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Why sloppy foreclosure process could ruin Florida

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

Why sloppy foreclosure process could ruin Florida

There’s no polite way to put this. A growing cancer is infecting the backlogged legal process of foreclosing on hundreds of thousands of homes in Florida.

It’s endangering the legal and economic stability of this state. And it’s exposing an appalling lack of leadership, first for allowing such a breakdown in the legal system and, now, for failing to own up to this mess and get it fixed.

How bad is it? Laws governing who actually owns a foreclosed home are becoming so suspect a new buzzword is emerging: blighted titles. Even the tepid rebound of Florida’s economy may face crippling delays in resolving hundreds of thousands of foreclosures in the Sunshine State.

The Truth About Short Sales and Their Impact on Your Credit

Monday, September 27th, 2010

One of the most frightening titles you can own right now is “homeowner.” That’s because millions of us have completely lost the equity in our homes, which means we are in the unenviable position of owing more than the home is actually worth. Nobody asks for their home’s value to fall, but plenty of homeowners are now in the position of trying to dispose of mortgages that are considered upside-down.

There are several ways to do this. First, you can actually find someone willing to buy your house for enough dough to cover all of the mortgages it secures. NOTE: That’s probably not going to happen so proceed to Option #2. Option #2 is to pay the difference out of your own pocket. So, if you owe $150,000 and find a buyer at $125,000 you’d have to show up at closing with a check for $25,000 to cover the difference. If that’s not an option then you can walk away from the home (foreclosure), turn the keys back over to the lender (forfeiture of deed in lieu of foreclosure), or attempt to have the loan modified and stay in the property. Finally, you can attempt to short sell the home.

A short sale is when the lender accepts less than the full loan balance and considers the loan to be paid. So, in the aforementioned example, if the lender had accepted $125,000 as a full payoff then you would have been on your way to a successful short sale. The lender would eat the $25,000 deficiency and everyone would call it a day. But it’s not that simple. There’s the impact this event will likely have on your credit.

More Bad News For Housing, As Foreclosures Gather Steam Again

Saturday, September 18th, 2010

More Bad News For Housing, As Foreclosures Gather Steam Again

Are we seeing the next wave of the housing decline that everyone’s been waiting for?

Foreclosure activity — which would certainly be a key spur — is back on the rise, says RealtyTrac:

RealtyTrac the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™ for July 2010, which shows that foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 325,229 properties in July, a nearly 4 percent increase from the previous month but a nearly 10 percent decrease from July 2009. One in every 397 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing during the month. . . .

Existing Homes Sales PLUNGE To 15-Year Low

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Existing Homes Sales PLUNGE To 15-Year Low

Sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to the lowest level in 15 years, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades and bargain prices in many areas.

July’s sales fell by more than 27 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. It was the largest monthly drop on records dating back to 1968, and sharp declines were recorded in all regions of the country.

Mortgage Fraud Is Rising, With a Twist

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Mortgage Fraud Is Rising, With a Twist

Adapting to Tighter Rules After Collapse, Scammers Turn to More Complex Plots

New data suggests that mortgage fraud—which got tougher to pull off after the collapse of the U.S. real estate market—is returning in a big way.

Data prepared for The Wall Street Journal by research firm CoreLogic, examining about seven million home loans made by hundreds of lenders, show that losses from mortgage fraud—ranging from falsified credit reports to identity theft—rose 17% last year after declining 57% in the two years after its 2006 peak.

In 2009, $14 billion in loans, or about 0.7% of all mortgage loans made in the U.S., were originated with fraudulent application data.

Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say

Housing will eventually recover from its great swoon. But many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg.

The wealth generated by housing in those decades, particularly on the coasts, did more than assure the owners a comfortable retirement. It powered the economy, paying for the education of children and grandchildren, keeping the cruise ships and golf courses full and the restaurants humming.

More than likely, that era is gone for good.

“There is no iron law that real estate must appreciate,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for the real estate site Zillow. “All those theories advanced during the boom about why housing is special — that more people are choosing to spend more on housing, that more people are moving to the coasts, that we were running out of usable land — didn’t hold up.”

Home Price Drop of 30% Possible for 2010

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Home Price Drop of 30% Possible for 2010

First American CoreLogic has released its latest residential real estate analysis here. Three important graphs from the report follow in this discussion.

Distressed Home Sales Increased in January

The first graph shows that distressed home sales have increased to 29% of all sales. This is high but less than a year ago.

Note the systematic increase in short sales over the past year. The volume of shorts sales is expected to be increasing further in 2010. The volume of REO sales is also likely to rise. I have estimated that REO (real estate owned) bank properties on the market in 2010 will be about 33% more in number than in 2009. If sales reflect the same increase then total sales will have to increase by 1/3 in 2010 to keep the ratio of distressed sales around 30%.

Distressed Sales Likely to Increase Share of Market in 2010

The previous discussion means the total sales in 2010 will need to rise to about 8 million, up from about 6 million in 2009.

Eliminating ‘He Said, She Said’ on Loan Modifications

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Eliminating ‘He Said, She Said’ on Loan Modifications

WHEN it comes to home mortgage modifications, everyone seems to have a complaint.

Borrowers accuse mortgage servicers, which process the paperwork, of often losing important documents like pay stubs and bank statements. Servicers assert that the borrowers fail to submit certain papers and claim that they did, or submit the wrong ones.

Now, an industry group is rolling out an online portal that could eliminate these issues. Hope Now, a partnership of mortgage companies and nonprofit housing counselors, this month introduced “LoanPort,” which lets borrowers seeking a permanent mortgage modification upload digitized versions of their documents and track the progress of their application, with the help of a loan counselor.

“With this, there’s no ‘he said, she said’ element with lost documents,” said Faith Schwartz, the executive director of Hope Now, which is based in Washington.

But Howard Glaser, a principal of the Glaser Group, a consulting company in Washington, predicted that the initiative would be too small to have much impact on what he characterized as a broadly dysfunctional loan-modification effort.

“Marginal improvements are not going to have a significant impact on increasing loan modifications,” Mr. Glaser said.

10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who've Been Screwing You

Tired of getting pushed around by faceless big business? Here are 10 ways to push back!

The New Year is nearly here, and so much has happened. Wait, what’s that? Nothing major at all has happened, you say? Oh right, we’ve been stuck in neutral since dumping the toxic trash of the Republican Bush administration and embracing Democratic promises of hope and change, neither of which have blossomed.

A year of our collective life has flown by and our global culture is still rife with schemers, screw jobs and sorry excuses for solutions. And we just sit back and take it, year after year. But no more. When you make that hefty list of New Year’s resolutions, drop some of these bombs. Then duck. You’ll get your change faster than you can say, “Teabag this!”

1. Mortgage underwater? Just walk away from it. Even academia says it’s OK. Move to the city and rent.

“Homeowners should be walking away in droves,” University of Arizona law school professor Brent T. White told the Los Angeles Times. “But they aren’t. And it’s not because the financial costs of foreclosure outweigh the benefits. One can have a good credit rating again — meaning above 660 — within two years after a foreclosure.”

In a scholarly paper called “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis,” White tells cash-jacked homeowners that they can return the screw.

We’ve been championing that course for years, with reports on walkaways and trashouts, as well as violent homeowner blowback. Hell, we called the Great Recession before most did, and we’re still calling it another Great Depression in the making. So trust us. And if not us, then take it from the professor, who will soon be joined by a chorus of similarly credentialed whistleblowers as the financial crap truly hits the fan in the years to come. Go ahead, move back to the city and rent. You’ll end up there anyway when your suburb runs out of water and malls.

Problem mortgages hit new high at 14 percent

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Problem mortgages hit new high at 14 percent

Data mean foreclosures may not peak until next year

More than 14 percent of borrowers were in trouble on their mortgage during the third quarter, a new record, according to an industry survey released Thursday, which also suggests that the foreclosure rate is likely not to peak until next year as unemployment rates continue to rise.

Unemployment remains a big driver of the problem, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, which conducts the survey. Those with delinquent loans now include a growing portion of people traditionally considered creditworthy and people whose mortgages are insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

“The outlook is that delinquency rates and foreclosure rates will continue to worsen before they improve,” said Jay Brinkmann, the group’s chief economist.

About 9.6 percent of borrowers were delinquent on their mortgage during the third quarter, according to the survey, and another 4.5 percent more were somewhere in the foreclosure process. Overall, about 14 percent of mortgage loans or 7.4 million households were delinquent or in the foreclosure process during the quarter, according to the group.

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Real Estate

...now browsing by tag

Why sloppy foreclosure process could ruin Florida

The Truth About Short Sales and Their Impact on Your Credit

More Bad News For Housing, As Foreclosures Gather Steam Again

Existing Homes Sales PLUNGE To 15-Year Low

Mortgage Fraud Is Rising, With a Twist

Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say

Home Price Drop of 30% Possible for 2010

Eliminating ‘He Said, She Said’ on Loan Modifications

10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You

Problem mortgages hit new high at 14 percent