Oct 28
Flashback.
YouTube Added: 08.06.2011
Tags: Alan Grayson, Bank of America, Banking, Economy, Foreclosures, Fraud, Global News, Government, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Politics, Society, U.S.
Oct 16
Don’t miss:
- Banks turn to demolition of foreclosed properties to ease housing-market pressures (Washington Post, Oct. 13, 2011):
Cleveland — The sight of excavators tearing down vacant buildings has become common in this foreclosure-ravaged city, where the housing crisis hit early and hard. But the story behind the recent wave of demolitions is novel — and cities around the country are taking notice.
A handful of the nation’s largest banks have begun giving away scores of properties that are abandoned or otherwise at risk of languishing indefinitely and further dragging down already depressed neighborhoods.
The banks have even been footing the bill for the demolitions — as much as $7,500 a pop. Four years into the housing crisis, the ongoing expense of upkeep and taxes, along with costly code violations and the price of marketing the properties, has saddled banks with a heavy burden. It often has become cheaper to knock down decaying homes no one wants.
The demolitions in some cases have paved the way for community gardens, church additions and parking lots. Even when the result is an empty lot, it can be one less pockmark. While some widespread demolitions could risk hollowing out the urban core of struggling cities such as Cleveland, advocates say that the homes being targeted are already unsalvageable and that the bulldozers are merely “burying the dead.”
Tags: Banking, Economy, Foreclosures, Global News, Real Estate, Society, U.S.
Oct 08
- Could they have stopped the credit crunch? Fannie Mae knew about dodgy mortgages in 2003, says report (Daily Mail, Oct. 4, 2011):
Mortgage giant Fannie Mae knew about allegations of improper foreclosure practices by law firms as early as 2003 but did not act to stop them, a government watchdog has said.
But it wasn’t until mid-2010 before the company’s overseer began to scrutinise the conduct of some of the law firms when news reports emerged of dubious practices, a report revealed today.
An unnamed shareholder warned Fannie Mae of alleged foreclosure abuses in 2003, the inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) said in the report.
Fannie Mae responded by hiring a law firm to investigate the claims in 2005, which reported it had found foreclosure attorneys in Florida ‘routinely filing false pleadings and affidavits’ the following year.
Tags: Economy, Fannie Mae, Foreclosures, Global News, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, U.S.
Aug 26
- JPMorgan Is Foreclosing On The U.S. Treasury (Business Insider, Aug. 26, 2011):
Here’s a hilarious story tracked down by Yves Smith.
Recently in Hillsboro, Ore. JP Morgan completed a foreclosure sale on a home that had a tax lien on it. The bank could have corrected this “mistake” by paying the IRS. Instead it claimed that its mortgage was senior to the lien and foreclosured on the Treasury.
Tags: Banking, Economy, Foreclosures, Global News, Government, JPMorgan, Politics, U.S.
Jul 21
- Special report: Banks still robo-signing (Reuters, Jul 19, 2011):
NEW YORK/IMMOKALEE, Florida (Reuters) – America’s leading mortgage lenders vowed in March to end the dubious foreclosure practices that caused a bruising scandal last year.
But a Reuters investigation finds that many are still taking the same shortcuts they promised to shun, from sketchy paperwork to the use of “robo-signers.”
In its effort to seize the two-bedroom ranch house of 87-year-old Margery Gunter in this down-on-its-luck Florida town, OneWest Bank recently filed a court document that appears riddled with discrepancies. Mrs. Gunter, who has lived in the house for 40 years and gets around with the aid of a walker, stopped paying her loan back in 2009, her lawyer concedes. To foreclose, the bank submitted to the Collier County clerk’s office on March 3 a “mortgage assignment,” a document essential to proving who owns a mortgage once the original lender sells it off.
But OneWest’s paperwork is problematic. Among the snags: state law permits lenders to file to foreclose only if they already legally own a mortgage. Yet the key document establishing ownership wasn’t signed and officially recorded until months after OneWest filed to foreclose on Mrs. Gunter. OneWest declined to comment on the case.
Reuters has found that some of the biggest U.S. banks and other “loan servicers” continue to file questionable foreclosure documents with courts and county clerks. They are using tactics that late last year triggered an outcry, multiple investigations and temporary moratoriums on foreclosures.
In recent months, servicers have filed thousands of documents that appear to have been fabricated or improperly altered, or have sworn to false facts.
Reuters also identified at least six “robo-signers,” individuals who in recent months have each signed thousands of mortgage assignments — legal documents which pinpoint ownership of a property. These same individuals have been identified — in depositions, court testimony or court rulings — as previously having signed vast numbers of foreclosure documents that they never read or checked.
Mar 24
…Just the wrong kind of record. At just 250,000, this was the lowest annualized new home sales number ever. So on one hand you have a TV clown tell you the housing market bottomed in August 2008, on the other you have a pathological tax cheat Welcoming all to the Recovery, and on the mutated third hand (thank you Fukushima), reality continues to indicate that the biggest depression in history persists without abating.
Source: ZeroHedge
Mar. 23 (Bloomberg) — Purchases of new U.S. homes unexpectedly declined in February to the slowest pace on record and prices dropped to the lowest level since December 2003, adding to evidence the industry is floundering.
Sales decreased 16.9 percent to a 250,000 annual pace, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected a gain to a 290,000 rate, according to the median estimate. The median price fell 8.9 percent from the same month in 2010.
Builders are struggling to compete with existing homes as foreclosures add to the overhang of unsold properties and drive down values. The figures underscore the Federal Reserve’s view that the housing market “continues to be depressed” even as the rest of the economy improves.
Tags: Economy, Foreclosures, Global News, Real Estate, U.S.
Feb 25
Ever wonder why the banks have been stowing away cash as if in anticipation of a torrential rainy day? Well, it just started pouring. According to the WSJ: “The Obama administration is trying to push through a settlement over mortgage-servicing breakdowns that could force America’s largest banks to pay for reductions in loan principal worth billions of dollars…Terms of the administration’s proposal include a commitment from mortgage servicers to reduce the loan balances of troubled borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth, people familiar with the matter said.
The cost of those writedowns won’t be borne by investors who purchased mortgage-backed securities, these people said…some state attorneys general and federal agencies are pushing for banks to pay more than $20 billion in civil fines or to fund a comparable amount of loan modifications for distressed borrowers…Regulators are looking at up to 14 servicers that could be a party to the settlement…Banks would also have to reduce second-lien mortgages when first mortgages are modified…Under the administration’s proposed settlement, banks would have to bear the cost of all writedowns rather than passing them on to other investors.
The settlement proposal focuses on pushing servicers who mishandled foreclosure procedures to eat losses, by writing down loans that they service on behalf of clients. Those clients include mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as investors in loans that were securitized by Wall Street firms.”
In other words, we have just reached the pinnacle of banana republic socialist insanity. In one fell swoop the teleprompter will not only grant reprieve to the banks for decades of fraudulent mortgage activity, but undercapitalize themselves and have them at risk for another liquidity run, which would of course mean another record multi-trillion taxpayer bailout. And the worst case: the 10 million or whatever underwater mortgages will get an average reduction of $2000 each. This is unfuckingbelieveable!
From the WSJ:
Tags: Banking, Barack Obama, Debt, Foreclosures, Global News, Government, Mortgages, Obama administration, Society, U.S.
Feb 05
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – If the saying “as goes California, so goes the nation” still rings true, then Americans are facing a depressing future, according to a list of the country’s most miserable cities.
Ravaged by falling house prices, high unemployment, a massive budget deficit, rampant crime and high state taxes, California filled four of the top five spots in the Forbes list of unhappy urban areas.
Stockton, in the state’s Central Valley, topped the list, followed by Miami, in Florida, Merced, Modesto and Sacramento — all in California.
“California was hit by the bursting of the housing bubble about as hard as can be imagined,” said Kurt Badenhausen, Forbes senior editor.
Tags: California, Economy, Foreclosures, Global News, U.S.
Feb 03
This is as I’ve said many, many times ‘The Greatest Depression’.
We are officially in the middle of the worst housing collapse in U.S. history – and unfortunately it is going to get even worse.
Already, U.S. housing prices have fallen further during this economic downturn (26 percent), then they did during the Great Depression (25.9 percent).
Approximately 11 percent of all homes in the United States are currently standing empty. In fact, there are many new housing developments across the U.S. that resemble little more than ghost towns because foreclosures have wiped them out.
Mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures reached new highs in 2010, and it is being projected that banks and financial institutions will repossess at least a million more U.S. homes during 2011.
Meanwhile, unemployment is absolutely rampant and wage levels are going down at a time when mortgage lending standards have been significantly tightened.
That means that there are very few qualified buyers running around out there and that is going to continue to be the case for quite some time to come.
When you add all of those factors up, it leads to one inescapable conclusion. The “housing Armageddon” that we have been experiencing since 2007 is going to get even worse in 2011.
Tags: Economy, Foreclosures, Global News, Great Depression, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages
Jan 29
Added: 28. January 2011
Tags: AIG, Bailout, Bank of America, Banking, Barack Obama, Barclays, Ben Bernanke, Bush administration, Citigroup, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Foreclosures, George Bush, Global News, Goldman Sachs, Inflation, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wall Street
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