Following an all-too-brief period of public scrutiny, Bank of America announced last week that it's back to business as usual, resuming 102,000 foreclosures in 23 states. Like several of the other large mortgage servicers, the bank had voluntarily frozen foreclosures earlier this month in light of revelations that its agents had not followed proper procedures in foreclosing on homeowners. With voluntary efforts to stem the foreclosure crisis falling short time and again, we now should consider a national moratorium.
I have heard from constituents being ignored and abused in the foreclosure process: documents repeatedly lost, inconsistent advice, hours trapped on the phone, and common sense turned on its head to reject fair modifications in favor of foreclosure. I have heard from mayors about the terrible collateral cost to communities from foreclosure. I have watched the big loan servicers drag their feet in the Obama Administration's well-intentioned mortgage modification program. And most recently, we have all learned that these companies have been playing fast and loose in their foreclosure process, carrying out foreclosures in the cheapest manner possible, often outsourcing the process to a "foreclosure mill" document processing company.
Trapped in administrative purgatory, real families suffer when the big banks and their servicers force foreclosures. Children pack up their rooms; parents struggle to find a temporary roof. We owe these families a fair chance to stay in their homes, and a humane, logical and orderly foreclosure process if all else fails.
The system is simply not working logically when it cannot answer the question, "why is the bank throwing me out of my house, to sell it to someone else who'll pay LESS than I'm willing and able to pay right now?" Slicing and dicing these mortgages into securities, and selling them to the four winds, has fractured the marketplace and introduced shards of perverse incentive. Misaligned fee structures have led loan servicers to reject mortgage modifications that would benefit both the homeowner and the mortgage holders. When a homeowner is "underwater" and willing and able to make payments on a rewritten mortgage with reduced principal, why would the loan servicer decline, and throw the home into a foreclosure that ravages its value? Present practices are injurious not only to the homeowner, but often to the owners and investors in the mortgage.
Much of the commentary against a foreclosure moratorium presupposes a false premise: that it's this broken, illogical foreclosure system or nothing. Whether through foreclosure counselors, mandatory mediation, state courts, or bankruptcy proceedings, there are innumerable ways to do it better -- more logically, more humanely, with less collateral damage. What's hard to imagine is how we could do it worse.
A national foreclosure moratorium will force loan servicers to look at the broader economic realities of foreclosure. Far from "delaying the inevitable" as some commentators have suggested, a national moratorium on foreclosures would force loan servicers to reevaluate their practices, and clean up the bureaucratic nightmare they now run.
The foreclosure crisis was worsened by the big banks blocking our attempts in Congress to permit bankruptcy courts to "mark to market" mortgage principal on primary residences -- the way they do for loans on vacation homes, cars, and boats. We in Congress should revive this bankruptcy legislation, and other proposals to help homeowners, such as mandatory pre-foreclosure mediation.
The mortgage companies did it their way for the last three years, and created nightmare, agony and frustration. Now it's time to scrap their failed approach and chart a more reasonable path forward for our housing market and its struggling homeowners.
http://parallelforeclosure.blogspot.com/2010/11/barack-obama-really-steps-into-it-big.html
However, before a homeowner can become eligible to apply for HAMP by being 3 to 4 months behind in their mortgage, PARALLEL FORECLOSURE happens. In essence, Barack Obama's administration is using taxpayer funds to lure homeowners in an accelerated foreclosure (aka parallel foreclosure), a direct violation of the Federal Hobbs Act.
Barack Obama reads letters at night in the white house that just make him want to cry, yet by day, he is now responsible for over a MILLION HAMP foreclosures that violated the Federal Hobbs Act, the extortion clause.
Guess the mortgage companies really "deserve" to get the help to continue their illegal practices and they are getting it from the government.
Here’s why. Oh the fury of it all – any talk of selected mortgage relief and those scintillating minds of the conservative persuasion immediately see visions of socialism and welfare mothers. And this in the face of the true fact that this temporary remedy would, in the final analysis, cost less than the real value lost to vacant and vandalized homes. A short drive through acres of abandoned tract homes in California and Nevada is solemn proof.
Now back to F Scott’s quote. The ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ crowd overtly sickened by the thought of spending a few billion dollars on a sensible and closed end fix to this fiasco and a rebuilding of the American house of cards. Yet, at the same time apparently oblivious to the trillions being wasted in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Invest in America, not Iraq and Afghanistan.
and do you really think that, if enacted, even temporarily, a mortgage foreclosure halt - enacted by the thie ving, corr upt, and blackm ailed congressmen - would not help out their buddies even more?
careful what you wish for - secret word has Obama doing an exec order to 'fix' things - keep an eye out
They worked for months, sending copy after copy of their paperwork from both closings, and County documents indicating that BOA had never been a holder of anything filed with the County, nor did they claim just to be the servicer. They claimed to HOLD THE MORTGAGE.
Finally, the couple engaged an attorney and only the attorney was able to prevent the forelcosure, but BOA is still claiming to own the mortgage. The attorney reported this is far from an isolated incident of this kind of problem
I think the problem occurs in the hierarchy of suck session and candy date bar code systems of tradition that utilize the legal mind as a crystal ball of pay awards using the tea (total earning arrangements) leaves (legal executive association victory earnings scheme) where the dead tree writer uses the tea leaves to define the rate of pay for individual members of the unity in the 8hr exchange rate mechanism, called a working day.
The 8hr exchange rate mechanism is the difference between inequality of existence and the advanced quality of suck sessions in life, feeding on tits that are full and creamy with the good milk or money you need to survive. Good teats (total earning arrangements trust society) and bad teats (total earnings arrangements tough society) decide your outcome through income security in the pay day hay day of nation’s truth in the value of unity and not the tea leaves system of ownership.
Democracy and freedom are rights to fair pay, for fair housing, not, bent paper contracts to serve suck.
We should help out families who can't make their mortgages...
Meanwhile those of us who have struggled for 15 years or better MAKING our payments get nothing.
Why is it smart guys like you NEVER seem to remember that it's the people who honor their commitments that make this country great?
Seeming to help out the little guy might look good on your next re-election campaign but I see it for what it is.
Nothing but more empty promises...
There is not one documented case of a mortgage lender forcing anyone to sign a mortgage. The people sought the mortgages out, the lenders did not go around knocking on doors offering mortgages.
President Bush called upon Congress 17 documented times insisting that better regulation be enacted and each time his warnings were rejected. Barney Frank is on video and in print accusing Bush of not being fair to the lower socioeconomic classes by trying to deny them easy mortgages.
Let the chips fall where they will. Our nation cannot recover until the governmment stops interfering and the markets make their needed corrections. A moratorium will only hinder that progress.
Your reference to Bush --- without attribution -- suggests you think this is a partisan issue. It is not. Crime is not partisan. Fraud is fraud and the allegation of fraud, especially on this wide scale, must be investigated and, if necessary, prosecuted.
But what I smell here is people wanting to end foreclosures just because they don't like foreclosures and the paperwork issue is just their EXCUSE for it.
We must err on the side of the homeowners and insist all paperwork be reviewed thoroughly before one more home is taken or sold out from under families.
I'm not for paying for my neighbors silly decision. Your mileage may vary.
Caveat emptor. If you can't afford it, don't buy it. If its too good to be true then it is too good to be true.
In fact by your analogy, their should never be a victim of fraud, since the victim should have known better.
Banks bloated and then crashed the fiscal economy, backed by our negligent politicians, who repeatedly denied a bubble existed, and consistently shouted what a great investment real estate is.
Banks lowered the bar, borrowers are just playing by banks rules, and they dont like it. If you want to be able to foreclose. follow the law.
The housing market will already be getting worse -- the most ARMs in history are scheduled to reset in Oct/Nov of next year, a bit of news not generally being reported much yet.