Category Archives: Real estate

Schneiderman Files Civil Fraud Lawsuit Against Three Major Banks for Use of MERS (Updated)

New York filed a lawsuit against various units of JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells, MERSCORP and MERS over their use of MERS in foreclosures. This civil suit alleges that the use of MERS has “resulted in a wide range of deceptive and illegal practices,” most importantly, over 13,000 foreclosures in MERS name where MERS “often” lacked standing to foreclose. The suit claims that an undetermined number of foreclosures that were not made in the name of MERS were also deceptive by virtue of MERS “certifying officers” making improper assignments prior to the foreclosure. The suit includes the use of robosigners who failed to review the review the underlying records as required, and served to disguise gaps in the chain of title.

Investors (and Others) Realizing Their Ox is About to be Gored in Mortgage Settlement

Investors have been remarkably passive as banks and servicers have taken advantage of them. We’ve heard numerous reports of servicer fee abuses that amount to stealing from investors (remember, if you overcharge a stressed borrower and that borrower loses his home, the money in the end comes out of pension funds and 401 (k)s when the excessive fees are deducted from the proceeds of the sale of the home). Investors can even see suspicious patterns in investor reports. We’ve also pointed out that they are guaranteed even more pain, since $175 billion of losses that have already recorded on loans in MBS pools have not yet been allocated to the related bonds.

Michael Olenick: More on ProPublica’s Off Base Charges About Freddie Mac’s Mortgage “Bets”

By Michael Olenick, founder and CEO of Legalprise, and creator of FindtheFraud, a crowd sourced foreclosure document review system (still in alpha). You can follow him on Twitter at @michael_olenick

Fallout continues from the ProPublica/NPR story “Freddie Mac Bets Against American Homeowners,” though probably not the sort ProPublica expected.

Many in the blogsphere who work on finance and housing finance issues, including myself and Yves Smith, didn’t find the piece to be convincing. In a rebuttal Yves, who like me is anything but a cheerleader for the GSEs, explained Freddie’s practice is, in reality, only slightly more nefarious than clearing snow from the parking lot. That is, of all the awful decisions Freddie Mac makes, this isn’t one of them.

Yet More Mortgage Settlement Lies: Release Looks Broad, Not Narrow; Other States Screwed to Bribe California to Join

A number of writers, such as Mike Lux, Bob Kuttner, Matt Taibbi, and Justin Krebs, have been willing to convey the Administration message that the current version of the mortgage settlement is a “much tougher deal” and even a pretty good deal, thanks to Schneiderman’s intervention.

It is important to note that any recent improvement in terms has come at the cost of Schneiderman moving from being decidedly against the settlement to being in the “maybe/maybe not” camp as an apparent part of his decision to join an Administration investigation on mortgage abuses. But as we have stressed, the fact that the Obama team is pushing to wrap up the settlement agreement before the probe underway is a very bad sign. How can you settle when you don’t know the full extent of the bad conduct?

In addition, the change in Schneiderman’s posture has undermined the solidarity of the dissenting attorneys general, which is no doubt what Obama hoped to achieve.

While there is every reason to believe there has been some improvement in terms due to the resistance of Schneiderman and other state attorneys general (Beau Biden of Delaware, Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Kamala Harris of California), the notion that, per Mike Lux, “the settlement release is tight” appears to be patently false.

Quelle Surprise! Feds Dust off Old Rogue Traders CDO Case to Burnish “Tough on Mortgage Crime” Credentials

The powers that be are in the process of seeing how they can burnish their “tough on bank crime” credentials while not ruffling anyone really important. And the case featured in the Wall Street Journal, “U.S. Plans Charges on Bond Fraud,” illustrates the sort of enforcement theater we are likely to see over the coming months.

Wow! Charges! Better yet, criminal charges! Finally the Administration is getting tough on crime.

Right. It’s tough on crime against banks.

Why is the Normally Astute Taibbi Sounding Like a Hopey Dopey Liberal on the Mortgage Settlement?

I hate taking issue with Matt Taibbi. I’m a huge fan of his writing and think he has done more to cause the big bad banks discomfort than any single writer.

But even someone as skilled as Taibbi occasionally has the writing equivalent of a bad hair day. And his post, “A Victory for the Public on Foreclosures?” is an example. And his misreading matters precisely because he has so much cred with the public that is unhappy with Big Finance.

Taibbi has taken up cheerleading the Schneiderman involvement in a Federal investigation committee as major progress and also amplified the messaging that the current version of the release in the mortgage settlement deal (which by the way is still more of a mystery than it ought to be) is a good deal. As we will discuss in due course, even a narrow deal around robosigning is in fact NOT a good deal.

ProPublica’s Off Base Charges About Freddie Mac’s Mortgage “Bets”

A new ProPublica story, “Freddie Mac Betting Against Struggling Homeowners,” treats the fact that Freddie Mac retains the riskiest tranche of its mortgage bond offering, known as inverse floaters, as heinous and evidence of scheming against suffering borrowers.

The storyline in this piece is neat, plausible, and utterly wrong. And my e-mail traffic indicates that people who are reasonably finance savvy but don’t know the mortgage bond space have bought the uninformed and conspiratorial ProPublica thesis hook, line, and sinker.

So Why Hasn’t SEC Enforcement Chief Robert Khuzami Resigned? SEC Only Now Investigating CDOs Created on His Watch at Deutsche Bank

I’d heard from German speaking readers about the Der Spiegel report of an SEC investigation in its German edition over the weekend and they’ve now released it in their English language version.

Der Spiegel is careful about its sourcing, so readers should take this account seriously.

“Mortgage Fraud is a Top Priority for This Administration”

By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller.

Since the President is now establishing yet another committee to look into the mortgage fraud crisis, I figured it would be useful to look into the history of the Obama and Bush administrations’ approaches to the problem of vast financial fraud.

More Caution and Skepticism About Federal Mortgage “Investigation”

While a large number of “liberal” groups, ranging from the official Democratic party outlets (the Center for American Progress) to ones that sometimes cross swords with the Administration (MoveOn, the Working Families Party) praised the Tuesday evening announcement of mortgage “investigations” with Schneiderman co-chairing the effort, others who have been watching the mortgage legal fight closely were far more ambivalent about the creation of a new unit in an initiative …which has done pretty much nothing since its creation in 2009 (boldface mine):

Quelle Surprise! Bank of America Accused of Blocking Arizona AG Investigation

One thing NC readers may have become attuned to, either via personal experience or some of the discussions we have had here, is how often a considerable portion of the value of a deal lies in releases (waivers of liability) or other provisions that might not seem all that important to the party signing away its rights.

Bloomberg reports that the state of Arizona has told the court that Bank of American is undermining the state’s investigation of its loan modification practices. The probe comes out of a 2010 lawsuit which alleged that Countrywide misled customers about its loan modification policies. So what did Bank of America do? It apparently gave mortgage mods to some (many?) of the people who had complained to state officials and had them sign an agreement not to say anything about the deal or disparage Bank of America. Per Bloomberg:

Yes, Virginia, Servicers Lie to Investors Too: $175 Billion in Loan Losses Not Allocated to Mortgage Backed Securities (and Another $300 Billion on the Way)

he structured credit analytics/research firm R&R Consulting released a bombshell today, and it strongly suggests that prevailing prices on non-GSE (non Freddie and Fannie) residential mortgage backed securities, which are typically referred to as “private label” are considerably overvalued.

Is Schneiderman Selling Out? Joins Federal Committee That Looks Designed to Undermine AGs Against Mortgage Settlement Deal

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been celebrated as the progressive Great White Hope. But the danger of assuming leadership is that that individual becomes a target both of attacks and of seduction. And while I’d like to think better of Schneiderman, an announcement earlier this evening has strong hallmarks of Schneiderman falling prey to the combined pressures and blandishments of the Administration and its allies.

Only a sketchy bit of news has been released, with the most extensive reporting so far coming in Huffington Post which incorrectly anticipated a State of the Union announcement of the fact that Schneiderman will be co-chairing a Federal committee to investigate mortgage abuses (the story appears to have been confirmed in general terms via an announcement from Schneiderman’s office). Key details from the HuffPo story:

Paul Krugman Makes Housing Call He Will Likely Come to Regret

I’m behind on commenting on various opinion pieces, thanks to a mild case of food poisoning (ugh), but I wanted to take note of Paul Krugman’s current New York Times op ed, “Is Our Economy Healing?”

As an aside, Krugman has written a lot of good pieces lately that we’ve linked to on income inequality the disastrous austerian policies in Europe, and Republican derangement and duplicity. But he tends to cut the administration far more slack than it deserves.

His current piece voices cautious optimism on the prospects for the economy based on some strengthening in various economic indicators. But astonishingly, the core of his argument rests on the outlook for the housing market:

Thanks NC Readers! Tom Miller Says No Mortgage Deal Imminent

Readers no doubt saw both on this site and elsewhere that the Obama Administration was cranking the heat up on the mortgage settlements talks, and was apparently planning to go ahead with the Federal regulators inking a pact, on the assumption they’d get enough state attorneys general to provide at least a modest fig leaf. The assumption also seemed to be that the Administration could enlist Congressmen to pressure some of the current and rumored dissident Democrat AGs to fold and join the Obama camp.

That effort appears to have gotten such a large repudiation today, when the settlement terms were presented in Chicago to Democratic AGs and discussed over the phone with the Republican AGs that Tom Miller who is leading the attorney general negotiations has done a major climbdown: