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MATT’S TAKE ON THE NEWS
March 22, 2012
Foreclosures Hit Rich and Famous

Craig Karmin and James Hagerty from the Wall Street Journal report on a trend that is spreading across the countryside. Houses with mortgages of $5M or more have seen a dramatic rise in mortgage defaults. People used to make money and could afford these gargantuan money pits but, with job cuts and a struggling economy these properties are going down the tubes, like their lower cost brethren. The article states, “In February alone, 352 homes nationwide in this category were scheduled for foreclosure auction, the final step before a bank acquisition. That is the largest monthly number of these so-called notices of sale since the financial crisis began. By comparison, in all of 2009, there were 1,312 such notices.” Astonishing numbers!
I think that this is the beginning of a trend. Why? Because wealthy people have the means to pump good money after bad to keep a house out of foreclosure. But, the money will eventually run out. Either that, or the home owner will make a business decision and engage in a strategic foreclosure. Either way, there may be opportunity heading your way.

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Matt’s Take On the News
June 7, 2011

Who Says Politicians Can’t Be Bought!

Massimo Calabresi from Time reports on how Iowa’s Attorney General Tom Miller recently accepted $15,000 in campaign contributions from (2) individuals who have vested interest in the government and the attorney generals NOT coming down on lenders for their bad deeds. You might ask who Miller is. Miller, “…. took the lead on the investigation by all 50 state attorneys general into the “robo-signing” foreclosure scandal, where several big banks allegedly approved taking away people’s homes without adequately verifying the facts in court, as required by law in some states.”

Instead of recognizing the conflict of interest, Miller made excuses justifying the contributions. Why wouldn’t he simply return the money?

Renowned Short Sale Investor, Coach and Mentor Randy Patrick Shares with you his “Relevant To Real Estate” Video Log for Short Sale Business Investment & the Real Estate World. Learn from the Investors that operate a real short sale business that includes over 100 deals in their pipeline at any given time, multiple closings per month [...]

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Matt’s Take on the News
August 4, 2011

Let’s Demolish The Homes

Lindsey Rupp from Bloomberg News reports on yet another brilliant idea that has been hatched by Bank of America. Ms. Rupp writes, “Disposing of repossessed homes is one of the biggest headaches for lenders in the United States, where 1,679,125 houses, or one in every 77, were in some stage of foreclosure as of June, according to research firm RealtyTrac Inc. The prospect of those properties flooding the market has depressed prices and driven off buyers concerned that housing values will keep dropping. “BOA takes bull dozers to the “decrepit” houses!

The move can make sense. Meaning, if the property is in such a state of disrepair, BOA argues that it costs them less to demolish a property that they can’t sell when compared to the cost of upkeep, taxes, insurance etc. This, however, is a very reactive position to take. A more proactive position would be to approve short sales before the houses become blighted and turned into REO’s.

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Matt’s Take on the News
July 5th 2011

Why Foreclosure Filings Have Dropped

Lisa Shapiro from the Huffington Post clarifies why foreclosures have fallen to a 40 month low. Many want you to believe that it is due to the success of this program or that program…or that the economy is making a miraculous recovery. While all of this would be great, it’s just not the case.

“This slowdown continues to be largely the result of massive delays in processing foreclosures rather than the result of a housing recovery that is lifting people out of foreclosure,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, in a press release.” An indicator is the average time to foreclose. Nationwide this number rose from 340 days to 400 days (Q1 2010 vs. Q1 2011). In judicial states this time frame can be higher (In Florida, the average time to foreclose is 619 days.) According to the report, the cause of these delays revolves around delays in paperwork processing.

As the article points out, “With home prices still falling, a slowdown in foreclosures driven by paperwork delays is bad news for the overall housing market recovery. Home prices hit their lowest point in two years in April, falling 0.7 percent below March 2009 levels, according to a recent report by Clear Capital. Housing experts say the data from RealtyTrac’s report does not indicate a reversal of this trend will be quickly forthcoming.

“As the servicers sort out their processing issues and staff up a little that means these homes will end up on the market as a distress sale and that will cause home prices to fall further,” said Celia Chen, a housing market analyst for Moody’s Analytics. “It delays the problem. It extends the recovery in the housing market.”

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Matt’s Take on the News

June 30, 2011

Illinois home foreclosures up 5 percent in May

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Matt’s Take on the News
June 28, 2011

Do You Facebook?

Sam Debord brings us an interesting post that involves one of the most visited websites in the world…Facebook. A couple in Australia defaulted on their mortgage. Presumable they were playing hide and seek with the bank because the bank couldn’t find them … The bank was trying to serve them foreclosure papers. Some industrious little Ninja from the bank took a gander at Facebook…low and behold guess who they found? Yep…the sellers! The sellers were served their papers over Facebook! According to Mr. Debord, Australian courts upheld the process!

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Matt’s Take on the News
June 23, 2011

“No end in sight to foreclosure quagmire”

NBC Channel 11 reports on how we continue down the rabbit hole of foreclosures. The government has introduced program after program that had great intentions but have delivered minimal results. The blame game is always played but never finished. Unemployment continues to rise while our economy plummets. The banks hold back the inventory of houses that they own. Servicing companies stretch out the process for endless periods of time. Some buyers are being ostracized in this market…I could go on and on……..rather than you listening to my rants, read the article and let me know your thoughts.

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Matt’s Take on the News
June 21, 2011

Going to the Well!

Once upon a time, Wells Fargo was a joy to deal with when purchasing short sales. They were responsive, timely and reasonable in their request. As of late, they have caught BOA it is…..or maybe they hired some genius from BOA! Either way, they have become a very cumbersome company.

On a recent short sale, Wells was in second position. They denied the short sale because “they didn’t like the buyer”! WTF! I can’t wait to see how much they like the buyer when the property is sold at auction for a 36% discount to retail versus 9-15%……oh…..I forgot….Wells is servicing the loan so they WAN’T the property to go into foreclosure so they can bilk the investor who owns the note for even more money!

Read the article below. According to Mark Calvey of the San Francisco Business Times; there was a posse at the annual Wells Fargo get together (aka their annual meeting) who expressed their disgust as to how the company is being run. I’d love to know how many buyers of short sale properties with portfolios owned by Wells are turned away. Compare this figure to the same stat involving mortgages that are being serviced by Wells. I’ll bet the numbers are dramatically different.

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Matt’s Take on the News

June 9, 2011

Dual Track Foreclosures

Alejandro Lazo from the Los Angeles Times report on a common practice called dual track foreclosures. To quote the article, “Financial institutions commonly pursue foreclosure even if a borrower has requested a loan modification, a two-track process the lending industry has argued is necessary to protect its investments. But dual tracking is under fire from regulators and lawmakers in the wake of last year’s “robo-signing” scandal, which revealed widespread foreclosure errors.”

What’s interesting is that the proposed law has been in front of state legislators several times before. In my opinion, the reason this bill is not passing (and probably won’t pass) is because of the bank lobby. Bankers enjoy wasting money but they don’t like wasting time. They know that getting a loan mod approved is a small miracle so they don’t want to stall the foreclosure process. Sounds kind of silly but it’s true.

SO my question is, If you can run a foreclosure and a loan mod in parallel, why won’t the banks allow a loan mod and a short sale to run simultaneously? They say that the seller must choose 1 path or the other but not both. Why?

Take the time to read the entire article. It’s quite interesting.