Subject: Foreclosure & Financial Crisis
Over the past month, the Obama administration has achieved several Home for Good victories for homeowners and consumers. Among them was the bold move Obama made to appoint the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to defend consumers from…
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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sued Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase over the banks' use of the mortgage database MERS, resulting in widespread "deceptive and fraudulant" foreclosure filings in the state and in federal courts,…
President Obama announced today a move that could allow millions of homeowners—including underwater homeowners— a chance to refinance their mortgages into lower-interest federally insured loans, saving an average borrower in the area of $3,000 a year. According to a report…
Last week President Obama followed up on a promise made in his State of the Union Address by creating a new working group to aggressively investigate the abuses that triggered the housing crisis. We know that President Obama means business…
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The Home Affordable Modification Program will make further attempts to extend relief to struggling homeowners, the administration announced last week, by tripling the incentive for banks to conduct principal writedowns as well as offering those incentives to Fannie and Freddie—should…
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Even though some in the House chamber winced at the president's mention of a mortgage investigative unit during the State of the Union, a new poll released today shows that Americans actually support the government's role in fixing the housing…
Eleven financial institutions have been subpoenaed by a new mortgage investigative unit assembled to examine fraud related to mortgage originations and securitizations. The unit was mentioned as part of President Obama's State of the Union address this week. HousingWire is…
A settlement between attorneys general, federal officials, and the nation's five largest mortgage lenders is reportedly anything but final following push back from advocacy groups and some of those attorneys general who worried the deal was too soft on banks.…
Housing advocates and many legislators are voicing their concern with an anticipated $25 billion settlement stemming from an investigation by state attorneys general looking into deceptive lending practices. The scope of the settlement, the extent of its effect on lending…
As the Republican presidential candidates debate the moral legitimacy of venture capital strategies, and the Occupy movement continues to challenge evictions, we have an important opportunity to elevate the foreclosure crisis and what must be done to address it. It's…
New Jersey has roughly $300 million in a housing trust fund that is currently unused, so on first glance, a state senator's proposal to create a "Foreclosure Relief Corp." that would use those monies to convert REO to low- and…
Happy New Year! And what better time to talk about my favorite ideas for getting us out of this fine mess of an economic jim jam we’re all bunched up in. But first, a recap of my previous two posts:…
You might have caught 60 Minutes flying over Cleveland last Sunday for a quick look at the city’s challenges stemming from rampant foreclosures and vacant properties. If you did and you were familiar with what’s happening on the ground in…
The Occupy movement took a welcome turn in the last few weeks when it began organizing around the issue of foreclosures. For a populist movement that aims to represent the 99 percent, this tack made a lot of sense. One…
In case you missed the first post in this series, you can link to it here. You should read it. My mom says so. My goal is to answer my mom’s simple question: Why did the economy crash? She was…
“What can cities do when limited-liability entities start buying up distressed properties as investments and then ignore basic maintenance?” asks Stephen Clowney, an assistant law professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. His question (as well as the…
My mom rocks. She’s the most big-hearted, intellectually curious, bright-eyed and good-looking mom in the world. Now, she and Pop came for a visit a few weeks back and Mom pulled out of her purse a couple of news clippings:…
California Attorney General Kamala Harris recently subpoenaed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for information on their foreclosure proceedings in her state. While it is too early to say what will come from the subpoena, Harris’s attention to the role of Fannie and Freddie in stemming our foreclosure crisis is a breath of fresh air. Fannie, Freddie, and their regulator — the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), led by Acting Director Ed DeMarco — have refused to implement widely accepted servicing best practices, such as stopping foreclosure proceedings until it can be determined whether a family is eligible for a modification or reducing principal balances. In fact, Fannie and Freddie actually fine banks that do not foreclose on homeowners quickly enough.
DeMarco’s disregard for home-saving solutions has serious ramifications. Fannie and Freddie own the majority of loans processed by the largest servicers. For example, they are investors in 60 percent of the loans serviced by Bank of America and in two-thirds of the loans serviced by Wells Fargo. Since Fannie and Freddie own the loans, they dictate the terms on which servicers collect payments, offer modification, and start foreclosures. There is no question that the big banks can and should be doing more to save homes and pay for wrongful foreclosures; however, the FHFAs firm stance against principal reduction and Fannie and Freddies demands for speedier foreclosures are working against the secure housing market Americans want. As Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) recently pointed out, their policies may have actually contributed to the enduring robo-signing scandal. It is no wonder why the Occupy movement in many places has become a family’s best hope for saving their homes. more
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Today, Representative Scott Garrett, R-N.J., chair of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, introduced the Private Mortgage Market Investment Act, which aims to encourage private capital into the residential mortgage secondary market. Its stated goals are…
The protesters challenging the big banks and the super-rich won a dramatic victory in Los Angeles on Thursday, as I describe below. OneWest Bank, the biggest bank based in Southern California, and Fannie Mae, stopped their foreclosure and eviction against…
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National Housing Institute
