mortgage mess: My World: Why can't you refinance your high interest rate loan? - 01/30/12 09:39 PM
Got a high interest rate mortgage and want to refinance? Too bad! Fannie and Freddie stand to profit if you can't. Based on some dynamite investigative reporting by Propublica and NPR, it now is public knowledge that many people who are locked in with higher than market interest rate mortgages are being told they can't refinance by publicly owned companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The really ironic part of this commonplace event is that both agencies have effectively bet against the homeowners by purchasing investment instruments which pay off when homeowners remain locked into high interest rate mortgages. While not … (2 comments)
mortgage mess: Joke of the day - #52: How to collect past due debts. - 12/29/10 07:35 AM
I was just reading that Countrywide, now part of B of A, strongly overstated the value of mortgages they sold to investors. There is a whole series of lawsuits coming down regarding this type of misrepresentation. The full extent of the problem is just starting to come to light and the probable end result looks like the taxpayers will have to end up holding the bad mortgages. Generally speaking, if you borrow $100 from a bank and can't pay, that's your problem. If hundreds of thousands of us borrow from a bank and can't pay, that's the taxpayer's problem. It's no … (1 comments)
mortgage mess: Banks threatened by mortgage mess! - 11/16/10 11:14 AM
The U.S. Congress is starting to pay attention to the mortgage mess as is the press - about time in my opinion! It's about time that the mainstream media pick up on this issue also. It's been largely ignored to date. I read lots of financial blogs (ZeroHedge being one of my favorites) and most of those blogs have been dealing with this issue for months, but the national news organizations have been ignoring it almost as if they were being paid-off weren't aware of it. Here's the link: Yahoo News Worth reading. … (3 comments)
mortgage mess: More Foreclosure Shenanigans - Who's on first? The bank or IRS? - 11/08/10 11:46 AM
In recently decided Southern Florida case 09-60633 (Merrill Lynch Credit Corp vs Karin Lenz) Judge Marcia Cooke slapped down Merrill Lynch's idea that they could foreclose on a property that had an IRS tax lien. The case found that a tax lien has priority over a mortgage. This basically means that the mortgage servicer cannot foreclose when IRS is involved in a tax collection issue with the property. Part of the issue that made this decision a slam-dunk for the Judge was that the transfer of the Mortgage to Merrill was not recorded. The Court asked whether the U.S. had notice … (1 comments)
mortgage mess: Does MERS owe your county recorder money? - 11/01/10 08:39 PM
Banks seeking to avoid local governments' recording requirements are now beginning to find that the self-published MERS claim to have saved at least 2.4 billion dollars in recording costs is coming back to haunt them in court. Local governments are using Qui Tam lawsuits which allow a private party to bring suit on behalf of the government entity for a past or present fraud. One such suit, State of California ex rel. Barrett R. Bates, was filed in May of this year. In this action, the plaintiff qui tam, standing in for numerous local California governments, sued MERS, BofA, Chase, and … (0 comments)
mortgage mess: Will your bank fail? The impact of second loan exposure might be serious. - 10/30/10 10:09 AM
What effect does the second mortgage or heloc have on a bank's exposure to the mortgage mess? So far, most banks are reporting that less than 5% of their second lien home loans are late. But, how can that be? By September 2009, 14.4% of all mortgages outstanding were either delinquent or in foreclosure. Either a disproportionate number of borrowers that had only taken out a first are in trouble or the banks are under-reporting on the seconds' delinquency rate. It'd be more reasonable to see somewhere around 10-12% of the seconds being reported as problems. Could the banks be attempting … (0 comments)
mortgage mess: Will the Massive Mortgage Mess Mean the End of Mortgages? - 10/14/10 03:43 PM
The only entity which has the legal standing to foreclose on a homeowner is the note-holder. The note is the actual IOU signed by the homeowner promising to pay back the loan. In the old days, before Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), most loans were kept locally by the originating bank and the banks held the notes and, thus, could easily foreclose. One of the reasons for Mortgage Backed Securities is that the bonds created could have different levels of security. Bonds which held high-quality mortgages would be relatively safe, bonds which were based on sub-prime mortgages would be more risky, but … (2 comments)
mortgage mess: Now mortgage releases are in doubt! - 10/11/10 11:55 AM
The massive mortgage mess just keeps getting more and more complex. The robo-signature problem hit home this morning on the 4closureFraud.org blog. He demonstrates that mortgage releases will also be in doubt. The example used is a release for a mortgage in the name of President Obama. The signature demonstrably doesn't match up with other alleged signatures of the bank executive who signed Obama's release of mortgage. I've already asked this, but here it is again. How can you sell a house if there is some doubt whether the previous mortgage has been released? If the title company won't insure the … (2 comments)
mortgage mess: A quick summary of the Foreclosure Mess - 10/08/10 03:43 PM
Bank of America announced that they would halt foreclosure proceedings in all 50 states pending review of the thousands of documents that they use to process foreclosures. This is part of the growing scandal relating to foreclosures nationwide. There are two parts to this problem. The first is that the banks have apparently been using unverified documents to process foreclosures. Public knowledge of this has been growing over the last several days. Some bank-hired foreclosure mills seem to have been providing the banks with documents which lack some measure of validity. The banks seem to have been approving the foreclosure actions … (0 comments)
mortgage mess: The Mortgage Mess just keeps getting worse! How bad could it get? - 10/05/10 11:49 AM
So, how bad could the Mortgage Mess actually get? Let's daydream for a minute and look at the possible problems this situation could create. We already know that several major banks have placed a moratorium on foreclosure sales in 23 states. In addition, I've spoken to our title agent and she was pretty sure that the title companies will not stand behind properties which have been sold through foreclosure, since they can't verify that the title was actually owned by the foreclosing entity. We know that many of the banks have had executives signing documents in mass without any quality control or cross checking … (0 comments)
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Got a high interest rate mortgage and want to refinance? Too bad! Fannie and Freddie stand to profit if you can't.
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