Category Archives: Real estate

Barbarians at the Gates of the New York Public Library

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Anyone remember this act of civic vandalism?

A Very Profitable Part Of Banking Goes Totally To Heck

Refinancing mortgages is a phenomenally profitable and nearly risk-free business for banks, and one of the few growth sectors that were actually spawned by the Fed’s herculean efforts to force down long-term interest rates through waves of quantitative easing. Banks went on a hiring binge to shuffle all this paper around and extract fees along the way before they’d dump most of these mortgages into the lap of government-owned and bailed-out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And then they’d run.

CFPB Examiners Find Mortgage Servicing Business Remains a Sewer

Not that we needed additional evidence, but the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has found more fraud and theft inside the nation’s mortgage servicing operations. CFPB has examiners in both bank and non-bank servicers; this is the first time non-bank servicers have faced such scrutiny. And their new report on Supervisory Highlights for the summer shows that extremely little has changed, despite a gauntlet of settlements that were supposed to end this conduct (OK, not really).

Bill Black: Obama’s FBI Channels the Tea Party – Partner with the Banks and Blame the Poor for the Crisis

Yves here. This is the latest installment of Bill Black’s forensic work into why the FBI, which had in the past been a critically important working oar in investigating banking industry frauds, was nowhere to be found before and after the global financial crisis. This post, on how the Mortgage Bankers’ Association, succeeded in getting the FBI focused solely on frauds made on banks, as opposed to by banks, is an ugly and critical bit of the story.

Bill Black: The Incredible Con the Banksters Pulled on the FBI

Yves here. Bill Black continues his forensic work about the dogs that didn’t bark in both the runup to and the aftermath of the crisis.

US Mortgage Lending is Tumbling

Yves here. We had predicted that the sharp rise in mortgage rates precipitated by the Fed’s taper talk would put a damper on the housing “recovery” and could even send it into reverse if rates continued to increase. They’ve in fact fallen over the past few weeks but are still markedly higher than in the spring. The central bank has been sending mixed signals over the last week or so, on the one hand seeming more inclined to taper based on its cheery view of the fundamentals, but concerned over what a budget slugfest might do to the confidence fairy.

The Real Foreclosure Scandal: Why Have Virtually No Lawyers Been Disbarred?

Even now, years after the subprime market’s death in 2007, new stories of mortgage chicanery or accounts providing more evidence of known abuses keep surfacing.

Municipal Workers in Bankrupt Cities Facing Financial Nightmare

Georgetown law school professor and bankruptcy expert Adam Levitin in a must read article in Salon parses how municipal workers, who on paper should actually be well protected in the event of a municipal bankruptcy, are likely to be butchered.

Quelle Surprise! Administration Lied About Mortgage Fraud Results, Numbers 4 to 10 Times Too High

Normally I’d relegate a good job of news spadework to the daily Links feature, but Bloomberg caught out Attorney General Eric Holder in such an egregious lie that this failed con job merits ample, widespread publicity and well-deserved derision.

So Why is the Administration Trying to Look a Smidge More Aggressive About Going After Banks?

In the last few days, the Department of Justice (as well as the SEC) filed a case against Bank of America over a 2008 prime mortgage securitization that takes breaks some new ground in fraud allegations and is also saber-rattling in the form of launching a criminal investigation into JP Morgan’s sale of mortgage backed securities.

So what’s with the new-found religion?

Calling All California Lawyers (and Others Who Want to Help Abused Homeowners)! Please Ask California Court of Appeal to Publish an Important Pro-Borrower Chain of Title Ruling

Your humble blogger is in no position to speculate how this curious set of circumstances came about, but we have a good news, bad news situation, and hope readers can help remedy the bad news part.

Beware Private Equity Guys Bearing Gifts: Eminent Domain Mortgage Scam Hit with Well-Deserved Lawsuit

The private equity firm Mortgage Resolution Partners looks to be well on its way to getting the good uses of eminent domain torpedoed by getting some not-too-swift municipalities to sign up for its self-serving scheme. One indicator of how dubious the MPR program is that investors who have been complacent in the face of all sorts of abuses by originators and servicers, have roused themselves to act in a unified manner and push back against the MRP plan, in the form of a suit filed in Federal court in California on Wednesday.

Four Headwinds to the US Housing Recovery

Yves here. This post from MacroBusiness describes three risks facing the American housing recovery, and I thought I’d add a fourth, which is the open question of how much longer private equity funds and other speculators will continue to bid up housing prices.

China’s Most Famous Ghost City Busts

The Chinese government, as has been widely reported, is trying to cool growth, in large measure to take the hot air out of its shadow banking sector. But can it engineer its hoped-for soft landing?