Mortgage Settlement Monitor Hires Firm that Has Worked on Countrywide Matters
Sadly, there is a reason that the Obama Administration believes that any problem can be solved by better propaganda.
Read more...Category Archives: Real estate
Quelle Surprise! Banks Getting Credit for What They Would Have Done Anyhow in Mortgage Settlement
Today, Joseph Smith, the official monitor for the Federal-state mortgage settlement entered into earlier this year with five major servicers, released a glossy initial report on program progress. Needless to say, my cynicism was piqued both by the glossy format of the document and the decision to release it well before the required date of second quarter 2013.
But the distressing part is the way the settlement is playing out according to script.
Read more...New Real Estate Train Wreck Coming: Securitized Rentals
No matter how bad things get, it turns out they can always get worse. Wall Street is about to foist a new “innovation” on investors that even the ratings agencies won’t touch.
Read more...Mark Ames: Tracy Lawrence: The Foreclosure Suicide America Forgot
Every week, it seems there’s another tragic story about a suicide or murder-suicides linked to foreclosure trauma. Some of the more spectacular murder-by-foreclosure stories the past few years have been collected by a blog called “Greenspan’s Body Count”—others, myself included, have been writing about these terrible stories of class warfare being waged by the only side fighting it, and winning it, as Warren Buffett rightly said.
Before the 2008 crisis, the media paid little attention to the death toll taken on Americans by the decades-long class warfare waged against the 99%. Now they’re impossible to ignore.
Read more...Ezra Klein Deems Joe Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Elizabeth Warren (Plus Other Serious People) Not Credible
Ezra Klein demonstrated how far he’s has to descend into the Humpty Dumpty world of words meaning just what he chooses them to mean in order to defend failed Administration policies.
Read more...Our Coming Rentcropper Society
We are in the midst of a sea change in terms of the relationship of ordinary Americans to the housing market. Policymakers are not only in denial as to its magnitude, but are actively enabling courses of action that are likely to prove destructive.
Read more...Michael Olenick: Still Looking for a Housing Bottom
By Michael Olenick, creator of NASTIACO, a crowd sourced foreclosure document review system (still in alpha). You can follow him on Twitter at @michael_olenick or read his blog, Seeing Through Data
Every day a growing crescendo of housing cheerleaders posit the end of the foreclosure crisis. We’re flipping our way out of the mess that we flipped ourselves into, is their usual line of reasoning. I’ve looked at national data, local data, and even data on my own block here in Florida. I tried to make the evidence prove the market has found a genuine, sustainable bottom. There are clearly gimmicks giving a temporary boost, a great PR campaign that may or may not be coordinated, and some foreclosure flippers that may do well, until they don’t. But the evidence is overwhelming: home prices are anything but stable.
Read more...New York Times Publishes Apology for Obama’s Failed Housing Policies
On the one hand, the dismal failure of the Administration’s cosmetic responses to the foreclosure mess is so evident that the New York Times is willing to acknowledge it, via a first page article titled, “Cautious Moves on Foreclosures Haunting Obama.” On the other, what the story offers is a whitewash, not an analysis.
Read more...Washington Supreme Court Issues MERS Smackdown
While MERS has served to illustrate the utter recklessness of the securitization industry, in that its promoters apparently believed that they could implement it nationwide and simply force state law to comply. But as the banks have found out, the law is not always so obliging.
Read more...Brockton Saves $ and Protests Foreclosure Misdeeds by Moving $170 Million Account from Bank of America
Although consumer-level “move your money” campaigns are popular, the sad thing is that many individuals are only marginally profitable as checking/savings account customers. So transferring your account out does not have enough of an impact to make a difference (unless you do so in a way that makes branch staff uncomfortable, by doing it in person and describing their banks’ bad behavior. Enough of that might make a psychological difference). The key to retail customer profitability is cross selling, usually at the time of account opening. So the checking account is the gateway product for them to get customers to sign up for retirement accounts/brokerage, credit cards, and (hopefully sooner rather than later) mortgages.
By contrast, bigger customers who use multiple products are a sweet spot for banks.
Read more...Get Everyone You Know in Palm Beach County to Vote for Lisa Epstein for Clerk of the Court Next Tuesday
Readers may know I don’t do political endorsements. I’m making an exception because I’ve worked with Lisa Epstein and am extremely impressed with her knowledge, energy, and tenacity. And separately, readers may have come to recognize that county clerks and registers of deeds can be very important guards of the integrity of property records and legal processes. But only a very few, such as Jeff Thigpen in Guilford County, NC, and John O’Brien in Southern Essex County, Massachusetts, have bothered to investigate their own files and speak up about the large-scale problems they have unearthed.
Lisa is an oncology nurse who has become a self trained and formidable mortgage document and foreclosure procedures (as in abuse) expert.
Read more...Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Proposes New Safeguards for Mortgage Borrowers
The CFPB is proving to be tough minded on the mortgage front. The Wall Street Journal reports that it intends to require banks to consider a modification request before proceeding with a foreclosure:
Read more...FHFA Threatens to Kneecap Use of Eminent Domain to Condemn Mortgages
All this talk of firing Ed DeMarco seems to have led him to decide to live up to his reputation.
Read more...Robert Shiller Questions Whether Housing Has Bottomed, Sees Possible Bubbles
Robert Shiller of the Case Shiller Index, spoke to Fox Business earlier this week (hat tip Ed Harrison). In this short chat, he stresses that the rise in housing prices so far this year look very encouraging, but could prove to be seasonal. He also points out that he is seeing what may be early bubble behavior in San Francisco and Phoenix, and even in Chicago and Atlanta.
If that is indeed happening, it’s not a bug but a feature.
Read more...Another Way Banks Abuse Homeowners and Distort Markets: Refusing to Take Title to Foreclosed Properties
If there’s any way for banks to cut the cake to work to their advantage, they do.
One example that has not gotten attention is that servicers will complete all the steps of a foreclosure, sometimes even scheduling the sheriff’s sale, and then not put in a bid.
Read more...