From the category archives:

Mortgage Servicers

Short Sale Delays Prolonging Housing Recovery

by Moe Bedard

Home equity lenders faced with losses from the U.S. property slump are holding out for more money in distressed sales, slowing transactions needed to support a recovery, real estate agents and analysts say.
These secondary lenders are gaining power in negotiating payments from “short sales,” a growing part of the market where homes are sold for [...]

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Banks Giving Some Homeowners Cash for Keys to Bail

by Moe Bedard

Despite federal loan modification programs to help struggling homeowners, many lenders are refusing to play ball and are proceeding with foreclosures.
But some of those same lenders are quietly paying people to move out and find another place to live.

It’s known as “Cash For Keys” and banks don’t talk about it publicly but, in some cases, [...]

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Wells Fargo Plays Kick the Can With Pick-A-Pay Mortgages

by Moe Bedard

This isn’t Wells Fargo, this is Hells Fargo!

 
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Wells Fargo & Co.’s (WFC) strategy for modifying its billions in troubled Pick-A-Pay mortgages looks a lot like a game of kick-the-can-down-the-road.

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Homeowner Told to Stop Making Payments by Mortgage Servicer

by Moe Bedard

When MC lost his second job he had trouble affording his $3,000 mortgage payment. He called his mortgage holder, Flag Star Bank, asking for a break, but the bank told him there was nothing it could do for him unless he skipped payments and submitted a loan modification package.
Can you tell where this is going? [...]

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Chase & Wells Fargo profiting big time from mortgage servicing

by Moe Bedard

Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) — Wells Fargo & Co. earned almost a third of its pretax quarterly profit by hedging mortgage- servicing rights, producing gains similar to those that have helped some of the biggest U.S. banks offset weaker consumer- lending businesses.
Wells Fargo’s hedges outperformed writedowns it took on the so-called MSRs by $1.5 billion and [...]

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Do Loan Servicers Really Prefer Foreclosures?

by Moe Bedard

At the start of the foreclosure crises, personal finance experts urged struggling homeowners to contact their lenders if they started to fall behind on their mortgages. The lenders want to do everything they can, homeowners were told, to avoid a foreclosure.
Now, the experts aren’t so sure that’s the case.
Consumers who have jumped through a frustrating [...]

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Cheaper to foreclose than offer loan modifications

by Moe Bedard

New Report Describes How Little Noticed Incentives Prompt Banks to Deny Relief to Homeowners
BOSTON, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Why have several recent programs designed to encourage loan modifications failed to slow America’s
still-worsening home mortgage foreclosure crisis?  A new report from the
National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) discloses that mortgage servicers -
including many large banks – have [...]

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Video: Chase CEO Jamie Dimon Disrespects Senator Marcy Kaptur & State of Ohio

by Moe Bedard

For those of you who do not know who Jamie Dimon is, he is the self assured, cocky CEO of Chase Bank and President of the New York Federal Reserve. Some people like myself feel that Jamie Dimon has more power than many in Congress.
Maybe this interview with one of the greatest state Senators of [...]

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JP Morgan Chase wants interest only loan modifications in Obama Plan

by Moe Bedard

Banks will push the Obama administration to expand its mortgage-modification program to allow interest-only periods on reworked loans, seeking to bring more homeowners into the initiative while recognizing concern that it may only postpone defaults, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“We’re working with our peers to develop a proposal to present,” Douglas Potolsky, a senior [...]

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Bank of America Desoer says homeowners part of the loan modification problem

by Moe Bedard

Now, servicers face challenges in turning 500,000 trial modifications granted into permanent ones with steps including document collection, Desoer said. Borrowers’ responses are part of the problem, she said.
“I listen to these calls every week, and we’ve got somebody talking on the phone while they’ve got four kids in the background, because they’ve got their [...]

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JP Morgan Chase fudging the books?

by Moe Bedard

Under U.S. accounting rules in place since 1995, banks are supposed to report the value of their mortgage-servicing rights on a fair-market basis, or roughly what they would fetch in a sale. A bank must record a loss whenever it sells MSRs for a price below where they’re marked on the books.
Because there’s no active [...]

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Turning the tables on the bankers

by Moe Bedard

Particularly mind boggling are mortgage servicers who plunge ahead with foreclosure filings, and then, when called on it my activist groups, say they have no power to stop the proceedings since they don’t own the real estate!
Now it appears the legal system may slam the brakes on this runaway corporate train wreck.
A pending decision in [...]

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Wachovia Borrowers Face Delays In Govt Foreclosure Program

by Moe Bedard

For many of Wachovia’s struggling mortgage borrowers, getting a loan modification with Uncle Sam’s help is still out of reach.
Richard Bell, a Pick-A-Pay mortgage borrower at Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) unit Wachovia, says he needs a government-assisted mortgage modification before his payments balloon early next year.
“This loan is blowing up on me and I’m [...]

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Homeowners allege bank hasn’t honored modified loan

by Moe Bedard

The Floreas’ modified mortgage payment was $584 per month. In late June 2009, the Bank of America sent a statement to the Floreas indicating their monthly mortgage payment is $924 — the initial mortgage payment amount, Legal Aid Society lawyers wrote.
The Bank of America correspondence to the Floreas also indicated they had a past due [...]

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Michigan Activists Rally Against Wachovia / Wells Fargo Evictions

by Moe Bedard

Wells Fargo spends millions lobbying against pro-citizen bills like the Employee Free Choice Act, the Foreclosure Prevention Act (S 2636), and House Bill 3609, which would allow judges to modify mortgages.  Where is the bailout for Wells Fargo customers & their neighborhoods?

On September 29, more than 50 people picketed the Wachovia/Wells Fargo branch office in [...]

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Chase sucks! Homeowners use social media to fight back

by Moe Bedard

Banks just do not get it. They may sit on all the big corporate media boards and fill political coffers in turn to pull the strings of our Senators, but they cannot control social media sites.
Their failure to do what is right is being exposed daily by homeowners and banking clients like the one below. [...]

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Are you being abused by Chase? Here is how you get help!

by Moe Bedard

Are you being screwed by Chase? Are you being used and abused during the loan modification or short sale process and want to know your rights?
Welcome to the club of unhappy homeowners, abused Chase clients and never ending stories of lies, lies and more lies. Heck, don’t take my word for it, there are over [...]

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Banks hold record delinquent mortgages

by Moe Bedard

The ratio of first mortgages 90-days late in Orange County rose for the seventh straight month in July, hitting 6.7% of all loans outstanding. That’s the highest percentage since at least January 2007, when it was a mere 0.7%, and is up slightly from 6.6% in June, reports First American CoreLogic.
The percentage of mortgages here [...]

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FORECLOSURE MEDIATION PROGRAMS’ POTENTIAL TO HELP HOMEOWNERS NOW IN JEOPARDY DUE TO LACK OF INDUSTRY ACCOUNTABILITY

by Moe Bedard

NCLC Looks at 25 Programs in 14 States: CA, CT, FL, IN, KY, ME, MI, NV, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OR and PA; Mediation Programs Seen as Faltering For Same Reasons as Struggling Federal Voluntary Foreclosure Modification Efforts.
WASHINGTON, D.C.///September 23, 2009///A spate of new state and local programs that have emerged over the last year [...]

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Ohio homeowner sues Bank of America

by Moe Bedard

When she fell behind on her payments in 2008, Countrywide Home Loans – under pressure from the Ohio Attorney General to offer loan modifications – lowered her interest rate and extended the loan term. Her payment went from $524 a month to $401 a month – which Cable said she paid.
But then Countrywide went out [...]

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Not getting help from Bank of America? Here is a special email form to get help today!

by Moe Bedard

This blog and my forum reach a lot of Bank of America customers and it seems many homeowners are not getting the help they deserve. So, they have set up an email that you can email for help via CBS Channel 5 News Phoenix, AZ and they have promised to help you.
Have you had challenges [...]

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BOA Among Worst For Loan Mods: Bank Of America Fires Back, Issues Statement

by Moe Bedard

Bank of America is reacting to a Treasury Department report that found it to be among the worst performers among the biggest U.S. banks in modifying loans for struggling homeowners.
Bank of America began 27,985 trial loan modifications, or 4 percent of its eligible loans, under the government’s Making Home Affordable Program started this year, the [...]

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Struggling Homeowners Take Aim At Bank Of America

by Moe Bedard

One of the banks named was mentioned more than other institutions. Viewers said Bank of America has not given them help they need.
“Their customer service has been horrible,” Tempe resident Shelley Peterson said she first applied for a loan modification last December after losing her job.
Peterson said the company has still not notified her about [...]

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Court Ruling Upholds Foreclosure Sale Despite MERS’ Appeal

by Moe Bedard

In its ruling, the supreme court said that MERS was not a “contingently necessary party.” It added since Sovereign Bank didn’t register its interest with the county’s register of deeds, it had no rights in the foreclosure preceding.
In response to the ruling, MERS president and CEO RK Arnold said the firm was disappointed, but respected [...]

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Malibu’s Least Wanted: Exec kicked out of the Bu and Wells

by Moe Bedard

Sometimes I wonder if I am living in a movie. Some type of fantasy land where bankers steal my money, my kids money, take out bonuses for failing and then party high on the hog in Malibu beach fronts as I slave to the dollar daily.
Oh, its no movie stupid, it’s the U.S.A.! And it’s beginning [...]

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Bank of America says executives to continue flying in luxury

by Moe Bedard

Bank of America Corp., pressured by the U.S. Treasury Department to justify executive perks after receiving a taxpayer-funded bailout, said the firm doesn’t need to impose new constraints on employee use of company aircraft.
The lender encourages use of its corporate aircraft for business travel for “safety and efficiency reasons” and doesn’t plan a new pre-approval [...]

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Helping homeowners?

by Moe Bedard

Lenders are not moving quickly enough to do their part and refinance mortgages
In March, Phoenix homeowner Bobbi Giguere started asking her mortgage company, Wells Fargo, to modify her loan. She since has gone rounds with the company, trying to provide information and get an answer.
As The New York Times recently reported, it took bankruptcy Judge [...]

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Judge Sends Countrywide Suit Over Loan Modifications to N.Y. Court

by Moe Bedard

“Although defendants deny it, by arguing that TILA requires a different interpretation of the contract, defendants are raising a federal defense,” the judge said in his decision. “A federal defense has never been sufficient for federal question jurisdiction.”
Two investors in mortgage-backed securities sued the Bank of America Corp. unit in December over plans to make [...]

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Is your bank a lagging lender?

by Moe Bedard

“I just never heard back,” Chavez said. “They just kept giving me the runaround, telling me, ‘You’ll hear something, don’t worry.’ But I never heard from them and I’m in this position now.”
Chavez claims Bank of America told him he should pray or maybe get a second job to pay his mortgage.
He says they even [...]

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More on the Wells Fargo Foreclosure Flap

by Moe Bedard

Your neighbors are always watching.
That much is clear from the story about the Wells Fargo executive who was reportedly throwing parties in a swank Malibu house that the bank had claimed from its struggling owners. It was the neighbors who revealed that the Wells Fargo banker was squatting in the house.
The story, which was first [...]

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Wells Fargo executive throws parties in Malibu foreclosure

by Moe Bedard

Wells Fargo executives sure know how to party. They may suck at mortgage servicing and loans modifications, but they sure know how to have Malibu beach front foreclosure romps.
A Wells executive, Cheronda Guyton, senior vice president for foreclosed commercial properties apparently per the LA times, “hosted parties and spent long summer weekends in the $12 million [...]

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Ohio Governor backs lawsuits against mortgage servicers

by Moe Bedard

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said on Thursday he backed the state attorney general’s efforts to sue mortgage servicers who fail to work with troubled borrowers to avoid foreclosure.
“For those servicers who aren’t willing to work with us and cooperate with us, I support the strongest legal action we can bring against them,” the Democrat told [...]

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Mortgage Servicers Bought Loans Blindly

by Moe Bedard

Waters: When you bought the loan from this mortgage company, you had to look at it to see what you were buying, right?
Coffin: Not loan by loan.
Waters: Not loan by loan. You got packages?
Coffin: [Nods in agreement.]
It’s a curious response. You wouldn’t buy a car without taking a test drive, wouldn’t buy a house without [...]

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Bank of America Increases Number Helped by Foreclosure Program

by Moe Bedard

Bank of America, the country’s largest lender, said Tuesday it had more than doubled the number of people it has helped under a government foreclosure prevention program last month.
Under the program, known as Making Home Affordable, lenders are paid by the government to lower the payments of distressed homeowners. But in its first progress report [...]

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WaMu: The forgotten bank failure

by Moe Bedard

“We’re still waiting to see how the Wachovia and Washington Mutual portfolios play out,” said Brian Olasov, who studies the banking industry as managing director at law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge. “We’ve got a big bulge in resets still to come.”
WaMu and Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), helped stoke the [...]

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Judges’ Frustration Grows With Mortgage Servicers

by Moe Bedard

PHOENIX — Bobbi Giguere had no luck in securing a loan modification from her mortgage servicer, Wells Fargo. For months, she had sent the bank the financial documents it requested to process her modification. But each time she called to check on the request, she was told to send her paperwork again.
“I submitted the paperwork [...]

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Is Carrington Mortgage Services misleading investors as they screw homeowners?

by Moe Bedard

It looks like Senator Chris Dodd is going to bat for one of his Connecticut mortgage buddy’s, Bruce Rose (pictured) and one of the worst mortgage servicers in the country, Carrington Mortgage Services. Forbes is reporting  that Dodd wrote a letter to the Federal Reserve asking for some leeway and TALF money for the independent servicers like [...]

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Rancho Cucamonga foreclosure center is Chase’s busiest

by Moe Bedard

“The center does double the loan modification submissions than any other in the country,” said Rod Tawasha, home preservation manager.
This month, the foreclosure prevention center moved to a bigger location on Haven Avenue to meet the growing demand. At the center, customers with Chase, WaMu and EMC loans can get help in reducing interest rates, [...]

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Citi Reports Second Quarter Foreclosure Prevention Activities Helped 108,000 U.S. Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

Loss Mitigation Successes Outnumbered Foreclosures Completed By More Than 12 to 1
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today Citi announced that the company’s consumer mortgage lending and foreclosure prevention efforts for the second quarter successfully helped 108,000 mortgage holders across the country avoid potential foreclosure and remain in their homes. The total number of homeowners helped by Citi’s initiatives [...]

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Mortgage Relief That’s No Help To Homeowners

by Moe Bedard

Billionaire Wilbur Ross clashed with Rose in court in March over Carrington’s conduct. The legendary investor’s subprime servicer, American Home Mortgage, collects payments on the only Carrington securities Rose doesn’t service in-house. Ross says Carrington wrongfully delays the sale of foreclosed homes so Rose can keep collecting interest on zombie properties, injuring other investors in [...]

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Wells Fargo Mortgage Promises Better Service

by Moe Bedard

Wells Fargo Executive Vice President Mary Coffin, with the home mortgage servicing division, acknowledged that customer service for Phoenix-area customers wasn’t up to par.
“During the past few months, we know there have been instances where it’s been unfortunate… where we haven’t appropriately communicated at a time when they’re anxious and they’re going through a very [...]

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Taylor, Bean & Whitaker served with cease and desist orders

by Moe Bedard

Several states have filed cease and desist orders against Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corporation, one of the largest wholesale lenders in the country.
Apparently the issues involve Taylor Bean closing FHA loans in several states, but has failed to fund them. Florida, News Jersey, Massachusetts and several other states are prohibiting Taylor Bean from accepting new [...]

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Litton Loan Servicing Signs Treasury Agreement for Federal Loan Modification Program

by Moe Bedard

HOUSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Litton Loan Servicing is pleased to announce it has signed the agreement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury to participate in the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). Since March, Litton has offered more than 38,000 modifications to struggling homeowners using terms in accordance with the broad principles of HAMP, and has built infrastructure [...]

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Mortgage servicers accused of preying on the people they’re supposed to help

by Moe Bedard

Billions of dollars the government is spending to help financially pressed homeowners avert foreclosure is passing through — and enriching — companies accused of preying on the people they’re supposed to help, an Associated Press investigation has found.
Foreclosure affects a persons life in many ways. Not only is the emotional strain difficult, but the financial [...]

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Biggest Lenders Among Worst Performers in Obama Mortgage Plan

by Moe Bedard

Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., four of the largest U.S. mortgage servicers, are likely to show the poorest levels of homeowner assistance among the 31 companies participating in President Barack Obama’s $75 billion loan modification program, according to David Sisko, the head of default management [...]

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