Posts Tagged ‘Bank Of America’
Bank of America Offers Principal Reductions to 200,000 Homeowners
A select group of struggling mortgage borrowers are about to get an offer that sounds too good to be true. Executives at Bank of America admit that, as they begin mailing 200,000 letters offering certain customers mortgage principal reduction.
Bank of America Getting Into the Landlord Business
Bank of America, the nation's second-largest lender, is launching a pilot program this week that will offer a limited number of customers behind on their mortgages to transition from owner to renter.
A Foreclosure Snapshot from Chicago
I'm here today doing a story on Bank of America's new program to demolish some of these homes and donate them back to the city. They expect to do a mere 150 over the next two years, which is really a drop in the bucket when you go on foreclosure websites and see thousands of these properties for sale, with many more coming.
Fannie Mae Bailing Out Bank of America? Not So Much
Late yesterday the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa, sent out a press release titled, "Is Fannie Mae's Purchase of Troubled B of A Portfolio a Back-Door Bailout?" The answer is: No…but let me go back a bit.
Huge Surge in Bank of America Foreclosures
Bank of America is ramping up its foreclosure processing, sending out far more notices of default to borrowers in August than in previous months, well over 200 percent more month-to-month.
Bank of America’s New Year’s Detox
I can't decide if it's more like a full-body detox or somehow akin to a new year's resolution —the part where you recognize what's wrong in your life and try to fix it, no matter how painful, or, in this case, expensive it may be.
Pros & Cons of the Foreclosure Freeze
Many states in America were struck when orders of foreclosure freeze were released. On Friday, Bank of America announced to the world about their plans of halting all foreclosure sales nationwide. This, according to many news websites is the aftermath of revelations by so-called "robo-signers.'' Many popular lending companies like JPMorgan Chase, PNC and GMAC have also suspended their foreclosure operations as well as Fannie Mae foreclosure sales. Together, these lenders own more than 3,000 properties for sale in Florida alone. So what will happen with this foreclosure freeze? Halting the foreclosure sales means the bank will continue to bear the costs of maintaining properties it has reclaimed, and won't be able to cash in on bank-owned sales, which move relatively quickly and often above asking prices. The already hurting housing market will most likely see a record setting low fourth quarter for sales since foreclosure sales make up more than 25% of the homes sold in Florida. When you look at it closely, the freeze could actually benefit both homeowners and the housing market. Homeowners facing foreclosure will have extra time to stay in their home while the effects of robo-signing are figured out and fixed. Prices might stabilize because so many homes are penned up. People trying to buy these foreclosed homes will have to wait out the freeze or find another home if they are in a rush to move in. Click here for a free Central Florida Real Estate Market report.
Bank of America’s Big Freeze Chills Housing Recovery
Bank of America extended its foreclosure freeze to all 50 states as it continues internal "assessments" of its foreclosure practices. "Our ongoing assessment shows the basis for our past foreclosure decisions is accurate," reads their statement.
Foreclosure legal problems could clog market
On Florida’s west coast, where the housing bust has flooded courts with foreclosure filings, the chief judge of the 6th Judicial Circuit has little sympathy for lenders who have routinely submitted flawed and possibly fraudulent foreclosure cases. J. Thomas McGrady, whose jurisdiction includes two hard-hit counties with more than 1 million people in the Tampa area, said Monday that foreclosures based on improper paperwork should be tossed out. Judges “are going to have to vacate that judgment and start over again,” he said. Across the country, judges facing pressure from homeowners and their attorneys are beginning to reexamine old cases and dismiss pending ones. The trend could lead to overturned evictions, and it could stall foreclosure cases for years and scare away buyers of millions of seized properties clogging the real estate market. “We’ve never been inundated to this extent with this number of cases alleging fraudulent paperwork,” said Peter D. Blanc, chief judge of the 15th Judicial Circuit Court, in West Palm Beach. “We’re in new territory, and we’re struggling to determine what the proper solution is.” Judges nationwide have broad latitude in deciding whether to accept new paperwork and whether to charge the lenders with fraud for submitting problematic documents in the first place. Even before three of the nation’s largest lenders – Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Ally Financial – announced moratoriums on foreclosures in the 23 states that require a court order to evict a borrower from a home, some judges were beginning to push back against banks with sloppy or fraudulent filings. The lenders have acknowledged that a handful of employees signing off on hundreds of thousands of files may not have read them, but they have insisted that the problem amounts to a technical issue that can be fixed easily by replacing old documents with new ones. They say that the facts proving that borrowers missed their payments are sound and that the procedural errors might delay foreclosures but won’t change the outcome. As the situation in Florida shows, it’s unlikely to wind up so simple. Armies of consumer attorneys and homeowners are seizing on the paperwork issues to try to protect individual homes from foreclosure and bring into question the legitimacy of the millions of foreclosures undertaken since the housing crisis began in 2007. The recent moratoriums have made life easier for people such as Michael Gaier, a Philadelphia lawyer who has taken on 130 clients hoping to fight their foreclosures. Before, he said, judges churning through foreclosure cases tended “to roll their eyes, because they’ve heard every story in the book,” he said. But now, “I don’t have to convince them on my own. I don’t have to start from scratch,” he said, because the moratoriums show that the banks “know that something is wrong.” Gaier and other lawyers say they have been flooded with calls from new clients who had lost hope of keeping their homes but now see an opportunity to stay. In addition, homeowners who had been complaining of flawed or forged paperwork for years feel they are finally getting traction. “My reaction is, it’s about time. In the past, people thought we were crazy; the judges laughed at us. Now everyone knows there is a serious problem,” said Denise McMillan, 51, who was evicted from her four-bedroom home in Pikesville, Md., in July and has been coordinating online with others fighting foreclosure. The collective decisions of judges across the country could turn a foreclosure slowdown into a far larger mess if they determine that homes were wrongly seized and resold by lenders. Foreclosed homes accounted for nearly one-fourth of all residential sales in the second quarter, according to a report by RealtyTrac released last week. That possibility already is driving away potential buyers of bank-owned properties who don’t want to get caught in legal battles between banks and borrowers. At least one company that provides title insurance, Old Republic Title, has refused to work on homes foreclosed by Ally’s GMAC mortgage unit. Travis John, a broker in central Florida who specializes in distressed sales, said buyers in recent weeks have seen the headlines about problems in the foreclosure process and have shied away. “If buyers continue to have this fear – if we have even 30 percent less sales – that would be traumatic,” he said. “We’re already in a traumatic market.” Across Florida, which has the most foreclosure filings of any state, mortgage companies are already submitting formal requests to judges for the withdrawal of documents that they say were “not properly verified.” Such actions show that the flawed paperwork is “a serious problem,” said veteran circuit court judge Lynn Tepper, who has presided over foreclosure cases in Pasco County, north of Tampa. “They’ve conceded that the affidavit is flawed,” Tepper said. That means the judgment based on the affidavit must have been problematic as well – and that the decisions should be reversed. Tepper sent a chill through law firms working for lenders this spring when she threw out a request for a foreclosure and ruled that U.S. Bank perpetrated fraud by submitting backdated documents that purported to show the lender owning the loan at the time of the foreclosure. The homeowner, Ernest E. Harpster, got his home back despite the fact that he owed $190,000 on the loan. Tepper also ruled that U.S. Bank could not refile the case. These days, Tepper is plodding slowly through the pending cases, looking closely at signatures and notarizations, making sure the names and numbers look accurate and legitimate. “You have to be careful,” she said. “It used to be such a pro forma thing; it was a no-brainer. That’s surely not the case now.”
Bank of America delays foreclosures in 23 states
Bank of America is delaying foreclosures in 23 states as it examines whether it rushed the foreclosure process for thousands of homeowners without reading the documents. The move adds the nation’s largest bank to a growing list of mortgage companies whose employees signed documents in foreclosure cases without verifying the information in them. Bank of America isn’t able to estimate how many homeowners’ cases will be affected, Dan Frahm, a spokesman for the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank, said Friday. He said the bank plans to resubmit corrected documents within several weeks. Two other companies, Ally Financial Inc.’s GMAC Mortgage unit and JPMorgan Chase, have halted tens of thousands of foreclosure cases after similar problems became public. The document problems could cause thousands of homeowners to contest foreclosures that are in the works or have been completed. If the problems turn up at other lenders, a foreclosure crisis that’s already likely to drag on for several more years could persist even longer. Analysts caution that most homeowners facing foreclosure are still likely to lose their homes. State attorneys general, who enforce foreclosure laws, are stepping up pressure on the industry. On Friday, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asked a state court to freeze all home foreclosures for 60 days. Doing so “should stop a foreclosure steamroller based on defective documents,” he said. And California Attorney General Jerry Brown called on JPMorgan to suspend foreclosures unless it could show it complied with a state consumer protection law. The law requires lenders to contact borrowers at risk of foreclosure to determine whether they qualify for mortgage assistance. In Florida, the state attorney general is investigating four law firms, two with ties to GMAC, for allegedly providing fraudulent documents in foreclosure cases. The Ohio attorney general asked judges this week to review GMAC foreclosure cases. In New York, State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is reviewing the matter “to prevent homeowners from being improperly removed from their homes,” according to a spokesman, Richard Bamberger, who said Friday that Cuomo’s office has been in contact with several of the financial institutions. Mark Paustenbach, a Treasury Department spokesman, said the Treasury has asked federal regulators “to look into these troubling developments.” And the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks, has asked seven big banks to examine their foreclosure processes. “We both want to see that they fix the processing problems, but also to look to see whether there is specific harm” to homeowners, John Walsh, the agency’s acting director told lawmakers Thursday. A document obtained Friday by the Associated Press showed a Bank of America official acknowledging in a legal proceeding that she signed up to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month and typically didn’t read them. The official, Renee Hertzler, said in a February deposition that she signed 7,000 to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month. “I typically don’t read them because of the volume that we sign,” Hertzler said. She also acknowledged identifying herself as a representative of a different bank, Bank of New York Mellon, that she didn’t work for. Bank of New York Mellon served as a trustee for the investors holding the homeowner’s loan. Hertzler could not be reached for comment. A lawyer for the homeowner in the case, James O’Connor of Fitchburg, Mass., said such problems are rampant throughout the industry. “We have had thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of foreclosures around the country by entities that did not have the right to foreclose,” O’Connor said. The disclosure comes two days after JPMorgan said it would temporarily stop foreclosing on more than 50,000 homes so it could review documents that might contain errors. Last week, GMAC halted certain evictions and sales of foreclosed homes in 23 states to review those cases after finding procedural errors in some foreclosure affidavits. Consumer advocates say the problems are widespread across the lending industry. “The general level of sloppiness is pervasive around the industry,” said Diane Thompson, counsel at the National Consumer Law Center. Vickee Adams, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo & Co., said Wells’ “policies, procedures and practices satisfy us that the affidavits we sign are accurate.” Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Citigroup Inc., said the bank “reviews document handling processes in our foreclosure group on an ongoing basis, and we have strong training to ensure that appropriate employees are fully aware of the proper procedures.” Mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said Friday they’re directing companies they work with that collect loan payments to follow proper procedures. In some states, lenders can foreclose quickly on delinquent mortgage borrowers. By contrast, the 23 states in which Bank of America is delaying foreclosures use a lengthy court process. They require documents to verify information on the mortgage, including who owns it. Those states are: Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin. AP Logo Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press, Alan Zibel
