Bloomberg reports US Home Prices Fall Again:
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. home prices dropped 3.3 percent in July from a year earlier, the eighth consecutive decline, as foreclosed properties flooded the market.
Prices fell 0.5 percent from June, the
Federal Housing Finance Agency in Washington said in a report today.
Economists had projected prices to fall 0.2 percent from the previous
month, based on the average of 15 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The
agency revised the previously reported May-to-June decline to 1.2
percent from 0.3 percent.
Foreclosures are boosting the supply of available properties and reducing prices, even as mortgage rates tumble to record lows. The time it would take to clear the market of homes for sale was 12.5 months
in July, the highest in more than a decade of data, according to the
National Association of Realtors. Banks seized a record 95,364
properties from delinquent borrowers in August, according to RealtyTrac
Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of housing data.
This should be of no surprise to anyone that reads the BoomBust or
follows me regularly. I’ve been warning about the crash for over 5 years
now, and those who feel we are nearing a bottom need to take out their
spreadsheets and plug in some historical numbers.
Paying Subscribers are welcome to download the mortgage and credit
template that was used in the original US (Don’t) Stress (US) tests,
otherwise known as SCAP. We have taken the liberty to update the
template on a periodic basis for the government, since it appears they
are not forcing the banks to do so SCAP Assumptions Updated_09082010 Web Version.
This model shows a weakness in the Case Shiller method of following
prices in that the CS doesn’t include investment properties (usually the
first to go into foreclosure), new construction, and REOs. As a matter
of fact, Case Shiller actually looked slightly rosy as of late. The
following graphs were generated from SCAP Assumptions Updated_09082010 Web Version..
Notice how the federal numbers show falls where CS doesn’t. Signs on the street tell me the federal numbers are correct.
As a matter of fact, things are so bad that I believe banks will have
a perverse incentive to actually walk away. Now wouldn’t that be
something??? Next, we take a look into the home builder that makes more
money doing distressed investing than it does building and selling
homes.
Related content of interest:
- I
Told You Housing Was Going to Take a Downturn for the Worse. I’ll Tell
You Something Else, We Are in a Housing Depression! It’ll Get Worse
Until Market Forces Rule Over Government Bubble Blowing! - Anecdotal Evidence That Banks Are Hiding Depressed High End Real Estate
- As I Made Very Clear In March, US Housing Has a Way to Fall
- The Shortlist of the Shortlisted “Stocks to Short for 2010″: What We See as the Most Profitable Bear Postions for 2010
- Commercial
Real Estate Continues to Dropped into Foreclosure as the Landlords of
Said Properties Enjoy Skyrocketing Share Prices? Yep, Makes Plenty of
Sense - Recent Mortgage Loss and Credit Performance Commentary
- Australia: The Land Down Under(water in mortgage debt)
- Australia: The Land Down Under(water in mortgage debt), pt. Deux: Which Banks to Short?
- Aussi Bubble Video to Go With You Aussie Bubble Speculation?
traderjoe
on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 22:12
#625086
"The law will recognize the banks as the proper owners."
No, it's more than that. The banks might NOT own the homes. Loans were sold so often (without proper transfers of titles) that the chain of title might be broken. Titles/loans may not have been properly transferred into RMBS trusts. Even if they were, all of the owners of the RMBS trusts have to participate in the foreclosure for there to be standing. And if some of the tranches have already been paid off, there might not be able to be standing. And title may have been clouded on millions of homes, even if the person has been paying (who owns the note?). Original notes may no longer exist. Some may be held by bankrupt organizations. This not a simple problem. This is systemic fraud brought about by the entire securitization and mortgage origination and services processes.
==============
Ned Zeppelin
on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 14:46
#630380
I enjoy this particular subject quite a bit, and at the risk of repeating myself from other posts, point out the "Shitstorm Coming" aspects of this whole "Fraudulent Foreclosure" problem.
First, hat tip to those who say they do not understand what the fuss is all about - if you stop paying your mortgage, you should be foreclosed against and thrown out of your home, the house sold, the lender having exercised its normal and customary remedies and life goes on. I don't think that is the problem, although from the shallow treatment given the subject matter by the MSM, you might conclude this fuss is nothing more than a lot of noise orchestrated by ACLU-do-gooder liberal commie Obama lovin' lawyers using the law and our sacred Constitution to help a bunch of deadbeats live rent free for life, and even better get a quitclaim deed without paying the principal and interest on their legal and proper debt.
Or, you might go a little deeper, and conclude that the problem is about mortgage foreclosure mills at the big banks "cutting corners" and "swearing oaths" to documents they have not really read - the implication being that the documents themselves are correct, but that the process is somehow defective. Partly true, but that's not the big problem.
Here's the big problem:
In defending the foreclosures the lawyers went deeper down the rabbit hole, to trace ownership of the notes and mortgages in question. What they found were defects in the formation of the mortgage backed securities, trusts really, such that the trusts did not own the note or the mortgage in question. And for a myriad of tax and other legal reasons, the problem cannot be fixed.
From Naked Capitalism:
"The admission by GMAC that it produced improper affidavits, followed by suspension of foreclosures by GMAC, Chase, and Bank of America in 23 judicial foreclosures states, is the tip of the iceberg of widespread foreclosure abuses. Yet comparatively few members of the media have asked the right question: why would servicers and law firms engage in fraudulent activity on such a widespread basis?
The ugly answer, as we have detailed long form in earlier posts . . is just as the front end of the mortgage securitization pipeline broke down, with originators increasingly simply pumping any deal through in the interest of pulling out fees, the same behavior spread to the back end.
Evidence is mounting that the various parties responsible for getting the notes (the borrower IOU into the securitization trust, failed to perform a series of tasks that were clearly set forth in the governing contract, the pooling and servicing agreement. These procedures were designed to thread a path through a complex thicket of multiple legal considerations (state real estate statutes, federal securities law, trust law, IRS provisions, to name a few). The failure to do it right means any retrospective fixes run afoul of multiple boundary conditions. Thus to industry participants, fraud, bizarrely, looks to be less bad than admitting to their colossal failures to respect contractual obligations and legal requirements."
What this means is that not only are the foreclosures invalid but, far worse, it shines a spotlight on the fact that the MBSs in question don't own anything. So not only do you discount the value of a particular tranche of MBS based on your particular view as to the risk allotted to that tranche, but you also have to consider the fact that the MBS tranches, ALL OF THEM, have nothing in them at all. The due diligence required to figure this out, whether a particular MBS is "safe" or not, would be colossal, if not impossible. So today, every single MBS may be completely worthless - well, that's not true, it is worth something, since there are a huge pile of lawsuits lurking there and someone will recover something from somebody after the lawyers feast and the bankruptcies conclude, but that is a small percentage.
If one foreclosure, in one MBS, turns out to not be feasible due to an ownership/chain of title/assignment issue, to me it means it is extremely likely the entire MBS is defective. And if one MBS is questionable for that reason, they are all questionable. Value plummets as marketability becomes a problem. Collateral calls, usefulness as margin security, need I go on?
That is the problem.
======================
RockyRacoon
on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 11:15
#629691
eric seigerArrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
eric seigerBloomberg reports US Home Prices Fall Again:
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. home prices dropped 3.3 percent in July from a year earlier, the eighth consecutive decline, as foreclosed properties flooded the market.
Prices fell 0.5 percent from June, the
Federal Housing Finance Agency in Washington said in a report today.
Economists had projected prices to fall 0.2 percent from the previous
month, based on the average of 15 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The
agency revised the previously reported May-to-June decline to 1.2
percent from 0.3 percent.Foreclosures are boosting the supply of available properties and reducing prices, even as mortgage rates tumble to record lows. The time it would take to clear the market of homes for sale was 12.5 months
in July, the highest in more than a decade of data, according to the
National Association of Realtors. Banks seized a record 95,364
properties from delinquent borrowers in August, according to RealtyTrac
Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of housing data.This should be of no surprise to anyone that reads the BoomBust or
follows me regularly. I’ve been warning about the crash for over 5 years
now, and those who feel we are nearing a bottom need to take out their
spreadsheets and plug in some historical numbers.
Paying Subscribers are welcome to download the mortgage and credit
template that was used in the original US (Don’t) Stress (US) tests,
otherwise known as SCAP. We have taken the liberty to update the
template on a periodic basis for the government, since it appears they
are not forcing the banks to do so SCAP Assumptions Updated_09082010 Web Version.
This model shows a weakness in the Case Shiller method of following
prices in that the CS doesn’t include investment properties (usually the
first to go into foreclosure), new construction, and REOs. As a matter
of fact, Case Shiller actually looked slightly rosy as of late. The
following graphs were generated from SCAP Assumptions Updated_09082010 Web Version..Notice how the federal numbers show falls where CS doesn’t. Signs on the street tell me the federal numbers are correct.
As a matter of fact, things are so bad that I believe banks will have
a perverse incentive to actually walk away. Now wouldn’t that be
something??? Next, we take a look into the home builder that makes more
money doing distressed investing than it does building and selling
homes.Related content of interest:
- I
Told You Housing Was Going to Take a Downturn for the Worse. I’ll Tell
You Something Else, We Are in a Housing Depression! It’ll Get Worse
Until Market Forces Rule Over Government Bubble Blowing!- Anecdotal Evidence That Banks Are Hiding Depressed High End Real Estate
- As I Made Very Clear In March, US Housing Has a Way to Fall
- The Shortlist of the Shortlisted “Stocks to Short for 2010″: What We See as the Most Profitable Bear Postions for 2010
- Commercial
Real Estate Continues to Dropped into Foreclosure as the Landlords of
Said Properties Enjoy Skyrocketing Share Prices? Yep, Makes Plenty of
Sense- Recent Mortgage Loss and Credit Performance Commentary
- Australia: The Land Down Under(water in mortgage debt)
- Australia: The Land Down Under(water in mortgage debt), pt. Deux: Which Banks to Short?
- Aussi Bubble Video to Go With You Aussie Bubble Speculation?
traderjoe
on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 22:12
#625086"The law will recognize the banks as the proper owners."
No, it's more than that. The banks might NOT own the homes. Loans were sold so often (without proper transfers of titles) that the chain of title might be broken. Titles/loans may not have been properly transferred into RMBS trusts. Even if they were, all of the owners of the RMBS trusts have to participate in the foreclosure for there to be standing. And if some of the tranches have already been paid off, there might not be able to be standing. And title may have been clouded on millions of homes, even if the person has been paying (who owns the note?). Original notes may no longer exist. Some may be held by bankrupt organizations. This not a simple problem. This is systemic fraud brought about by the entire securitization and mortgage origination and services processes.
==============
Ned Zeppelin
on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 14:46
#630380I enjoy this particular subject quite a bit, and at the risk of repeating myself from other posts, point out the "Shitstorm Coming" aspects of this whole "Fraudulent Foreclosure" problem.
First, hat tip to those who say they do not understand what the fuss is all about - if you stop paying your mortgage, you should be foreclosed against and thrown out of your home, the house sold, the lender having exercised its normal and customary remedies and life goes on. I don't think that is the problem, although from the shallow treatment given the subject matter by the MSM, you might conclude this fuss is nothing more than a lot of noise orchestrated by ACLU-do-gooder liberal commie Obama lovin' lawyers using the law and our sacred Constitution to help a bunch of deadbeats live rent free for life, and even better get a quitclaim deed without paying the principal and interest on their legal and proper debt.
Or, you might go a little deeper, and conclude that the problem is about mortgage foreclosure mills at the big banks "cutting corners" and "swearing oaths" to documents they have not really read - the implication being that the documents themselves are correct, but that the process is somehow defective. Partly true, but that's not the big problem.
Here's the big problem:
In defending the foreclosures the lawyers went deeper down the rabbit hole, to trace ownership of the notes and mortgages in question. What they found were defects in the formation of the mortgage backed securities, trusts really, such that the trusts did not own the note or the mortgage in question. And for a myriad of tax and other legal reasons, the problem cannot be fixed.
From Naked Capitalism:
"The admission by GMAC that it produced improper affidavits, followed by suspension of foreclosures by GMAC, Chase, and Bank of America in 23 judicial foreclosures states, is the tip of the iceberg of widespread foreclosure abuses. Yet comparatively few members of the media have asked the right question: why would servicers and law firms engage in fraudulent activity on such a widespread basis?
The ugly answer, as we have detailed long form in earlier posts . . is just as the front end of the mortgage securitization pipeline broke down, with originators increasingly simply pumping any deal through in the interest of pulling out fees, the same behavior spread to the back end.
Evidence is mounting that the various parties responsible for getting the notes (the borrower IOU into the securitization trust, failed to perform a series of tasks that were clearly set forth in the governing contract, the pooling and servicing agreement. These procedures were designed to thread a path through a complex thicket of multiple legal considerations (state real estate statutes, federal securities law, trust law, IRS provisions, to name a few). The failure to do it right means any retrospective fixes run afoul of multiple boundary conditions. Thus to industry participants, fraud, bizarrely, looks to be less bad than admitting to their colossal failures to respect contractual obligations and legal requirements."
What this means is that not only are the foreclosures invalid but, far worse, it shines a spotlight on the fact that the MBSs in question don't own anything. So not only do you discount the value of a particular tranche of MBS based on your particular view as to the risk allotted to that tranche, but you also have to consider the fact that the MBS tranches, ALL OF THEM, have nothing in them at all. The due diligence required to figure this out, whether a particular MBS is "safe" or not, would be colossal, if not impossible. So today, every single MBS may be completely worthless - well, that's not true, it is worth something, since there are a huge pile of lawsuits lurking there and someone will recover something from somebody after the lawyers feast and the bankruptcies conclude, but that is a small percentage.
If one foreclosure, in one MBS, turns out to not be feasible due to an ownership/chain of title/assignment issue, to me it means it is extremely likely the entire MBS is defective. And if one MBS is questionable for that reason, they are all questionable. Value plummets as marketability becomes a problem. Collateral calls, usefulness as margin security, need I go on?
That is the problem.
======================
RockyRacoon
on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 11:15
#629691
eric seigerArrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seigerArrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
eric seigerBloomberg reports US Home Prices Fall Again:
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. home prices dropped 3.3 percent in July from a year earlier, the eighth consecutive decline, as foreclosed properties flooded the market.
Prices fell 0.5 percent from June, the
Federal Housing Finance Agency in Washington said in a report today.
Economists had projected prices to fall 0.2 percent from the previous
month, based on the average of 15 estimates in a Bloomberg survey. The
agency revised the previously reported May-to-June decline to 1.2
percent from 0.3 percent.Foreclosures are boosting the supply of available properties and reducing prices, even as mortgage rates tumble to record lows. The time it would take to clear the market of homes for sale was 12.5 months
in July, the highest in more than a decade of data, according to the
National Association of Realtors. Banks seized a record 95,364
properties from delinquent borrowers in August, according to RealtyTrac
Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of housing data.This should be of no surprise to anyone that reads the BoomBust or
follows me regularly. I’ve been warning about the crash for over 5 years
now, and those who feel we are nearing a bottom need to take out their
spreadsheets and plug in some historical numbers.
Paying Subscribers are welcome to download the mortgage and credit
template that was used in the original US (Don’t) Stress (US) tests,
otherwise known as SCAP. We have taken the liberty to update the
template on a periodic basis for the government, since it appears they
are not forcing the banks to do so SCAP Assumptions Updated_09082010 Web Version.
This model shows a weakness in the Case Shiller method of following
prices in that the CS doesn’t include investment properties (usually the
first to go into foreclosure), new construction, and REOs. As a matter
of fact, Case Shiller actually looked slightly rosy as of late. The
following graphs were generated from SCAP Assumptions Updated_09082010 Web Version..Notice how the federal numbers show falls where CS doesn’t. Signs on the street tell me the federal numbers are correct.
As a matter of fact, things are so bad that I believe banks will have
a perverse incentive to actually walk away. Now wouldn’t that be
something??? Next, we take a look into the home builder that makes more
money doing distressed investing than it does building and selling
homes.Related content of interest:
- I
Told You Housing Was Going to Take a Downturn for the Worse. I’ll Tell
You Something Else, We Are in a Housing Depression! It’ll Get Worse
Until Market Forces Rule Over Government Bubble Blowing!- Anecdotal Evidence That Banks Are Hiding Depressed High End Real Estate
- As I Made Very Clear In March, US Housing Has a Way to Fall
- The Shortlist of the Shortlisted “Stocks to Short for 2010″: What We See as the Most Profitable Bear Postions for 2010
- Commercial
Real Estate Continues to Dropped into Foreclosure as the Landlords of
Said Properties Enjoy Skyrocketing Share Prices? Yep, Makes Plenty of
Sense- Recent Mortgage Loss and Credit Performance Commentary
- Australia: The Land Down Under(water in mortgage debt)
- Australia: The Land Down Under(water in mortgage debt), pt. Deux: Which Banks to Short?
- Aussi Bubble Video to Go With You Aussie Bubble Speculation?
traderjoe
on Mon, 10/04/2010 - 22:12
#625086"The law will recognize the banks as the proper owners."
No, it's more than that. The banks might NOT own the homes. Loans were sold so often (without proper transfers of titles) that the chain of title might be broken. Titles/loans may not have been properly transferred into RMBS trusts. Even if they were, all of the owners of the RMBS trusts have to participate in the foreclosure for there to be standing. And if some of the tranches have already been paid off, there might not be able to be standing. And title may have been clouded on millions of homes, even if the person has been paying (who owns the note?). Original notes may no longer exist. Some may be held by bankrupt organizations. This not a simple problem. This is systemic fraud brought about by the entire securitization and mortgage origination and services processes.
==============
Ned Zeppelin
on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 14:46
#630380I enjoy this particular subject quite a bit, and at the risk of repeating myself from other posts, point out the "Shitstorm Coming" aspects of this whole "Fraudulent Foreclosure" problem.
First, hat tip to those who say they do not understand what the fuss is all about - if you stop paying your mortgage, you should be foreclosed against and thrown out of your home, the house sold, the lender having exercised its normal and customary remedies and life goes on. I don't think that is the problem, although from the shallow treatment given the subject matter by the MSM, you might conclude this fuss is nothing more than a lot of noise orchestrated by ACLU-do-gooder liberal commie Obama lovin' lawyers using the law and our sacred Constitution to help a bunch of deadbeats live rent free for life, and even better get a quitclaim deed without paying the principal and interest on their legal and proper debt.
Or, you might go a little deeper, and conclude that the problem is about mortgage foreclosure mills at the big banks "cutting corners" and "swearing oaths" to documents they have not really read - the implication being that the documents themselves are correct, but that the process is somehow defective. Partly true, but that's not the big problem.
Here's the big problem:
In defending the foreclosures the lawyers went deeper down the rabbit hole, to trace ownership of the notes and mortgages in question. What they found were defects in the formation of the mortgage backed securities, trusts really, such that the trusts did not own the note or the mortgage in question. And for a myriad of tax and other legal reasons, the problem cannot be fixed.
From Naked Capitalism:
"The admission by GMAC that it produced improper affidavits, followed by suspension of foreclosures by GMAC, Chase, and Bank of America in 23 judicial foreclosures states, is the tip of the iceberg of widespread foreclosure abuses. Yet comparatively few members of the media have asked the right question: why would servicers and law firms engage in fraudulent activity on such a widespread basis?
The ugly answer, as we have detailed long form in earlier posts . . is just as the front end of the mortgage securitization pipeline broke down, with originators increasingly simply pumping any deal through in the interest of pulling out fees, the same behavior spread to the back end.
Evidence is mounting that the various parties responsible for getting the notes (the borrower IOU into the securitization trust, failed to perform a series of tasks that were clearly set forth in the governing contract, the pooling and servicing agreement. These procedures were designed to thread a path through a complex thicket of multiple legal considerations (state real estate statutes, federal securities law, trust law, IRS provisions, to name a few). The failure to do it right means any retrospective fixes run afoul of multiple boundary conditions. Thus to industry participants, fraud, bizarrely, looks to be less bad than admitting to their colossal failures to respect contractual obligations and legal requirements."
What this means is that not only are the foreclosures invalid but, far worse, it shines a spotlight on the fact that the MBSs in question don't own anything. So not only do you discount the value of a particular tranche of MBS based on your particular view as to the risk allotted to that tranche, but you also have to consider the fact that the MBS tranches, ALL OF THEM, have nothing in them at all. The due diligence required to figure this out, whether a particular MBS is "safe" or not, would be colossal, if not impossible. So today, every single MBS may be completely worthless - well, that's not true, it is worth something, since there are a huge pile of lawsuits lurking there and someone will recover something from somebody after the lawyers feast and the bankruptcies conclude, but that is a small percentage.
If one foreclosure, in one MBS, turns out to not be feasible due to an ownership/chain of title/assignment issue, to me it means it is extremely likely the entire MBS is defective. And if one MBS is questionable for that reason, they are all questionable. Value plummets as marketability becomes a problem. Collateral calls, usefulness as margin security, need I go on?
That is the problem.
======================
RockyRacoon
on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 11:15
#629691
eric seiger
eric seigerArrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
eric seiger
eric seigerArrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
eric seigerArrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
eric seigerArrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
how to lose weight fast big seminar 14
big seminar 14
big seminar 14
big seminar 14Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
big seminar 14
There is an amazing story in the August 2009 issue of the California Bar Journal about the growing number of complaints against lawyers and law firms offering mortgage help to homeowners. From investigating nine such complaints for all of 2008, the California State Bar is now investigating 391 complaints against 140 attorneys. What is causing this huge increase in the number of borrowers complaining about attorneys?
With the rise in the foreclosure rate over the past few years, it seems that many lawyers have gone into the foreclosure assistance business. Even in states like California, where loan mitigation companies are no longer allowed to charge an up-front fee from borrowers, attorneys can still charge a multiple-thousand dollar retainer fee before any work is done for a homeowner. This makes the foreclosure business very lucrative, and very attractive for the corrupt.
Also, what happened to all of the lawyers providing mortgage services during the boom for lenders, title companies, and home buyers? Many states require that borrowers and sellers both have an attorney at closing to represent them. With the falloff in new closings and refinances, these attorneys may have decided to enter the other side of the business -- helping homeowners escape the predatory loans the lawyers should have warned about in the first place.
Many homeowners were given loans that were either misrepresented to them or were simply not explained at all. Too many lawyers hired to make sure the borrowers understood the terms of the contracts did very little other than collect several hundred dollars at the closing table. The law requiring legal counsel before a real estate closing had more to do with injecting unnecessary legal fees into the housing market than creating educated borrowers.
Some of the complaints against these lawyers now providing loan modification services are the same ones homeowners routinely file against loss mitigation companies. Some of the complaints involve no service being provided, up-front fees that are collected but no work is done, no refunds even though no work is done, instructing homeowners to stop contacting their lenders, even attempting to transfer money directly out of a borrower's bank account.
This indicates that some lawyers have entered the loan modification business essentially just to steal money from desperate homeowners. Too many companies or law firms take payments from borrowers and then never provide any work -- it is one of the most common foreclosure scams around, and one that homeowners keep becoming victims of as they try to save their homes.
But none of this really explains the shocking rise in complaints against attorneys offering foreclosure help. From nine in 2008 to close to 400 in the first seven months of 2009, it seems that more factors than just legal industry corruption are involved. Or, have attorneys in large numbers made the move from other less lucrative practices into the foreclosure business, where they can prey off the huge numbers of people struggling to keep their properties?
big seminar 14Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
big seminar 14Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/11 - Arrowhead Pride
Well, that happened. Good morning Chiefs fans, and welcome to Arrowheadlines. As you'd expect, there are a lot of Kansas City Chiefs stories out there this morning. We've gathered them here for you. Enjoy.
The Week Ahead in Health Care <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Politicians are campaigning on their health care votes. The Brookings Institution is holding a public forum on ensuring patient access to effective information about prescription medicines.
Soap Casting <b>News</b>: 'One Life' Gets Two New Men ... and More
This week, 'One Life to Live' grabbed the headlines this week with a casting flip-flop, one in which everybody came out a winner. We also.
big seminar 14
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