Blog Archives
More Time Allowed for Foreclosure Review Requests
Image via Wikipedia
Homeowners who think they may have been financially injured due to the actions of mortgage servicers during a foreclosure have additional time to request a review of their cases. The deadline for the Independent Foreclosure Review authorized by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve originally schedule for April 30 has been extended to July 31.
To be eligible for a review a borrower had a mortgage on the primary residence serviced by a participating company which was in active foreclosure between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010. There are no costs associated with the review.
More information and a list of participating servicers can be found at: www.federalreserve.gov/consumerinfo/independent-foreclosure-review.htm or www.occ.gov/independentforeclosurereview.
Related articles
- Borrowers have until July for foreclosure review (marketwatch.com)
- Judge orders Wells Fargo to face claims of improper disclosure of foreclosure practices (alialawgroupforeclosurenews.com)
- Feds to help borrowers prove foreclosure errors (marketwatch.com)
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Promotes National Consumer Protection Week
Image via Wikipedia
WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) promoted awareness of consumer protection resources during today’s National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW) event on Capitol Hill.
“Consumers need timely, useful information to make sound financial decisions and protect themselves from unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent practices,” Acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh said. “National Consumer Protection Week highlights important sources of information and resources that consumers can use every day.”
The OCC joined the Federal Trade Commission and other federal agencies on Capitol Hill to distribute educational materials about a range of consumer protection and financial services issues. The OCC highlighted its Web site HelpWithMyBank.gov that provides answers to common questions about banking in English and Spanish. OCC material is also available at the NCPW Web site http://www.ncpw.gov.
During this year’s event, many attendees sought information about the ongoing independent foreclosure review, which the OCC and the Federal Reserve ordered in April 2011. The Independent Foreclosure Review provides the opportunity for people to request a review of their case if they believe they suffered financial injury as a result of errors, misrepresentations, or other deficiencies in a foreclosure action on their primary homes in 2009 or 2010 by one of the 14 servicers covered by the enforcement actions. More information is available at www.independentforeclosurereview.com. More than 4 million letters were sent to potentially eligible people with instructions on how to request a review. Individuals who believe they are eligible and have not received a letter, should call 1-888-952-9205, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. (ET) and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (ET). Requests for review must be returned by mail no later than July 31, 2012.
SOURCE: http://www.occ.gov
Related articles
- Occ Releases Public Service Ads About the Independent Foreclosure Review (mainstreetresolutions.com)
- Borrowers have until July for foreclosure review (marketwatch.com)
- Bank Regulators Using Mortgage Deal To Levy Their Own Fines (huffingtonpost.com)
- Overall Mortgage Performance Stable, Delinquencies Remained Elevated in Third Quarter 2011 (mainstreetresolutions.com)
Michigan AG asked not to sign on to foreclosure fraud deal with feds
January 31st, 2012 2:48 pm by Todd Heywood
Ingham County Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel, Jr., sent a letter to Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette on Tuesday asking him not to sign on to a rumored foreclosure fraud deal brokered by the U.S. Department of Justice with all 50 states and two of the nation’s largest banks.
The proposed deal has to be approved by Feb. 3, reports Bloomberg News Servic. Hertel is urging the state’s top law-enforcement officer to talk to the Michigan people about the deal, which he says has been “shrouded in secrecy.” Hertel says the deal is rumored to include immunity from criminal prosecution for executives and employees of JP Morgan Chase and CitiGroup — something he vehemently opposes.
“If a person committed this kind of widespread forgery and fraud, they would go to jail,” Hertel told The American Independent in a phone interview. “Therefore, we believe the banks should meet the same fates.”
In Michigan, Hertel has been a leading voice in ferreting out robo-signing foreclosure fraud. Robo-signing is a term used to describe the mass production of forged signatures on legal documents related to mortgage foreclosures and other matters.
Hertel has had a close working relationship with Schuette’s office and has referred several cases for criminal investigation. He is also suing several banks and foreclosure firms for allegedly failing to pay millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes. He is also suing the Mortgage Electronic Registration System alleging the same tax dodges.
In his letter, delivered to Schuette’s office Tuesday morning, Hertel wrote the attorney general:
I am writing to ask that you stand firm, and refuse to add Michigan to any settlement that would give criminal immunity to the defendants. Our ongoing investigations have demonstrated that the major banks in this settlement, and their hired document mills, were engaged in the practice of robo-signing. Hundreds of residents here in Ingham County, and thousands of residents across the state, were illegally foreclosed upon because of this practice.
These illegalities have stolen due process from our own citizens, and robbed them of precious time that could have been used to recover and resume their mortgages, or obtain a modification. A family who is facing a foreclosure is already vulnerable; this practice insured that they could not possibly reclaim their home. The full letter is embedded below.
“Those crimes were committed in our offices and essentially destroyed our land property records,” Hertel says of the alleged frauds. “You shouldn’t be able to buy your way out of criminal investigations.”
The Attorney General’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
Administration Revamps HAMP to Reach More Borrowers
The Obama administration has announced changes to its flagship foreclosure prevention initiative – the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) – which officials say will expand its reach to more distressed homeowners.
Among the changes, borrowers who are struggling because of debt beyond their mortgage will be eligible for a secondary evaluation with more flexible debt-to-income criteria, and eligibility will be extended to investor-owned homes that are used as rental properties.
The administration is also giving principal reductions a bigger role within the program, tripling incentives for investors that agree to write down an underwater borrower’s principal and offering these same incentives to the nation’s two biggest mortgage investors – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The deadline for HAMP will be extended for an additional year through December 31, 2013.
(developing story)
*Additional details have been provided in a blog post by Tim Massad, assistant secretary for financial stability.
Related articles
- Reduce amount due on mortgage, or grant a short sale? (besthouses2go.wordpress.com)
- Secret Docs Show Foreclosure Watchdog Doesn’t Bark or Bite (mainstreetresolutions.com)
- What went wrong with mortgage aid? (georgegmiller.wordpress.com)
- Fixing the Housing Market: The Principal of the Matter (avidlawblog.wordpress.com)
- Obama loan modification program moving slowly (marketwatch.com)
Mitt Romney to Lenders: Take the Loss and Help People Recover, To Government: Get out of the Way
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney spent nearly an hour talking to struggling home and business owners Monday morning in Florida, the next stop in the Republican primary contest and one of the states hardest-hit by the foreclosure crisis that wrecked the economy in 2007.
At a round table in a Tampa, Fla. hotel, Candice Tammey told Romney about how she’d lost her job in the staffing industry three years ago and eventually stopped paying her mortgage after her bank wouldn’t negotiate a loan modification.
“I’m going to be living in my home until I’m kicked out. I don’t have a choice at this point,” she said, adding that employers seemed “inundated” with other job applicants. She said she had her health and that she’s keeping a positive outlook. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “I don’t see it quite yet but I know that it’s there, so I’m encouraged — I know that there’s something better out there for me and for us as a country.”
“It will get better,” Romney said, according to CNN’s online video stream of the event. “It will not always be like this. This is a detour from America’s history. … I can’t predict when it will get better but if I’m fortunate enough to become president, I will care very deeply about getting it better in a big hurry.”
It’s the first time Romney’s talked foreclosures since he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the only thing the government should do is get out of the way.
“Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” Romney said last October. “Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up. … The Obama administration has slow walked the foreclosure process … that has long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang.”
Romney stuck to that message as homeowners told him of their struggles.
Richard Wood of Bradenton, Fla., told Romney he’d folded his title insurance company in October 2010. “I invested in some real estate, some rental properties, made what I considered to be very conservative investments during the boom times and right now I am negotiating with the same bank who has mortgages on each of those and an approximate $200,000 deficiency,” he said. “We have been exploring the possibility of moving to another to another country where we might be able to live on our retirement and our Social Security.”
“Yeah. It’s just tragic, isn’t it? Just tragic, just tragic,” Romney said. “We’re just so overleveraged, so much debt in our society, and some of the institutions that hold it aren’t willing to write it off and say they made a mistake, they loaned too much, we’re overextended, write those down and start over. They keep on trying to harangue and pretend what they have on their books is still what it’s worth.”
“Also, Gov. Romney, we got hit with a double whammy,” Wood continued. “My wife, she’s a Realtor — she is in the process of filing for bankruptcy on some debts that she needed to take out in order to try and stay in business the past five years. I’m probably right behind her.”
“That’s tragic,” Romney said. “In some cases, if the debt is not in something you can service, it’s like you have to move on and start over away from those debts. It’s helpful if you get an institution that’s willing to work with you, but if you don’t you have no other option.”
The Sunshine State had the seventh-highest foreclosure rate of any state in 2011, according to RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure marketplace and data firm. All of the homeowners at the table Monday said they owed more than their homes were worth and that their banks wouldn’t negotiate on modifications or refinancing. More than 22 percent of all residential properties in the U.S. are “underwater,” according to housing research firm CoreLogic. In Florida, a full 44 percent of mortgage properties are underwater.
“The banks are scared to death, of course, because they think they’re going to go out of business,” Romney said. “They’re afraid that if they write all these loans off, they’re going to go broke. And so they’re feeling the same thing you’re feeling. They just want to pretend all of this is going to get paid someday so they don’t have to write it off and potentially go out of business themselves.”
“This is cascading throughout our system and in some respects government is trying to just hold things in place, hoping things get better,” Romney continued. “My own view is you recognize the distress, you take the loss and let people reset. Let people start over again, let the banks start over again. Those that are prudent will be able to restart, those that aren’t will go out of business. This effort to try and exact the burden of their mistakes on homeowners and commercial property owners, I think, is a mistake.”
