WEEKEND EDITION, MARCH 11 MARCH 15, 2013

MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2013

ACADEMIA ADVERSARIES ADVOCATES BLOGOSPHERE LEGAL LEGISLATE OP-ED HOMEOWNERS NEWS ForeclosureGate.org Is A Public Service Homeowner Coalition and Cooperative, Created To Exchange News And Information And To Advance Justice For American Homeowners

Facing Foreclosure? Don't Just Sit ThereAct Now A shocking 2012 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, University of Chicago and Ohio State University estimates that over 800,000 foreclosures that were done between 2009 and 2010 were done in error ... much like a doctor amputating the wrong leg. Studies show that higher rates of home owners in a neighborhood versus renters generally result in better property maintenance, school quality, crime rates and tax base stability. Higher amounts of rentals generally have the opposite effect. Home foreclosures can result in neighborhood property devaluation, neighborhood blight, increase in crime, government tax base erosion, family discord and health issues.

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New rules to govern Illinois foreclosures The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday announced new rules governing mortgage foreclosures that will require lenders to prove to judges that they have exhausted all efforts to help a borrower before seeking a foreclosure judgment against the homeowner. The rules, first reported by the Chicago Tribune, are designed to better inform and protect the tens of thousands of Illinois homeowners still at risk of losing their homes to lenders six years after the local housing market's bubble burst.

Four proposals to protect homeowners from foreclosure-related abuses and increase resources to keep them in their homes were filed this week as lawmakers ready for a legislative session that already includes a long-debated The bills, filed fast-track foreclosure bill. Wednesday by Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, would help homeowners by reducing their loan amounts through principal reductions, shrinking the number of years banks can pursue a.

SHILLER: All This Housing Optimism Is Way Too Premature Henry Blodget: Everybody in the U.S. seems convinced that the housing market is going to come roaring back, its going to save the economy, house prices are going to rise, houses are a great investment again. Are they right? Professor Shiller: First of all, I challenge your statement a little bit. The Pulsenomics survey of experts they had 105 experts in their December survey and not one of them predicted a return to the boom that we had.

Chairman Of Debt Collection Service Sentenced To 5 Yrs In Prison For Tarp Fraud To keep the money flowing in the $12 million fraud scheme at Oxford, Richard Pinto defrauded TARP recipient Webster Bank in order to obtain a $6 million line of credit, said Christy Romero, Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP). In this case, the consequence for lying, cheating, and stealing from clients, investors, and a TARP bank is serving five years in federal prison, and it should serve as a warning to anyone exploiting TARP at taxpayers expense. SIGTARP, the.

New York City Housing Trails Rebound: Cutting Research

National

Case Offers Peek Behind the Curtain of a Security The private mortgage-backed securities market grew to be a virtually inscrutable giant. Each securitization contained thousands of mortgages and as many as dozens of different securities, some of which could emerge unscathed even if others produced total losses for investors. Five years after it began to blow up, that market can be seen as having failed twice

New York Citys housing market is poised to lag behind other markets for the next two years even as a national recovery in real estate continues. Thats the assessment of Capital Economics Ltd. Property Economist Paul Diggle and assistant Michael Pearce, who in a Jan. 28 report said conditions look less amenable to rising prices in New York City, particularly in Manhattan and.

The Government Whiffs, Again, on Mortgage Servicer Abuse Since the foreclosure crisis began six years ago, homeowner advocates advanced two priorities: accountability for the fraud and abuse that took place, and safeguards to ensure it never happens again. There has been little if any progress on the former, but a spate of new rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau represent a serious attempt at the latter. New rules governing mortgage lenders (also called mortgage originators), which create a standard 30-year qualified mortgage based on the borrowers ability to pay, and use various incentives to discourage riskier loans outside the QM model, have been lauded by many analysts.

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WEEKEND EDITION, MARCH 11 MARCH 15, 2013

TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2013

ACADEMIA ADVERSARIES ADVOCATES BLOGOSPHERE LEGAL LEGISLATE OP-ED HOMEOWNERS NEWS ForeclosureGate.org Is A Public Service Homeowner Coalition and Cooperative, Created To Exchange News And Information And To Advance Justice For American Homeowners

Dave Dayen: Servicers Committed Loan Error Rates of Either 4.2% or 97.2%, Take Your Pick Anyone paying a smattering of attention justifiably raised a skeptical eyebrow at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currencys assurances to Congress that the Independent Foreclosure Reviews revealed hardly any borrower harm from servicer malfeasance. First of all, from the reporting we know, OCC just dropped this 4.2% error rate number without supporting information from the loan files. Second, the error rate contrasted wildly with what Yves uncovered in her superlative series on Bank of America reviews. Most critically, if the reviews were finding no borrower harm, there would have been no real reason to ditch them. What Mortgage Relief? A year ago, when the nations biggest banks settled with state and federal officials over claims of foreclosure abuses, the public was led to believe that the deal would allow millions of hardpressed borrowers to escape the threat of foreclosure. It still hasnt happened. A third progress report was issued last Thursday by the monitor of the settlement, which, among its terms, required the banks to grant $25 billion worth of mortgage relief, much of it by reducing the principal balances on troubled loans. The report showed that through the end of 2012. Florida Senate Bill (1) 666, The Foreclosure Relief Bill That Carries The Mark Of The Beast The Florida Senate has now weighed in with their version of foreclosure reform and WOW is it a treasure chest of juicy, wonderful stuff. They want to dramatically change the rules for foreclosure, not just for all those new mortgages that might be executed after the bill is passed but declaring that the act is remedial in nature and applies to all mortgages encumbering real property and all promissory notes secured by a mortgage, whether executed before, on, or after the effective date of this act....

Massachusetts Division Of Banks Proposes New Rules For Foreclosure Prevention Options The new rules are not only in line with Massachusetts strong foreclosure protection efforts but they go a step further by requiring that the lenders do the math to determine whether foreclosing makes the most economic sense, said Undersecretary of Consumer Affairs Barbara Anthony.

Class Claims Chase Bank's Collection Abuses Mirror Housing & Foreclosure Fiascos JP Morgan Chase abusively extracted tens of millions of dollars from debtors, and people who do not owe debts, through robo-signing, "intentionally inaccurate record-keeping," and all the abuses of the mortgage and foreclosure catastrophes, a class action claims in Federal Court. Lead plaintiff Johanna Sierra sued JP Morgan Chase & Co.; its collections subsidiary.

Justice prepares to file civil lawsuit against S&P over alleged misgrading The Justice Department is preparing to file a civil lawsuit against the ratings agency Standard & Poors centered on the companys alleged misgrading of complex financial products at the heart of the financial crisis, according to an announcement by the firm Monday. The countrys ratings agencies have been frequently blamed for playing a major role in causing Wall Streets meltdown four years ago. The Justice.

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New-home sales fell 7.3% in December from the prior month to an annual rate of 369,000, said the U.S. Census Bureau. That's compared to November's revised annual rate of 398,000 new home sales. Last month's rate of sales was significantly lower than expectations. A consensus of economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast an annual rate of 385,000 new home sales.

Promises, Promises at the New York Fed The agreement spells out the terms of a deal in which the New York Fed received $43 million from Bank of Americas Countrywide unit. The money changed hands to settle a narrow dispute involving cash flows on several mortgage securities held by an investment vehicle, known as Maiden Lane II. That vehicle was created by the New York Fed as part of the rescue of A.I.G., which had held the Countrywide securities. The previously confidential agreement released Bank of America from all litigation claims on the securities held by Maiden Lane II. But in exchange for that $43 million, the New York Fed did something else for Bank of America. It agreed to testify on behalf of the bank in its legal battle against A.I.G. over fraud claims.

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WEEKEND EDITION, MARCH 11 MARCH 15, 2013

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2013

ACADEMIA ADVERSARIES ADVOCATES BLOGOSPHERE LEGAL LEGISLATE OP-ED HOMEOWNERS NEWS ForeclosureGate.org Is A Public Service Homeowner Coalition and Cooperative, Created To Exchange News And Information And To Advance Justice For American Homeowners

Banks Find More Wrongful Foreclosures Among Military Members The nations biggest banks wrongfully foreclosed on more than 700 military members during the housing crisis and seized homes from roughly two dozen other borrowers who were current on their mortgage payments, findings that eclipse earlier estimates of the improper evictions. Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo uncovered the foreclosures while analyzing mortgages as part of a multibillion-dollar settlement deal with federal authorities, according to people with direct knowledge of the findings.

Courts and Lawyers Getting Sucked into Holder Arguments The only problem I have with cases that find for either the borrower or the would-be forecloser is that they continue to put too much emphasis on holder and too little emphasis on owner. The banks continue to use worthless paper assigned in blank. The paper was worthless because no financial transaction occurred. The paper talks about the transaction and raises certain presumptions. But the presumptions are.

California Man Charged With Bankruptcy Fraud Related To Foreclosure-Rescue Scam The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) and U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Melinda Haag today announced that a federal grand jury in San Francisco has indicted Walter Bruce Harrell, of Montara, California, with eight counts of bankruptcy fraud and two counts of making false statements in bankruptcy proceedings.

Two Years Later, The Florida Bar Takes Action Against Foreclosure Baron David J. Stern Way back in August 2010, I sounded the alarm about a fellow named David J. Stern, a lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who'd gotten rich off the housing meltdown of the mid-2000s. Stern ran a law firm that handled foreclosure cases as fast as possible for big banks and the quasi-governmental housing corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But as I revealed, Stern's law firm, paid per case, increasingly cut.

California Court Holds That Borrowers May Enjoin A Foreclosure If A Lender Fails To Meet Servicing Guidelines In Pfeiffer v. Countrywide Home Loans, --Cal.Rptr.3d ----, 2012 WL 6216039 (Dec. 13, 2012), mortgage borrowers filed a damages claim against a trustee for violating the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and an injunction claim against a lender to halt a foreclosure they claimed was wrongful. The trial court sustained the defendants demurrer to both claims without leave to amend....

Occupy Our Homes crashes foreclosure auction, protests investment firms buying up distressed properties Dozens of Occupy Our Homes Atlanta activists played an oversized game of Monopoly in the midst of monthly foreclosure auctions at the Fulton County Courthouse this morning, protesting what's been called a real-life Game of Homes. Multicolored piggy banks named after some of the investment firms currently buying large numbers of homes.

St. Petersburg wants to create foreclosure registry It took city officials four weeks to board up an abandoned home in the Melrose-Mercy neighborhood because, by law, they had to post notices and try to contact the property owner. During that time, thieves stripped out wiring and aluminum windows from the home. "You now have a house that has $20,000 of damage done because it was not secure enough," said City Council Chairman Karl Nurse.

Occupy the SEC, Frustrated With Regulatory Defiance, Sues Fed, SEC, CFTC, FDIC and Treasury In the US, the challenge is somewhat different. While the issue of widespread apathy is the same, one critical difference is that much of the public still fails to understand the degree to which the ruling classes no longer represent their interests. Oh, they may resent the banks, and they may also hate Congress, but most people deeply need to believe they live in a system that is fair and where business and political leaders (some if not all) still deserve respect and admiration. So efforts like this suit, which in a few short pages sets forth regulators have simply refused to do their job, whether out of intellectual laziness or due to their indulgence of bank stymieing tactics, puts another chink in the official defenses of cronyism.

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WEEKEND EDITION, MARCH 11 MARCH 15, 2013

THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2013

ACADEMIA ADVERSARIES ADVOCATES BLOGOSPHERE LEGAL LEGISLATE OP-ED HOMEOWNERS NEWS ForeclosureGate.org Is A Public Service Homeowner Coalition and Cooperative, Created To Exchange News And Information And To Advance Justice For American Homeowners

Regulators Feel Heat on Foreclosure Pact The revelation that big U.S. banks made more foreclosure mistakes than regulators disclosed is leading to fresh scrutiny of the government's handling of investigations into banks' mortgage practices. Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressing regulators for more details on what led to a $9.3 billion foreclosure settlement after a report in The Wall Street Journal last week showed error rates by several large banks were higher than the figures released in January by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. "There was widespread misconduct by the banks, and the OCC needs to be clearer about how and why it reached these settlements," Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.) said.

Oregonians have received $384 million in foreclosure relief under mortgage settlement The relief, required as part of a settlement resulting from fraudulent paperwork in the robosigning scandal and other mortgage abuses. In Oregon, the five major mortgage servicers party to the settlement -- Ally, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo -have forgiven a combined $385 million in debt.

Mortgage applications continue to sink Mortgage applications continued to sink, dropping 1.7% from last week according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 77% of total applications, the lowest level since May 2012, from 78% the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage share of activity increased to 4% of total applications.

Poll: Americans expect economic pain to continue Americans remain deeply pessimistic about the nations economic future nearly four years into the recovery, and the vast majority think it will take many years for things to return to the way they were before the downturn, according to a poll released Thursday. The survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University paints a picture of a nation wounded by the recession in ways that have diminished future expectations.

Maine Supreme Court: "only the economic beneficiary of a mortgage note may sue for foreclosure" [16] The requirement that a plaintiff certify proof of ownership of the mortgage note does require that a plaintiff do more than provide the evidence described in the second half of the sentence. 14 M.R.S. 6321. The statute does not define ownership. In this context, we interpret certify proof of ownership to require the plaintiff to identify the owner or economic beneficiary of the note and, if the plaintiff is not the owner.

Elizabeth Warren gets to work on foreclosure fraud investigation Sen Elizabeth Warren is already doing the work we elected her to do, the work that had Wall Street so scared of her being in the Senate. She's joined up with Rep. Elijah Cummings to investigate the Independent Foreclosure Reviews. These were set up by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve two years ago to do case-bycase reviews of foreclosures that were caught.

Oral Arguments to be presented to Rhode Island Supreme Court in significant Home Foreclosure Case The case of Bucci vs. Lehman Brothers Bank has a history dating back to 2009 and can be seen as one of the first cases that cited issues with MERS as a reason to halt home foreclosure. Many members of the legal community view this case as a keystone case for many of the other home foreclosure cases; not only in Rhode Island, but also across the nation.

Former Connecticut Bishop Pleads Guilty To Wire Fraud And To Laundering Proceeds Through A Tarp Bank As bishop of his church, Blackwelder used his status within the community to dupe victims, including members of his congregation, into funding his Ponzi scheme, said Christy Romero, Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP). Blackwelder promised gains for investors, and rather than even invest their money, he laundered it through an account used under false pretenses at TARP recipient Bank of America to pay down personal loans, pay off earlier investors, and pay to build a new home. Taxpayers did not bailout banks so others could launder proceeds of crimes through them. SIGTARP and our law enforcement partners will shut down money laundering through TARP banks.

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WEEKEND EDITION, MARCH 11 MARCH 15, 2013

FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2013

ACADEMIA ADVERSARIES ADVOCATES BLOGOSPHERE LEGAL LEGISLATE OP-ED HOMEOWNERS NEWS ForeclosureGate.org Is A Public Service Homeowner Coalition and Cooperative, Created To Exchange News And Information And To Advance Justice For American Homeowners

State high court rules big foreclosure trustee broke consumer law The state Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that one of the West Coasts major players in the foreclosure industry violated the state consumer-protection law by falsely notarizing legal documents and not considering requests to delay the auction of a Whidbey Island home. The court, overturning an appeals courts decision, instructed a King County Superior Court judge to issue an injunction against foreclosure trustee Quality Loan Service. Quality has demonstrated little understanding or regard for Washington law, wrote Justice Tom Chambers. Foreclosure trustees are not simply agents for the lender, the court wrote.

Have Floridas Courts Declared War Against Foreclosure Defense? I woke this morning to read a just issued court Order which reads like a partisan manifesto against foreclosure defense. This long and detailed order makes many, many findings of fact and bends and twists to fit those facts into many different interpretations of law. The order cites cases from long, long ago and from far, far away. Its quite incredible to read on order that cites case law from different statesespecially

Southern California rents on the rise as mortgage qualifying gets tougher You don't have to tell Jeff Johnson why rents continue to climb in the Southland. His family of four is living the reason. They lost their home in Long Beach's upscale Naples area to foreclosure nearly five years ago when Johnson's wife, Shelly, lost her job. Since then, the Johnsons have been renting a house in neighboring Belmont Shore. "We weren't left with many options," Jeff Johnson said.

Elizabeth Warren Not Ready to Back Down on U.S. Consumer Bureau A strong independent consumer agency is good for families and lenders that follow the rules and good for the economy as a whole, Warren said yesterday in an interview. I will keep fighting for that. Warren, 63, who has styled herself as an anti-Wall Street crusader, was passed over to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even though she conceived.

Foreclosure rate up in Portland area from a year ago The foreclosure rate in the Portland area rose slightly in December compared with a year earlier, but continued a decline seen in recent months. According to CoreLogic Inc., a California-based real estate industry data firm, the PortlandVancouver-Hillsboro foreclosure rate was 2.45 percent in December, up from 2.43 percent a year earlier.

LPS Authorizes Share Repurchase Program of $100 Million and Regular Quarterly Dividend Lender Processing Services, Inc. (NYSE: LPS), a leading provider of integrated technology and services to the mortgage and real estate industries, today announced the companys board of directors authorized the repurchase of up to $100 million of LPS outstanding common stock. The authorization ends on June 30, 2014.

More than 10,000 N.C. homeowners benefited from foreclosure assistance fund Managers of a state foreclosure prevention fund say they had made their 10,000th loan by the end of January, and are on target to help 21,000 distressed homeowners by the end of 2014. The fund is operated by the Raleigh-based North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, a selfsupporting public agency set up by the General Assembly in 1973. The groups primary mission through the years has been.

Judge tosses robo-signing case against 2 O.C. residents Five giant mortgage firms are shelling out $25 billion to settle claims of "robo-signing" and other foreclosure abuses but putting anyone in jail is another matter. In one of only two known robo-signing prosecutions nationwide, a judge last week threw out an entire case, including more than 100 felony counts each against Gary Trafford and Geraldine Sheppard of Orange County. The Californians had worked as title officers for Lender Processing Services, a giant Jacksonville, Fla., firm that helps banks and mortgage servicers generate legal documents.

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