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Home Loan News

New Jersey Sees 14.5% Increase in Foreclosures

by Moe Bedard

That means that almost one of every seven mortgages in the state was in trouble. The nationwide percentage of delinquent or foreclosed mortgages was a record 14.4 percent, up from 10 percent a year earlier.
The rise in unemployment is the main driver behind the rise in foreclosures, according to Jay Brinkmann, the mortgage bankers’ chief [...]

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1 in 7 US Home Loans in Foreclosure or Delinquent

by Moe Bedard

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A record one in seven U.S. mortgages were in foreclosure or at least one payment past due in the third quarter, according to fresh data signaling the recovery in the housing market will be tepid at best.
U.S. mortgage delinquency rates and the percentage of loans that entered the foreclosure process also [...]

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Many Americans in Home Loan Limbo

by Moe Bedard

The number of Americans in mortgage limbo keeps growing.
These are the people who are far behind on their payments but are still waiting for their loan servicer to start the foreclosure process. LPS Applied Analytics, a research firm in Denver, reported that 3.4% of U.S. households with mortgages – or around 1.9 million –  are [...]

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Few Getting Loan Modifications

by Moe Bedard

Only a tiny percentage of troubled homeowners have received permanent modifications under President Obama’s foreclosure prevention plan, raising concerns about the effectiveness of the $75 billion effort.
Fewer than 5% of the trial modifications on loans owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac were converted to long-term adjustments as of Sept. 30, according to the mortgage finance [...]

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Counseling Helps Homeowners Avoid Foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

Troubled homeowners who receive housing counseling are 60 percent more likely to avoid foreclosure and have their mortgage payments lowered significantly than borrowers who navigate the process themselves, according to a study to be released Wednesday.
The study, by the D.C.-based Urban Institute, examines the effectiveness of the government-funded National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling program, established in [...]

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In Europe, regulators are moving to break up megabanks

by Moe Bedard

“If the government did not provide these bailouts or guarantees, then the market itself would ensure such organizations did not grow beyond their ability to attract capital,” he said. “It is only when fear is overcome by government guarantees that systemic risks can arise.”
While the Fed has sought recently to burnish its regulatory credentials by [...]

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46% of South Florida Homeowners Are Underwater

by Moe Bedard

Nearly half of all owners of single-family homes in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area were underwater at the end of the third quarter, meaning their homes were valued at less than the mortgages owed against them.
Forty-six percent of South Florida homeowners, representing 387,157 homes, were underwater at the end of Sept. 30, compared to 47 [...]

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Florida Judges Consider Foreclosure Mediation

by Moe Bedard

A majority on the high court’s Task Force on Residential Mortgage Foreclosures recommended trying mediation on owner-occupied homes before cases go to court, with lenders picking up the tab. Borrowers would be contacted by phone and mail and asked to participate. The high court did not immediately act on the proposal.
“The data that the banks [...]

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IRS Gives Homeowners With Jumbo Mortgages Some Tax Relief

by Moe Bedard

The Internal Revenue Service has delivered a valuable gift to those with $1 million-plus mortgages on their mansions. In an internal legal memo released publicly last month, the IRS concluded that a taxpayer can deduct interest on the first $1.1 million of a home mortgage–$100,000 more than earlier legal findings allowed.
The ruling is a boon [...]

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Loan Modification Numbers are Fantasy Land

by Moe Bedard

Mortgage expert and one-time Fannie Mae Chief Credit Officer Edward Pinto says a claim made by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that 500,000 homeowners have entered the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) is ridiculous.
In fact, he says, the program is rapidly becoming: “I will pretend to modify your loan if you pretend that you [...]

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Bank of America CEO Search in Limbo

by Moe Bedard

Apparently Bank of America Corp.’s (NYSE:BAC) search for a new CEO is at a standstill, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The board was hoping to pick a successor for Ken Lewis by Wednesday, but the committee choosing the new CEO needs more time. Lewis actually forewarned that the committee was taking its time during [...]

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The Housing Gamble

by Moe Bedard

Artificially low interest rates and a government tax credit are luring buyers, but both those inducements are scheduled to end. Defaults and distress sales are rising in the middle and upper price ranges. And millions of people have lost so much equity that they are locked into their homes for years, a modern variation of [...]

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Homeowners Continue to Walk Away in Droves

by Moe Bedard

He stopped paying the mortgage, basically forcing the lender to take the condo off his hands through foreclosure.
“I was able to pay off all my credit cards,” said Duque, who is biding his time in the condo, waiting until they come and evict him. “In a way, it was the best thing that happened to [...]

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The media loan-modification program

by Moe Bedard

But I made a call to Select Portfolio Servicing anyway and left a message. A staffer called back, but only to ask what the questions were and to relay them to a higher-up.
Shortly after that, Nido’s attorney sent me an e-mail.
“I don’t know what you did but I’ve got an offer from SPS (Select Portfolio [...]

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Bank of America’s mortgage chief says, ‘mortgage industry is fragile’

by Moe Bedard

The mortgage industry remains “relatively fragile,” in part because it has been bolstered by government aid, the head of Bank of America Corp.’s home-loan unit said.
“Clearly there are some green shoots and early indicators” the mortgage and housing markets are recovering, Bank of America’s Barbara Desoer said today at a Mortgage Bankers Association conference in [...]

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Mortgage bankers seem depressed at convention

by Moe Bedard

Many of these banking vampires used to operate their businesses on serving consumers a high fee and toxic loan platter to their CEO Overlords for consumption daily. Now, they seem to be bit bummed out on banking lately and having to do business the right way.
CEO’s will not be as fat in the new banking world and [...]

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Unspoken Risk of Second Mortgage Meltdown: Today’s Outrage

by Moe Bedard

Here we go again with all the regulatory silence and wishful thinking by banks that preceded the first mortgage meltdown. Meltdown part II could be in the making as defaults rise in the commercial real estate sector.
Behind closed doors, U.S. banking regulators appear to be “girding for a rerun” of the mortgage losses that nearly [...]

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Lack of Legal Help: One More Way the Deck Is Stacked Against Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

Having legal help can be the difference between people keeping their homes and being evicted. A lawyer can stop foreclosure proceedings or put enough pressure on lenders to get them to rework the terms of the loan. A lawyer can also intervene in other ways, such as enforcing consumer protection laws or spotting legal violations [...]

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Short Sales: A Fraying Lifeline for Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

Troubled homeowners may be losing a major lifeline: so-called short sales. To get bad loans off their books and spur home sales, lenders have been forgiving the difference between the outstanding mortgage balance and the purchase price. Banks were never eager participants in short sales, and now financial firms—even those that can offload losses to [...]

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Job losses overshadow signs of recovery

by Moe Bedard

“The hole that has been blown in the labor market is absolutely enormous,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute.
That hole continues to widen. On Thursday, the Labor Department said initial claims for unemployment insurance rose to a seasonally adjusted 551,000 — up from 534,000 in the previous week and more than [...]

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Leaving Affordable Mortgage May Become Winning Gambit

by Moe Bedard

“You have to ask yourself: Are you just renting the home from the bank?” said Michael Joe, a foreclosure expert at the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada. “Would it be cheaper to walk away and rent across the street?”
Conroy, 32, and his wife purchased their home for $385,000 in March 2006, a month before [...]

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Homeowners in limbo real `hidden’ inventory

by Moe Bedard

Fact is there are no prescribed time periods for either scenario. Because of this arbitrary manner in which homes become official statistics, there’s a chunk of homes that miss the radar screen of economists.
This “hidden inventory,” as it is known, is the subject of much debate.
Are banks holding back properties to keep prices stabilized in [...]

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Nevada Loan Modification Companies Get 1 Month for Compliance

by Moe Bedard

Fly by night loan modification companies swoop in, promise the world and then leave with your stolen ID and cash. It’s a problem we’ve been tracking for years.
Legitimate companies are trying to keep up with some tough new rules. Those protections motivate Elisabeth Daniels with the Nevada Business and Industry Department. The bottomed-out market brought [...]

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America’s backlash against banks

by Moe Bedard

Consumers: Bailout aided lenders, not us
James Seeley and Hilary Egan live in different towns, but have lots in common: Both face financial woes, both applied for mortgage modifications and both got turned down.
And, like lots of Americans these days, both feel banks that got massive taxpayer bailouts aren’t reciprocating by helping U.S. consumers.
“I don’t know [...]

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Foreclosure lawyers scrutinized for ethical violations

by Moe Bedard

The state group that disciplines lawyers is debating how to deal with reports of attorneys using errors and false statements to retake property in foreclosure cases.
Some of the most egregious Florida examples come from Sarasota County, where a study this summer that looked at the civil courts system found three of four foreclosure cases that [...]

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Bank Pulls Back From Acorn Work

by Moe Bedard

“Bank of America takes recent allegations made against Acorn and Acorn Housing Corporation employees very seriously,” the bank said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Census Bureau dropped Acorn as a partner for the 2010 Census, and the House of Representatives voted to block the group from receiving federal funds.
“We’re not surprised that our [...]

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Evicted owners stripping homes of all valuables

by Moe Bedard

Sure, the plunging price reflects a weak housing market. But it also reflects another trend: the evicted former owners had stripped the home of all valuables inside — including its appliances and its plumbing — leaving only a skeleton of a structure.
“They took everything,” southwest suburban Realtor Patrick Zomparelli said.
Chicago area real estate agents say [...]

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Relatives: Bank Employees Face Flag Backlash

by Moe Bedard

Angry callers are making death threats against Bank of America employees in Gaffney, according to relatives of the workers.
Two women — who said they were the mother and sister of an employee — made the claims after a protest outside the bank on Friday.
“They’re being called daily. All day long, they are being threatened. ‘We’ll [...]

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Mortgage-modification program questioned, protested

by Moe Bedard

Protesting near the National Constitution Center, where a congressional panel yesterday tried to gauge the progress of homeowner-rescue programs, Aponte said his lender had agreed to modify his mortgage, then had withdrawn the offer.
“They said that without a job, how could I pay even that?” Aponte said. “They’re right, but it isn’t fair.”
That opinion was [...]

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Delayed Foreclosures Stalk Market

by Moe Bedard

Debra and Arthur Scriven were served notice in June 2008 that their mortgage lender, a unit of Citigroup Inc., was preparing to foreclose on their home. Fifteen months later, the Scrivens are still in their home near Columbia, S.C., and battling to stay there, even though a dispute with the lender over how much they [...]

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HUD secretary: Housing crisis improving, not over

by Moe Bedard

But Phyllis Salowe-Kaye, executive director of the watchdog group New Jersey Citizen Action, said most mortgage lenders aren’t as supportive of loan modifications.
“If the industry really believed this we wouldn’t be here,” Salowe-Kaye said.
She said some lenders appear to be padding their numbers by directing refinancing offers to homeowners with solid finances instead of those [...]

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U.S. mortgage delinquencies set record

by Moe Bedard

NEW YORK (Reuters) – High U.S. unemployment keeps pushing up the rate of mortgage delinquencies, which could in turn drive personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures, monthly data from the Equifax Inc credit bureau showed on Monday.
Among U.S. homeowners with mortgages, a record 7.58 percent were at least 30 days late on payments in August, up [...]

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New trend in foreclosures as moratorium comes to an end

by Moe Bedard

VICTORVILLE • As the 90-day foreclosure moratorium comes to a close, mortgage executives began to see a new trend in foreclosures that are not just subprimes.
A survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association shows that “prime” home loans now account for one in every three foreclosures and 58 percent of all new foreclosure starts.
Last year the [...]

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Low expectations for new loan help program

by Moe Bedard

Dial back the pie-in-the-sky projections.
Last month, the Obama administration launched a program to help homeowners with loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. About 850,000 FHA borrowers are behind on their payments or in foreclosure, yet the program will assist just 45,000.
The effort targets homeowners who were ineligible for the government’s other loan modification plans. [...]

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Break up the big banks

by Moe Bedard

The FDIC has been the most effective regulator since the onset of the crisis, closing down failed banks in order to limit risk to taxpayers. But its resources are woefully inadequate to deal with the largest institutions. (I am excluding the $500 billion credit line it has at Treasury; those are taxpayers’ resources, not FDIC’s.)
And [...]

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Minister sentenced to prison for mortgage fraud

by Moe Bedard

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. – A federal judge in East St. Louis has ordered a southwestern Illinois minister to spend four years in federal prison and repay $142,000 in a mortgage fraud case.
The government says he made fraudulent transactions to get a loan on a home in an exclusive Maryville neighborhood. His wrongdoing helped him [...]

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Bank of America execs facing charges

by Moe Bedard

Let’s dive into the world of breaking news here, as the New York Attorney General’s office has decided to mark the one-year anniversary of the financial meltdown by preparing charges against some Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) executives. Reportedly, the charges stem from the failure to disclose details about the company’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
The [...]

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Foreclosure: Dealing with disaster

by Moe Bedard

There are so many foreclosures in the legal system that it cannot handle them, reported the Task Force on Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Cases. It was appointed by the Florida Supreme Court, and issued its first report recently.
How bad is it?
- Florida has the worst foreclosure inventory in the nation. Of 3.5 million loans serviced in [...]

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Big Trouble For Bank Of America

by Moe Bedard

Bank of America “is in serious, serious trouble now,” says St. John’s University law professor Anthony Sabino. “The judge’s rejection of the SEC settlement, which is of course rooted in the same transactions, will embolden Cuomo to attack BofA head on and get more info about just what happened at the bank when it took [...]

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Condos forced into creative action amid foreclosure crisis

by Moe Bedard

The association at Shoreline Towers, a 378-unit Chicago condominium, plans to use reserve funds to buy foreclosed units, rent them, then resell them when the market improves.
The move prevents foreclosed units from being sold far below market value and allows the association to recoup some unpaid assessments, says Chris Sempler, vice president of Shoreline Towers’ [...]

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Recession may forge a housing shift in California

by Moe Bedard

After being burned by a negative-amortization loan that left her owing more on her Compton home than it was worth, Bell, 62, has soured on the home-refinancing craze. Never a big spender anyway, she has clamped down even harder — deferring painting and other repairs on her modest three-bedroom home. Sadly, she’s also postponed retirement.
“From [...]

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Task force recommends steps to reduce foreclosures

by Moe Bedard

Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan’s (D-Janesville) “Speaker’s Taskforce on Preventing Home Foreclosures” also recommends a law requiring court officials to notify municipal clerks when a home has been abandoned, and that Wisconsin’s financial education standards for students include information on the types of mortgages and the risks associated with them.
The bipartisan task force, led by state [...]

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Wells Fargo to hold workshops in Arizona on loan modifications

by Moe Bedard

Wells Fargo is offering a sit-down with a loan-modification specialist for its Arizona customers struggling to afford their mortgage payments.
The lender’s Home Preservation workshop at the Phoenix Convention Center is open to borrowers today and Thursday.
Wells Fargo has brought in hundreds of employees to work with borrowers. By Tuesday, 1,000 homeowners with Wells Fargo mortgages [...]

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Another Wave of Foreclosures Looms

by Moe Bedard

About 70 percent of the $189 billion in outstanding option ARMs will reset by 2011, the report said, which would be another setback to a teetering housing market still struggling to recover from the mortgage meltdown that precipitated the financial crisis.
Option ARMs make up only 1.3 percent of percent of outstanding mortgages and were used [...]

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Rising US Foreclosures Dim Outlook For Loan Modifications

by Moe Bedard

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. officials on Wednesday are set to defend their effort to help borrowers obtain loan modifications amid rising concerns that the government program is no match for the relentless pace of foreclosures.
Mortgage servicers have had trouble coping with the surge in applications from strapped borrowers and have complained of the program’s complexity.
Now, rising [...]

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