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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 18, 2011

Have They Seen The Light!?

Shanthi Bharatwaj from The Street reports on a trend that I hope sticks. He reports that some lenders finally have realized that short sales make more sense than foreclosures. My hope is that the trend is being pushed by the investors that actually own the notes versus’ the “banks” that are simply servicing the loans. I say this because the servicing companies have a vested interest to drive properties into foreclosures. The investors that own the notes have little to gain (except being able to prolong the reporting of the bad debt until the house is actually sold).

From the article, “Lenders often consider short sales as the lesser of two evils when compared to foreclosures,” Core Logic noted in a May 2011 report on short sales. “While significant losses may be incurred in both foreclosure and short sale scenarios, the overall negative financial impact of short sales is typically less than that of foreclosure. In many cases short sales represent the best way for lenders to minimize their overall losses. In general, all parties fare better when a foreclosure is prevented.”

So, why are some servicing companies still making it painfully difficult to complete a short sale? I think its stupidity and greed.

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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 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.

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Matt’s Take On the News
June 2, 2011

Yet Another Scam!

Cynthia Roldan from the Palm Beach Post reports on a growing scam that is becoming more and more prevalent throughout the country. People are renting out abandoned homes as if they owned the home…..the only problem is that they don’t own the home!

The message here is pretty clear. If you or one of your clients is renting (or about to rent) a home, make sure that the person that is renting it to you/them is the rightful owner of the property. I would suggest that you take the extra step of determining whether the house is in pre foreclosure. If it is, the owner is probably not paying the mortgage. The last thing that you or your clients need is to get an eviction notice on the door because the property that they have been renting has been foreclosed upon.

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Matt’s Take On the News
May 24, 2011

THE REGULATORS ACT

Victoria McGrane, Alan Zibel and Robin Sidel report on on US regulators passed down foreclosure penalties for improper foreclosure processes. The current rulings deal with process change and not penalties. It is said that “civil money penalties” are on the way. Sounds like the check is in the mail!

It’s noted that this has no effect on what the attorney generals are trying to accomplish with penalizing the major banks. To amplify this, note the following from the article, “Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said the agreement appears to require only “modest changes” to banks’ foreclosure process and is unlikely to have a big impact on the housing market or broader economy. Still, Mr. Zandi added, “the foreclosure process will remain bogged down and a true bottom in the housing market elusive” until the banks reach a complete settlement with the state attorneys general.”

The crux of the ruling is, “…….banks have 60 days to establish plans to clean up their mortgage-servicing processes to prevent documentation errors.

The orders also direct banks to take steps to ensure they have enough staff to handle the flood of foreclosures, that foreclosures don’t happen when a borrower is receiving a loan modification and that borrowers have a single point of contact throughout the loan-modification and foreclosure process.

Banks must hire an independent consultant to conduct a “look back” of all foreclosure proceedings from 2009 and 2010 to evaluate whether they improperly foreclosed on any homeowners and require each company to establish its own process to consider whether to compensate borrowers who have been harmed.”