Tuesday, October 26, 2010

foreclosure agents


Interesting story, but the longer homes are allowed to avoid foreclosure, which artificially buoys housing prices, the longer it will take for the overall economy to recover (and Harry Reid couldn't give a flying v):
The plan swept states with some of the highest foreclosure levels, including California, Nevada and Arizona, into a swelling crisis over lenders’ flawed paperwork that had been mostly confined to 23 other states that require judicial review of foreclosures.

Bank of America instituted a partial freeze last week in those 23 states, and three other major mortgage lenders have done the same. The bank’s decision on Friday increased pressure on other lenders to extend their moratoriums nationwide as well.

An immediate effect of the action will be a temporary stay of execution for hundreds of thousands of borrowers in default. The bank said it would be brief, a mere pause while it made sure its methods were in order.

But as the furor grows over lenders’ attempts to bypass legal rules in their haste to reclaim houses from delinquent owners, there is a growing expectation that foreclosures will dwindle for months as the foreclosure system is reworked.

Stan Humphries, an economist with the housing site Zillow.com, said what was initially cast as a problem of sloppy record-keeping is rapidly evolving into one that suggests the banks’ procedures for recording loans might not have followed the law.

“The former scenario represents a hiccup for the market, maybe a 30- to 90-day slowdown in foreclosure initiations,” Mr. Humphries said. “The latter scenario is more like hitting a wall.”

The uncertainty is putting the housing market in turmoil and causing vast confusion. Bank of America, for example, said it was not halting sales of foreclosed properties to new owners, but Fannie Mae, the giant mortgage holding company, is doing exactly that with properties it bought from Bank of America.

One real estate agent in Florida said Friday that he had six deals involving former Bank of America properties that had been at least temporarily scuttled. Representatives for Fannie, which was taken over by federal regulators after it failed two years ago, did not return calls.

Real estate agents said the extent of any disruption depended on how long the moratorium lasted, how many lenders ultimately participated — and what people in default decided to do.

“If it’s still January, February, March, and they’re not foreclosing, you’ll see a big effect,” said Jim Klinge, an agent in San Diego. “It’ll be a banker’s holiday, free rent for everybody and a lawyers’ gold mine.”
More on housing at Instapundit.


If you want a nice 8-minute primer into how the foreclosure fraud crisis works, here’s a video from Rep. Alan Grayson, complete with four real-world examples. He talks about a man who was foreclosed on when he didn’t have a mortgage and paid cash for the home; a home that had two foreclosure suits against it because both servicers claimed ownership of the title; a couple foreclosed on over a contested $75 late fee; and a story that sounded a lot like the ones from my HAMP series, only in the end the servicer used forged documents to claim ownership of the title.


Grayson takes us back to the very beginning of this crisis, during the housing bubble, where runaway mortgage sales and poor record-keeping led to confusion over title ownership on the part of the servicers. “The banks simply digitized mortgage titles into a privatized system, called the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (or MERS). And it did the transfers by trading Excel spreadsheets among the banks and trusts, rather than endorsing the notes as required by their own contracts, by state real estate law and by IRS rules.”


This was basically the original sin. Users of the MERS system did not make the proper procedures to own the notes, and according to Grayson, in 45 of the 50 states, they lack the legal right to foreclose. “Servicers are basically guessing that they have the right to foreclose when they do foreclose,” he says. This led to the foreclosure mills and the robo-signers and all the fraudulent activities and forgeries that we have seen.


This fraud really is catching up with the servicers. The New York Times reports today that the system has seized up, which they plausibly see as a positive:



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Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...


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Phoenix Realty Condos Foreclosures For Sale by ScarlettLie790


&quot;Xbox 2&quot; game WarDevil canned Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of. ... "Xbox 2" game WarDevil canned Related content. Latest WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within screenshots; News WarDevil trailer set for Tokyo ; News Digi-Guys shows off gorgeous Xbox 2 war game ...

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...


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Interesting story, but the longer homes are allowed to avoid foreclosure, which artificially buoys housing prices, the longer it will take for the overall economy to recover (and Harry Reid couldn't give a flying v):
The plan swept states with some of the highest foreclosure levels, including California, Nevada and Arizona, into a swelling crisis over lenders’ flawed paperwork that had been mostly confined to 23 other states that require judicial review of foreclosures.

Bank of America instituted a partial freeze last week in those 23 states, and three other major mortgage lenders have done the same. The bank’s decision on Friday increased pressure on other lenders to extend their moratoriums nationwide as well.

An immediate effect of the action will be a temporary stay of execution for hundreds of thousands of borrowers in default. The bank said it would be brief, a mere pause while it made sure its methods were in order.

But as the furor grows over lenders’ attempts to bypass legal rules in their haste to reclaim houses from delinquent owners, there is a growing expectation that foreclosures will dwindle for months as the foreclosure system is reworked.

Stan Humphries, an economist with the housing site Zillow.com, said what was initially cast as a problem of sloppy record-keeping is rapidly evolving into one that suggests the banks’ procedures for recording loans might not have followed the law.

“The former scenario represents a hiccup for the market, maybe a 30- to 90-day slowdown in foreclosure initiations,” Mr. Humphries said. “The latter scenario is more like hitting a wall.”

The uncertainty is putting the housing market in turmoil and causing vast confusion. Bank of America, for example, said it was not halting sales of foreclosed properties to new owners, but Fannie Mae, the giant mortgage holding company, is doing exactly that with properties it bought from Bank of America.

One real estate agent in Florida said Friday that he had six deals involving former Bank of America properties that had been at least temporarily scuttled. Representatives for Fannie, which was taken over by federal regulators after it failed two years ago, did not return calls.

Real estate agents said the extent of any disruption depended on how long the moratorium lasted, how many lenders ultimately participated — and what people in default decided to do.

“If it’s still January, February, March, and they’re not foreclosing, you’ll see a big effect,” said Jim Klinge, an agent in San Diego. “It’ll be a banker’s holiday, free rent for everybody and a lawyers’ gold mine.”
More on housing at Instapundit.


If you want a nice 8-minute primer into how the foreclosure fraud crisis works, here’s a video from Rep. Alan Grayson, complete with four real-world examples. He talks about a man who was foreclosed on when he didn’t have a mortgage and paid cash for the home; a home that had two foreclosure suits against it because both servicers claimed ownership of the title; a couple foreclosed on over a contested $75 late fee; and a story that sounded a lot like the ones from my HAMP series, only in the end the servicer used forged documents to claim ownership of the title.


Grayson takes us back to the very beginning of this crisis, during the housing bubble, where runaway mortgage sales and poor record-keeping led to confusion over title ownership on the part of the servicers. “The banks simply digitized mortgage titles into a privatized system, called the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (or MERS). And it did the transfers by trading Excel spreadsheets among the banks and trusts, rather than endorsing the notes as required by their own contracts, by state real estate law and by IRS rules.”


This was basically the original sin. Users of the MERS system did not make the proper procedures to own the notes, and according to Grayson, in 45 of the 50 states, they lack the legal right to foreclose. “Servicers are basically guessing that they have the right to foreclose when they do foreclose,” he says. This led to the foreclosure mills and the robo-signers and all the fraudulent activities and forgeries that we have seen.


This fraud really is catching up with the servicers. The New York Times reports today that the system has seized up, which they plausibly see as a positive:



bench craft company complaints

&quot;Xbox 2&quot; game WarDevil canned Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of. ... "Xbox 2" game WarDevil canned Related content. Latest WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within screenshots; News WarDevil trailer set for Tokyo ; News Digi-Guys shows off gorgeous Xbox 2 war game ...

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...


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&quot;Xbox 2&quot; game WarDevil canned Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of. ... "Xbox 2" game WarDevil canned Related content. Latest WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within screenshots; News WarDevil trailer set for Tokyo ; News Digi-Guys shows off gorgeous Xbox 2 war game ...

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...


bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints

&quot;Xbox 2&quot; game WarDevil canned Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our Xbox 360 news of. ... "Xbox 2" game WarDevil canned Related content. Latest WarDevil: Unleash the Beast Within screenshots; News WarDevil trailer set for Tokyo ; News Digi-Guys shows off gorgeous Xbox 2 war game ...

Timothy Karr: Fox <b>News</b> Tries to Foreclose on Sesame Street

Every time PBS and NPR have come under attack, the American public has risen up in protest to defend -- not defund -- it. Whatever the rationale, Fox News' ongoing witch hunt tactic is a proven loser.

Breathe Better With Bitter - Science <b>News</b>

Science News. Vol. 175, March 28, 2009, p. 11. [Go to]. Citations & References : seperator. D. A. Deshpande et al. Bitter taste receptors on airway smooth muscle bronchodilate by localized calcium signaling and reverse obstruction. ...


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