Posts Tagged ‘Mortgage Payments’
Facing foreclosure? New Fannie Mae website helps consumers find options
Fannie Mae launched a new website to help consumers understand their options when facing foreclosure and the possible loss of their home. Called KnowYourOptions.com, it outlines the choices available to homeowners struggling to make mortgage payments, and provides guidance on how they can contact and work with their mortgage company to find a back-up plan. KnowYourOptions.com provides information in both English and Spanish. Features include: • Interactive Options Finder helps homeowners identify options. • Calculators help borrowers understand how many of the options would work in their situation, including calculations about refinance, repayment, forbearance, and modification. • Videos feature real homeowners discussing how they received help; others feature housing counselors giving advice. • Forms – including a financial checklist and contact log – to help borrowers prepare for a meeting with their mortgage company or housing counselor. • Information on refinancing, repayment plans, forbearance, modifications and Deed-for-Lease. • Out-of-the-box alternatives, including short sales and deeds-in-lieu for homeowners who recognize that they can no longer afford their mortgages, but want to avoid a foreclosure on their credit history More info: www.KnowYourOptions.com.
Florida’s Largest Foreclosure Law Firm Faces Allegations
Florida’s purported largest foreclosure law firm filed thousands of documents to take people’s homes that contained deceptive and intentionally ambiguous information, according to a proposed class action lawsuit. The suit, filed last month in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, says David J. Stern and his Plantation-based legal team violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by generating fraudulent mortgage assignments when pursuing foreclosures. An assignment is held by the entity that has the right to receive mortgage payments. Stern’s practice, which the lawsuit claims filed up to 7,000 new foreclosure cases in Florida every month last year, is also alleged to have pursued foreclosures for lenders that didn’t own the debt on the homes. “There really is no proper plaintiff to sue and foreclose and that’s what this charade is designed to cover,” said Fort Lauderdale Attorney Kenneth Eric Trent, who is seeking class action status and filed the suit on behalf of Oakland Park resident Ignacio Damian Figueroa. “There is no real holder of the note and the mortgage anymore because they broke it up and sold it to 10, 12, 20 people.” During the real estate boom, loans traded hands often, sometimes being bundled or split up and sold to investors. Tracking the true owner of the debt sometimes can be a challenge. When pressed for proof of debt ownership, Trent said Stern’s office would create an assignment signed by a Stern employee instead of a representative of the lender attempting to foreclose. “The assignments were meaningless shells designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the judiciary and ease the burden upon the unknown real parties of interest,” the lawsuit states. Miami Attorney Jeffrey Tew, of Tew Cardenas law firm, is representing Stern. He said Stern and his company have done nothing wrong, and that it is accepted practice for a firm employee to be given power to approve assignments. “This foreclosure crisis was not created by David Stern, but it is so huge and a lot of people are in very bad shape, so some of the finger pointing goes to him,” Tew said. Trent also named the Mortgage Electronic Registration Service Corp. as a defendant. The private entity, known as MERS, was created by banks in 1995 to track mortgage ownership electronically and reduce paper documents. Trent says MERS helps hide the identity of loan ownership and that it conspired with Stern to “confuse everyone as to who owned what.” Tew called that claim “fantastical.” He did acknowledge, however, that errors can happen. West Palm Beach foreclosure defense Attorney Thomas Ice found 21 examples last year of assignments from Stern’s office that had been executed with a date before the notary’s commission was issued. In a deposition, a Stern employee agreed with Ice that “sloppiness” was to blame for the irregularity. Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Meenu Sasser, who handles the county’s foreclosures, said she’s dismissed cases when she found problems with assignments. She wasn’t speaking directly about cases filed by Stern, and said it’s only happened a few times. “I haven’t seen any widespread problem,” Sasser said. Copyright © 2010 The Palm Beach Post, Fla., Kimberly Miller. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
Foreclosure 101
Being able to own a house is one of the best achievements one could attain in his/her life. Your hard earned money is building equity that will benefit you and your family for generations. People who own a home outright are proven to be less stressed by money issues and more SUCCESSFUL!! But what if something bad happened? Let's say you were fired from your job or perhaps you are going through a divorce ... leaving you unable to buy food, clothes, medicine or more likely, afford to keep paying on your MORTGAGE? When you are no longer paying your mortgage payments, your home will be in foreclosure. Foreclosure takes away the homeowner's right to his/her own property because of failure to pay the mortgage. The lender will have the complete authority to the house. Ultimately, the lender makes the final decision on approving a short sale or auctioning off your house. A short sale can be initiated by the home owner calling the lender and letting them know that you are soon going to be missing payments or using a Realtor and/or Real Estate Attorney. A successfully negotiated short sale means you have been able to sell your home for less than what is owed on it. Therefore, you can evade further foreclosure proceedings with minimal damage to your credit score. There are also cases when a property is not sold or the purchase is not enough to cover the lender’s loan. When this happens, a deficiency judgement could be pursued against you. A foreclosure is a worrisome prospect for anyone, but there are options you can pursue in order to avoid it. Written by Lindsey Huntington M.B.A and Certified Short Sale Professional Concord SellState Realty http://centralfloridarealestatedeals.com huntington.lindsey@gmail.com Need help about mortgage payments? E-mail Lindsey Huntington (huntington.lindsey@gmail.com) and learn about Foreclosure Defense Options and information
Evaluating Your Foreclosure Defense Options
In the wake of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, many people have found it difficult to keep up with their mortgage payments. Factors like high unemployment have caused financial distress for many households. When a borrower is unable to make mortgage payments on time, banks and other lenders can take legal action to repossess and auction off that person's home in a process known as foreclosure. If you are struggling with heavy debt or facing foreclosure, you are not alone. Many people do not realize that, with the help of an experienced foreclosure defense attorney, they can put an end to the foreclosure process. Attorneys can help their clients evaluate their situations and avoid the fate that has disrupted the lives and taken the homes of millions of people. It is an unfortunate truth that many homeowners every year could have protected their homes from an impending foreclosure. Had they explored their legal options fully, many homeowners could have protected their livelihoods from foreclosure. An experienced foreclosure defense attorney has a deep and detailed knowledge of the foreclosure process and what can be done to bring it to a halt. By evaluating your situation thoroughly and giving weight to all of your options, you and your attorney may be able to put a stop to the foreclosure and reorganize your debt. Negotiating with mortgage lenders can help you find a new repayment arrangement. You can work to reduce, eliminate, or consolidate your debts and finally return to a normal life. Living under the threat of foreclosure is a profoundly stressful and emotionally difficult time. If you are struggling to protect your home from the hands of mortgage lenders, an foreclosure defense attorney can help you make the right decisions and may be able to help you safeguard your home from repossession. For more information, visit the website of the Boston foreclosure defense attorneys of Spirn & Associates today. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_S_Caldwell
Yes, You Can Still Afford To Get Your Dream Home!
In February 2009, President Obama introduced to the nation his comprehensive Financial Stability Plan, addressing the key problems that are at the heart of our country's current housing crisis. A core and critical component of that plan is his Making Home Affordable program, a plan with the goals of stabilizing the housing market and providing immediate and necessary relief to struggling homeowners so that they may avoid foreclosure and get back on their feet again. The Home Affordable Modification Program provides all eligible homeowners with the wonderful opportunity to modify and restructure their existing mortgages in order to make them affordable and maintainable. To date, over a million homeowners received assistance and the program is well on its way to helping 3 to 4 million homeowners by the year 2012. If your family can no longer afford your current monthly loan payments, then you may be able to qualify for a loan modification that would make your monthly mortgage payment affordable. Default and late payments aside, if you are one of the millions of borrowers who happen to be current, but are having difficulties with making their payments, as well as, borrowers who have missed payments may be eligible. Don't worry about whether or not you are already in foreclosure. The program was designed especially for you. Foreclosure proceedings cease at the moment the modification process starts. The first thing you will want to do if you find yourself in this predicament is contact your loan servicer, provided they have not already contacted you. Your loan servicer is the whichevever financial institution collecting your mortgage payments and is responsible for all accounting and management of the loan. The loan servicer will provide you with all the necessary paperwork and instructions for creating your loan modification package. There is free foreclosure help available to you on the Obama Administrations "Making Home Affordable" website and you may find additional support at the HUD (Housing and Urban Development) website. If you are having problems making your mortgage payment or need assistance with a loan modification, please contact us today at http://www.unitedloanmods.com and we can help save your home! United Mortgage Solutions is a Texas Based Loan Modification company!
The Obama Mortgage Plan – Are You Close to Losing Your Home?
Due to the recession, there has been a long period of unemployment, which has caused many families to live in fear of losing their homes. There are many other factors that can also lead to financial distress. Many Americans have been put in a situation where they can not make their mortgage payments. What many people do not realize, is that the $75 Billion that was released from Congress can also help to keep you from foreclosure. This created a program call the Obama mortgage plan that began to give incentives to banks to help you keep your home from foreclosure. Fact: Assistance is available to save your home through the Obama mortgage plan. The government is aware of the problems that so many people are experiencing. There have been billions of dollars set aside to assist homeowners in making their mortgage payments. Fact: Banks are now getting incentives to help you from going into foreclosure with your home. Fact: After congress released stimulus money to bail American out, many people have been able to keep their homes out of foreclosure. Why do American' s have a higher chance of keep their homes after the stimulus bill was passed? After Congress released $75 Billion to bail America out in the housing industry, banks were given incentives to encourage them to help you keep your home. This means that the Obama is working to help Americans keep their residence. Hence, the name "The Obama mortgage Plan". There have been over four million families who have had success through the Obama mortgage stimulus plan. The plan helps people who are living in fear of foreclosure by restructuring loans. Families are able to make their house payments, and can stop worrying about loosing their homes. Fact: There is no reason to lose your home when $75 Billion has been spent to help you keep your residence. The Obama mortgage refinance plan is set up to make sure that mortgage payments will not exceed 38% of the homeowners income. Money is available to help reduce payments so that homeowners can also pay other bills and keep food on the table. These reductions can last for up to five years. There are private American companies that are joining the effort to help, by making legal assistance available for those who need it. If you are a financially concerned US citizen, you should take advantage the great opportunities available to help you save your home from foreclosure. You can Save Your Home They are a private company that gives free info on how to save your home. There is no charge. Just enter your email address. Click Here find out what Obama's program entails.
Losing Your Home to Foreclosure – Is a Short Sale the Best Way to Go?
With the millions of Americans behind on their mortgage or are about to lose their home to foreclosure provides a great opportunity to look at some potential options for those folks in trouble with their homes. One of the most popular ways to go is what we call a "Short Sale." Essentially, this is a way that someone that can't make their mortgage payments AND the amount they could sell the house for is less than they owe on their mortgage(s). The short sale is not a new way to get rid of a house it is just become prevalent in today's world thanks to the millions of potential foreclosures that are out there. For example, let's say the Jones family has a house that they bought for $250,000 three years ago and put 5% down ($12,500) so they had a mortgage balance of $237,500 and over 3 years they paid it down to $228,199. Mr. Jones loses his job and they don't have enough savings to continue to make their house payment, in fact they are 2 months behind so they actually owe closer to $230,500 with interest and penalties. They would like to sell the house, but the market for their home could only get them about $225,000. This is what they call being "underwater on your mortgage." A majority of successful home sales are done with a Real Estate Agent, so if we factor in that we'd need to add at least 6% ($13,500 6% of $225,000) to the equation. So if the house sold for $225,000, we owe $230,500 and need another $13,500 to facilitate the sale. That means the Jones' family would need at least $19,000 (Owe $230,500 + $13,500 to sell = $244,000 minus $225,000 sale price = $19,000 difference) to facilitate the sale. Remember, they don't even have enough money to make their payments so how could they come up with $19,000? (To keep this simple we didn't include potential sales concessions, property taxes due, any repairs needed, etc. but all those costs would be added to the total the Jones family owes.) In order to sell the house the lender would have to agree to take $19,000 less than what is currently owed to them. Why would a lender want to do that? Well, when a house goes completely through the foreclosure process the costs could be much higher. The lender would have to pay the legal costs, it takes longer so they miss more payments (no interest payments), a lot of the time the house is left in poor condition so they either have to spend money to fix it or accept a lower price for its condition, and they have to pay a Real Estate Agent to sell the house and any other sales concessions. The bottom line is that the foreclosure process could cost the lender thousands and thousands more than to cut their losses and do a short sale. It makes sense to cut one's losses, yet the lenders still make this process extremely difficult and their delays can make it even tougher to get a buyer to stick thru the home buying process. Sounds like a great deal for the Jones family, they get rid of their house and don't have a foreclosure on their credit, right? It's not quite that simple. First of all, contrary to popular belief, a short sale has a very similar impact on your credit and your ability to buy a home in the future. Future lenders will look at it much like they would a foreclosure. The credit score will suffer a significant drop, just like a foreclosure, maybe not quite as much but it will be very close. It will take a few years before you'd be able to get financing again and I would look for that time frame to be longer as this current crisis plays itself out. You will likely have to wait 3 to 4 years or more even with a short sale before you can qualify to get a new home loan AND your credit score will have to have come back up significantly, which doesn't just happen. Cleaning up your credit will take work on your part too. Another issue is the amount that the lender "wrote off" on what you owed them. The $19,000 in our example could be held as a "deficiency balance" that you would likely have to pay or some lenders would require the Jones family to sign a promissory note to repay that money (which can be a legally enforceable debt that could have a monthly payment attached to it). If the lender agreed to "forgive" the "deficiency balance" then they could issue you a 1099 form which would mean you would have to pay taxes on that money like it was income. The point here is there are many variables that must be fully understood before attempting a short sale so trying to do this on your own, or with the help of just a Real Estate Agent is probably not a good idea. You need to also involve a financial pro that understands all the possibilities and probably even look for a real estate attorney that can help to make sure you are fully protected from the lender coming back at you. I would also strongly recommend a conversation with a Bankruptcy Attorney to make sure you understand all your options. All in all "Short Sales" can be a viable way to get out from under a house you can no longer afford, but it isn't a quick and simple process. In fact it is such a complex process that trusting just one individual to guide you thru it is not a financially intelligent thing to do. Real Estate Agents are not necessarily financial experts or legal experts, financial people are not attorneys may not understand mortgages and how they work so you'll need to find one that understands this unique discipline and attorneys are not financial pros nor are they necessarily well versed in selling homes. Kurt Jackson, Financial Pro 4 the Average Joe is a credit expert and is well versed in the potential financial aspects of the short sale and other ways to minimize the damage that someone with mortgage and housing issues will be facing. If you or anyone you know is facing issues with paying for their home have them call me at 816.582.5532 for a Free Consultation to assess the situation. Kurt Jackson, Financial Pro 4 the Average Joe combines years in the mortgage and financial services to offer a unique way to help Average Americans have someone working for YOU in advising YOU to do what is best for YOUR interests. Check us out on line at http://www.FinancialPro4theAverageJoe.com. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kurt_Jackson
