Subject: Foreclosure & Financial Crisis
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Last week, a coalition of housing, civil rights, and consumer protection groups issued an open letter to President Obama and Governor Romney asking what they would do, specifically, to address the housing crisis in America, and seeking a meeting to…
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Republican Platform: Taxpayer dollars should not be used to bail out borrowers and lenders by funding principal write-downs. Democratic Platform: Too many people still owe more on their homes than they are worth. And so, with detached whimpers have both…
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For the last two weeks, one politico after another has railed about our damaged economy and declared their intention to solve the problem. Without question, unemployment remains a serious issue that must be dealt with head-on. However, one issue that…
This week, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and members of his party hammered home the point that this country needs leaders who will do what is essential to preserve the “American Dream” not only for ourselves, but for future generations.…
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Now that the presidential tickets are set, it’s time for the candidates to get specific about problems and solutions critical to our economic recovery and future prosperity. Along with job creation, they should start with Home Opportunity—the cluster of housing,…
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Poverty rates are on the rise and more Americans are living in poverty than at any other time since the Census Bureau began measuring its occurrence. According to 2006-2010 American Community Survey (ACS) figures, 40.7 million people have incomes below…
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Aside from Romney VP pick Paul Ryan proposing to abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, any talk of fixing the ongoing housing crisis has been notably absent in 2012. This week, however, Home for Good, a national campaign to inject housing…
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Last month Wells Fargo, the nation's largest home mortgage lender and fourth largest bank, agreed to pay at least $175 million to redress blatant discrimination against African American and Hispanic borrowers. The irony is that this settlement—the second largest in…
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Not even Olympians are immune from America’s homeownership crisis. The Associated Press reported this week that the parents of U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte are facing foreclosure in Florida, while the mother of gold medal gymnast Gabby Douglas filed for…
Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took a bold step toward guarding families’ homes from unnecessary foreclosure. He wrote an open letter in defense of principal reductions—a vital option that reduces the original amount of a home loan for struggling homeowners.…
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Dramatic developments this month have underscored our nation’s progress, as well as our continuing peril, when it comes to Home Opportunity—the deeply held idea that everyone should have access to an affordable home under fair conditions. These developments, both positive…
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This article first appeared on Huffington Post. The heat wave may have broken, but the news is still hot on the latest scheme to deal with underwater mortgages: getting them from the lenders through eminent domain in order to modify…
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HUD announced today that it will make 3,500 distressed loans available through its Distressed Asset Stabilization Program—part of an expansion to the FHA disposition program that sells pools of defaulted mortgages headed for foreclosure. A competitive application process in four metro areas—Chicago,…
Last week, the California legislature passed the California Foreclosure Reduction Act, finally putting an end to the unfair “dual track” system that allows banks to process foreclosure papers while also moving a family through a loan modification. This historic step is…
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After years marked by stalemate and indecision, 2012 has delivered a glimmer of hope for families and the housing market. The Justice Department kicked off the year with a historic settlement with Bank of America regarding predatory loans made by…
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1. Don't Let the Lenders Lie. When lenders and servicers say they can't modify the principal on a loan because it's in a security and their securitization agreements don't let them, they're lying. They may not be doing it on…
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If money from the national mortgage settlement is not used for principal reduction, how should it be spent? We posed that question to readers last week offering a few options (respondents could pick more than one) and here's the response.…
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Recently the National Low Income Housing Coaltion, as part of a blog series looking at discrimination in the marketing and maintenance of bank-owned properties, suggested that FHFA's REO-to-rental pilot program could serve as a gateway to address afforability by tying future…
Short sales are gaining traction as homeowners, real estate agents, servicers, and the GSEs have become more comfortable with the process. Servicers have even indicated that they have recently been approving more short sales than loan modifications, and short sales…
Enterprise Community Partners has issued a new report on what all 50 states are doing with funds received from the national mortgage settlement. It's a comprehensive filing, but acknowledges that while some states offer pinpoint appropriation plans, others include abiguities that leave…
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National Housing Institute
