survey of joblessness showed that California’s unemployment rate was 12.2% in September, down from a revised 12.3% in August. The unemployment rate in September 2008 was 7.8%.
“It is discouraging,” said Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University. “We want to see job losses go down and the pace slow down, but we didn’t [...]

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Foreclosure doesn’t mean get out now

by Moe Bedard

For starters, you don’t have to move right away. And if you work out a payment arrangement with your lender, there’s still a chance you can stay in your home. 
Jamele Hage, director of the Wayne County foreclosure-prevention program, said that under the new state law that took effect in July, lenders need to specify in [...]

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Many Americans losing homes become homeless

by Moe Bedard

But this fall, she exhausted all options. She had once owned and overseen a group home for homeless people. Now, she succumbed to that status herself, checking in to a shelter.
“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for [...]

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A true look at a Chase Bank California foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

5031 Alcorn Lane, Turtle Rock
Amount owed: $298,876.14
Last sale: July 2001, $485,000
Auction date & time: Nov. 5 at 10 a.m.
Location: In front of the flagpoles at Placentia Civic Center, 401-411 E. Chapman Ave.
Trustee sale #: JPM-580
Information: 714-573-1965 [emphasis mine]
I assume the JPM means JPMorganChase, though that’s not the important thing.
If you look at the other houses, [...]

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Florida homeowner faces loan modification confusion

by Moe Bedard

“Some investors will not allow Making Home Affordable modifications because they cut the value of their investments too much — enough so they are losing money on their investment,” the spokeswoman said. “Investors don’t have to tell us why they decline a modification. It is not in our control.”
Now Brady is worried that the house [...]

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Banks and Delinquent Borrowers: The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

by Moe Bedard

Never mind that Bank of America seemed to think it was “entitled” to tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. Now the bank suddenly thinks that other people being “entitled” is such a bad thing? Who set the example?
The article also cites a disturbing trend:
On a recent morning, Tiffany Palmer was on the line with a [...]

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Does NACA lie to homeowners and the media? YES!

by Moe Bedard

The facts are that NACA, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America have done a lot to help struggling homeowners in this devastating foreclosure crisis. However, it appears that this group led by their fearless leader, Bruce Marks is forgetting one key component in operating a foreclosure prevention business, treating your past clients as you treat your new clients.
If [...]

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Big banks suck. Who really needs them?

by Moe Bedard

The first is this “we need big banks to serve global corporations” line. I’ve heard this before and I don’t buy it, for a number of reasons.
First (sorry, I have this habit of embedding numbered lists inside numbered lists), how global is Bank of America? Until it bought Merrill Lynch, it was pretty much a [...]

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No fix for foreclosure threat

by Moe Bedard

The majority of cases were adjourned, meaning homeowners will get another chance to try to reach a deal with their lenders.
Nonetheless, the results are “deeply disappointing,” said Michael Hickey, the center’s executive director.
“We had high hopes that face -to-face meetings between banks and homeowners would produce far more happy outcomes,” he said.
In many cases, lenders [...]

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Linda woman fights bank so she can stay in her home

by Moe Bedard

They don’t have to worry about whether they’ll lose their homes, Linda resident Mary Carter said.
Former executives with the Bank of America and Countrywide, once the largest mortgage lender in the nation, who were involved in the financial crisis that first made national headlines last year, are safe from sharing her status.
Their homes aren’t threatened, [...]

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Life after the bubble: From American dream to American nightmare

by Moe Bedard

A year has passed since the peak of the great financial panic of 2008. Regulators and analysts alike spent much of September pontificating about the economy’s regained stability.

Debt: Life in Oregon after the bubble

Thanks to a multitrillion-dollar bailout, much of the financial sector has regained an uneasy equilibrium. Some banks that seemed on death’s door [...]

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Go Ahead, Walk Away

by Moe Bedard

There is nothing immoral about ditching your mortgage.
A solid two years into the housing bust, the national foreclosure wave doesn’t show the least signs of abating. Banks that had called a foreclosure moratorium are now back to the business of taking back properties, and the foreclosure numbers are again at record highs. As the foreclosures [...]

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Study: Many go through foreclosure without legal help

by Moe Bedard

The vast majority of people in Nassau County who default on their subprime loans go through the foreclosure process without legal representation, according to a New York University study on foreclosures released this week.
The lack of legal help puts homeowners at a disadvantage, since most laypeople don’t know how to negotiate better loan terms or [...]

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Customer DIS-Service: The Unspoken Reason for the Continued Collapse of the U.S. Housing Market

by Moe Bedard

If it’s this hard for a housing counselor, what is the poor homeowner supposed to do? “Call a nonprofit, HUD-approved housing counselor,” say all the government brochures and broadcast public service announcements. But housing counseling agencies like ours cannot possibly handle the flood of calls for help we receive on a daily basis. Thousands of [...]

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Raped by bankers

by Moe Bedard

During an interview with Sean Hannity, Michael Moore laments the mortgage fraud that’s been caused by banks and lenders, and suggesting Hannity is blaming victims of the mortgage crisis for not knowing any better, Moore says it’s “like asking a woman how short was your shirt after you’ve been raped.”

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The rich bail faster on mortgages

by Moe Bedard

Increasingly, homeowners with good credit and no late payments are making what appears to be a strategic decision to walk away when their home’s value falls below what’s owed.
“The American consumer has had a long-held taboo against walking away from the home, and this crisis seems to be eroding that,” concludes a report on research [...]

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After $75 Billion, Homeowners Ask: Where’s the Money?

by Moe Bedard

Complaints about the federal loan modification plans continue to pile up, as do foreclosures.
Darrell Goldberg of Chicago says he has been waiting since April for the packet of paperwork promised to him by CitiMortgage. Lori Gonzalez of Fox River says she has faxed and re-faxed a thick packet of her documents to Bank of America [...]

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Reverse mortgages to be the next foreclosure shoe to drop

by Moe Bedard

SENIORS AND THEIR HOME EQUITY THREATENED AS SUBPRIME LENDERS, ABUSES APPEAR IN REVERSE MORTGAGE MARKET
National Consumer Law Center Report Released at News Event with U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill
BOSTON, MA///Oct. 6, 2009///Abuses and abusers from the subprime mortgage market have begun showing up in the reverse mortgage market, putting at risk the equity and savings of [...]

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Banks abuse borrowers

by Moe Bedard

The Government Accountability Office – GAO – in July found that the Treasury was short staffed and had hired only half of the employees necessary to monitor the loan modification program.
Taxpayer dollars bailed out the banks from bankruptcy, now they’re back on track to pay out big bonuses while at the same time they are [...]

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Lawyers scarce for poor facing foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

The nation’s foreclosure crisis has swamped lawyers for the poor, leaving thousands of low-income homeowners across the country without legal assistance that could save their homes.
Legal offices providing help to the poor are turning away many who have been hit hard by the economy, according to lawyers in cities across the country who were interviewed [...]

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Will California become America’s first failed state?

by Moe Bedard

But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it [...]

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