Florida ends mandatory foreclosure mediation. Good for inspectors.

[Nick Gromicko]

Florida is giving up on a program designed to help keep struggling homeowners in their homes and out of foreclosure. When the state created the foreclosure mediation program two years ago, it was heralded as a creative way to try to address the foreclosures moving into courts and causing huge backlogs in the judicial system. The idea was to get lenders and borrowers together with a mediator, who would help find a solution to keep cases out of court. But it didn't work. Only about three percent of the cases resulted in revised mortgage agreements. Nearly 60% of the homeowners eligible for mediation could never be found or contacted.

[Preston L. Halstead]

Its about time. Not only good for inspectors but also good for the economy!

[Russell J. Hensel]

Originally Posted by phalstead

Its about time. Not only good for inspectors but also good for the economy!

Booooo hoooooo....like this guy needs a better economy..has enough work to fill 12 hours a day, eats $300 meals, and keeps his wife in the luxury she is accustomed too....like he knows about a bad economy...the nerve of some people...

[Preston L. Halstead]

I eat them but get some other sucker to pay for them

[Russell J. Hensel]

Lol....please you and your family have a great Christmas and it was a Ppeasure seeing you guys. You and your family are true treasure...

[Preston L. Halstead]

Thanks Russ, you enjoy your xmas as well.

[Eric C. Van De Ven]

Originally Posted by gromicko

Florida is giving up on a program designed to help keep struggling homeowners in their homes and out of foreclosure. When the state created the foreclosure mediation program two years ago, it was heralded as a creative way to try to address the foreclosures moving into courts and causing huge backlogs in the judicial system. The idea was to get lenders and borrowers together with a mediator, who would help find a solution to keep cases out of court. But it didn't work. Only about three percent of the cases resulted in revised mortgage agreements. Nearly 60% of the homeowners eligible for mediation could never be found or contacted.

And nearly 100% of the banks couldn't find the documents or had the power to negotiate anything. They still don't!


http://www.news-press.com/article/20...sey=nav%7Chead

[Reece D. Welch]

How is this good for inspectors?

[Preston L. Halstead]

It puts these house up for sale at very appealing price. When they sell the buyer gets an inspector. Right now people are living in the home for free for the last 2 years.

[Eric C. Van De Ven]

Originally Posted by phalstead

It puts these house up for sale at very appealing price. When they sell the buyer gets an inspector. Right now people are living in the home for free for the last 2 years.

That isn't how it works and the reason they are living in the house for free, in several instances is that the bank can't prove they own the home and "legally" cannot proceed with the foreclosure.

There are numerous foreclosures that have been ruled illegal and the home was awarded to the original borrowers displacing the current owners...who are entitled to any and all monies spent.

Until all the clouded titles are cleared up, the market will not recover.

Today's latest chapter in what is now known as the new 3M: the Massive Mortgage Mess, is that Fidelity National has told lenders to halt foreclosures, and to stop sales of bank owned properties. The reason, and this should be no surprise to anyone, is "possible document flaws." Fidelity is merely the next of, well, all. And while the WaPo reports that the John Walsh, acting director of the OCC has reached out to seven lenders including Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and HSBC, to review their foreclosure processes in light of the Ally and JPM Chase situations, the news of the day comes from the NYT that Old Republic National Title has stopped insuring title to Ally-foreclosed properties "until further notice." And once the insurers lost faith in the product they are supposed to have 100% confidence in it is game over: virtually no foreclosure transactions will take place going forward. We hope RealtyTrac will provide an update on what they may be seeing in foreclosure trends in the past two weeks : we are confident these have plunged off a cliff across the land.

From the NYT:

As more defaulting homeowners become aware of the lenders’ problems, they are expected to hire lawyers and challenge the proceedings against them. And if completed foreclosures were not properly done, families who bought the troubled homes could be vulnerable to claims by the former owners.
Apparently alarmed about such a possibility, one of the major title insurance companies, Old Republic National Title, has sent a bulletin to agents saying that “until further notice” it would not insure title to properties foreclosed upon by GMAC Mortgage, the country’s fourth-largest home lender and one of the two big lenders at the center of the current controversy.
GMAC declined to comment, and Old Republic representatives did not return calls.
As we have long expected, this merely means that as the foreclosure pipeline gets clogged beyond repair, and as mortgage losses accumulate at an exponentially growing pace, stocks of financial companies will likely surge as very soon their survival will become a binary bet on TARP 2. Very soon the investing public will realize that they are worth either nothing or infinity, which is what we affectionately call the Fed's price target for the US financial sector.

Source: mortgage mess

And, just today:

LPS POUNDED BY LAW SUITS AS WEAK LINK IN THE BANK SECURITIZATION SCAM
by Neil Garfield
MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

CLICK HERE TO GET COMBO TITLE AND SECURITIZATION REPORT

WRONGFUL FORECLOSURE WAS THE RULE NOT THE EXCEPTION

"Plaintiffs and consumers have paid the ultimate price through bankruptcies, evictions and foreclosures that were predicated upon false, forged, fraudulent and/or inaccurate documents,” the lawsuit charges.

"Keep your eye on the MONEY. That will tell you everything. Not one cent was ever given by the parties who received documents purporting to give them rights over your loan. The documents --- nearly all of them --- are patent lies. Those lies are intended to deceive the public, the regulators, the investors, the courts and the homeowners into believing that the foreclosures are real. The foreclosures were not, for the most part, real in that their purpose was never to mitigate damages --- it was to make money for intermediaries who never had a dime in the deal." Neil Garfield, livinglies.me

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is why homeowners need the COMBO analysis whether it is from us (see above) or anyone else. The burden of proof SHOULD be on the forecloser but until Judges realize that error, they are looking for the homeowner to come into court loaded with data that can be introduced as evidence and which clearly define issues of fact that are triable by the court and that trigger the right to discovery.

The very presence of LPS and other document fabrication factories like it provides instant corroboration of the homeowners' allegations that the mortgages, and the foreclosures were rotten to the core. The notes are improper, the liens probably didn't attach to the land, the closing documents were essentially vehicles to deliver the signature of borrowers to end the money chase that Wall Street started. As has been repeatedly asserted across the country this was not a case of people chasing money. It was a case of money chasing people. That signature of the borrower was worth more than the borrower ever knew and more than they realize even now.

Think about it. For hundreds of years lenders have been dotting their i's and crossing their t's creating near perfect documentary trails in hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of transactions. Suddenly they need to create layers upon layers of plausible deniability with document fabricators, substitute trustees (what was wrong with the old one?) and all sorts of excuses about why they don't need to prove their case. Here is the truth: THEY HAVE NO CASE.

They were not the lender,the creditor or the assignee at any time. The documents refer to transactions (transfers) that never took place. The origination documents (note, mortgage, deed of trust etc.) refer to transactions that never took place because the actual lender/creditor was not disclosed --- instead they put a straw-man on the note and another straw-man on the mortgage.

Keep your eye on the MONEY. That will tell you everything. Not one cent was ever given by the parties who received documents purporting to give them rights over your loan. The documents --- nearly all of them --- are patent lies. Those lies are intended to deceive the public, the regulators, the investors, the courts and the homeowners into believing that that the foreclosures are real. The foreclosures were not, for the most part, real in that their purpose was never to mitigate damages --- it was to make money for intermediaries who never had a dime in the deal.

DON'T GET LULLED BY THE HOLIDAY MORATORIUM ON FORECLOSURES AND EVICTIONS. THEY WILL START AGAIN WITH A VENGEANCE IN JANUARY. THE BANKS MUST COMPLETE AS MANY FORECLOSURES AS POSSIBLE BEFORE THE PUBLIC, GOVERNMENT AND REGULATORS REALIZE, ONCE AND FOR ALL, THAT PRACTICALLY NONE OF THE FORECLOSURES WERE REAL, LEGAL OR AUTHORIZED.

Nevada homeowners file class-action lawsuit over foreclosure robosignings

SEE FULL ARTICLE ON VEGASINC.COM

by Steve Green

Lender Processing Services Inc., the company targeted by Nevada’s attorney general in a foreclosure robosigning investigation, has been hit with a class-action lawsuit filed by Las Vegas and Henderson homeowners.

Jacksonville, Fla.-based LPS, one of the nation’s largest foreclosure processors, has insisted its robosigning problems in Nevada involved mere paperwork issues, have been addressed and did not involve wrongful foreclosures.

But Tuesday’s homeowner lawsuit said LPS’s use of “forged, fraudulent and/or erroneous” foreclosure documents tainted the foreclosure process to the point where LPS and banks it worked with “did not have authority to foreclose or to continue with the foreclosure process.”

The suit filed in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas alleges violations of Nevada’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, seeks to block pending foreclosures involving allegedly forged LPS documents and seeks unspecified damages for completed foreclosures.

Besides the Nevada attorney general’s lawsuit filed against LPS last week alleging widespread fraud in its foreclosure paperwork operations, criminal charges have been filed in Las Vegas against two LPS officers and four notaries in what state prosecutors call a scheme in which thousands of foreclosure documents were tainted by forged signatures and bogus notarizations.

Also named as defendants in Tuesday’s class-action lawsuit were lenders and foreclosure trustees that work with LPS. They are Bank of America, its subsidiary ReconTrust Co.; IndyMac Mortgage Services, a division of OneWest Bank; and Regional Service Corp., which acts as a foreclosure trustee.

Tuesdays lawsuit was filed by five homeowners and is proposed as a class action representing “countless” more plaintiffs, likely thousands. Four of the named homeowners face foreclosure and the fifth has been foreclosed on, the suit says.

The proposed class of plaintiffs is defined as borrowers in Nevada who received foreclosure documents, called notices of default, “that were improperly executed by LPS, its predecessors or its subsidiaries.”

Tuesday’s lawsuit seeks a court declaration that LPS and its codefendants violated Nevada’s law governing foreclosure proceedings “in that they proceeded with the foreclosure process despite relying upon forged and falsified notices of default.”

“Plaintiffs and consumers have paid the ultimate price through bankruptcies, evictions and foreclosures that were predicated upon false, forged, fraudulent and/or inaccurate documents,” the lawsuit charges.

The suit also seeks a declaration that the notices of default issued by LPS “are null and void” and asks for an injunction blocking LPS and the codefendants from proceeding with the allegedly tainted foreclosures.

“Plaintiffs’ properties face foreclosure as a result of defendants violations of NRS 107.080 (the foreclosure law),” the suit says.

The suit also seeks unspecified actual and punitive damages and attorney’s fees. It was filed by attorneys at the Las Vegas law firm Callister & Associates LLC.

An LPS spokesman said the company had no immediate comment on Tuesday's lawsuit but reiterated its earlier statement: "LPS acknowledges the signing procedures on some of these documents were flawed; however, the company also believes these documents were properly authorized and their recording did not result in a wrongful foreclosure."

[Preston L. Halstead]

Too funny.I buy house, I dont pay for house. Bank to blame. I should live in house for free

[Eric C. Van De Ven]

Originally Posted by phalstead

Too funny.I buy house, I dont pay for house. Bank to blame. I should live in house for free

Even funnier...
I buy a house, lose the house, then get sued by someone I don't even know for a house I don't even own.

And to your statement above, the bank is to blame because they never owned your home in the first place. If they actually did, all foreclosures would be done in six months.

This JP Morgan has happened in probably 3/4 of all foreclosures.

Some more: 60 minutes


And one other thing, it isn't a crime to not pay your mortgage, on the other hand, fraud, especially on the court, is.

[Richard Murphy]

It would seem that the banks - who securitized the mortgages and sold them on the open market - don't, in fact, own the loans - Noone has 100% ownership:

By 1960, Congress authorized creation of real estate investment trusts (REITs) which would produce favorable tax advantages for investors. Most early REITs were mortgage REITs (ownership of mortgages) rather than equity (ownership of property) investments.
• In the 1980s limited partnerships and syndications became popular again as large, nationwide firms entered the picture as underwriters and promoters. Passage of dramatic tax law changes in 1986 took away many of the tax incentives for this vehicle, leading to its near demise.
• In the 1990s, investment in equity-REITs took off, with that becoming the predominant real estate security for investors.

[Eric C. Van De Ven]

Originally Posted by rmurphy1

It would seem that the banks - who securitized the mortgages and sold them on the open market - don't, in fact, own the loans - Noone has 100% ownership:

By 1960, Congress authorized creation of real estate investment trusts (REITs) which would produce favorable tax advantages for investors. Most early REITs were mortgage REITs (ownership of mortgages) rather than equity (ownership of property) investments.
• In the 1980s limited partnerships and syndications became popular again as large, nationwide firms entered the picture as underwriters and promoters. Passage of dramatic tax law changes in 1986 took away many of the tax incentives for this vehicle, leading to its near demise.
• In the 1990s, investment in equity-REITs took off, with that becoming the predominant real estate security for investors.

That is the whole purpose of having land records. The loan is based on the property. When the loan is sold, it is required to be recorded.

The problem now, is that way back when, the originator, who is the only one in the county with true ownership rights, is gone. Now, the title of the property cannot be conveyed as the chain of title has been broken.

Until the banks decide to bite the bullet and admit what they have done, this real estate crisis will continue indefinitely.

The other option is that individuals will realize that who they are paying every month isn't the entity who owns their loan and in fact, their loan may have been paid off several times over. Once that happens, the only option for the homeowner if he wants to sell his home, is a quiet title action.
After a few million of those take place, everything will straighten itself out, unfortunately, the banks will suffer massive losses and again, the taxpayers will have to bail them out.