In Florida, about half of all homeowners with mortgages owe more than the value of their home. This is called “having negative equity, ” being “upside down,” or “underwater.” Most of those families owe a LOT more, up to 50% or more than their homes are actually worth! If a family owes tens of thousands…
Continue reading ›Florida has earned the dubious honor of being number one in the nation for foreclosures filed against families. Florida has more than twice national average of foreclosure activity. And if that wasn’t bad enough, those figures came from a housing data firm, RealtyTrac, which reported Palm Beach County’s October 2012 foreclosure starts at 925 while the Palm Beach…
Continue reading ›A CBS News affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia produced an excellent series of short videos on the story of widespread foreclosure fraud committed by banks. Kudos to the reporter, Jeff Chirico, for covering this neglected issue. The most illuminating segment shows Georgia Attorney General squirming in the hot seat of Jeff’s questions about his refusal to…
Continue reading ›A federal prosecutor from the Department of Justice has filed a one BILLION dollar civil lawsuit against Countywide/BoA for a massive scheme to defraud investors, notably Freddie and Fannie, into purchasing loans that were practically guaranteed to quickly go bad. This lawsuit is based on the courage of a former six year Countrywide Vice President,…
Continue reading ›The nation’s top banks are tired of paying the price for crashing the economy, defrauding billions from retirement savings, and dispossessing tens of millions of people from their homes in fraudulent foreclosures across the nation. The banks are ready to move on already. Their officers and representatives are whining about the continued investigations, lawsuits, and damage to…
Continue reading ›In the fall of 2010, after years of tireless work by foreclosure defense attorneys and citizen activists, the media finally shed light on what is widely known as robosigning. Robosigning is a dismissive term for the widespread manufacture of evidence, including real estate document fraud and forgery by banks, in order to fraudulently claim the…
Continue reading ›The 2008 bailout of the American financial industry was based on a law enacted by Congress, Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (TARP). Under rushed and pressured emergency conditions, Congress passed the legislation with very little understanding of why the economy was crashing. There was a sense that the housing boom had something to do with…
Continue reading ›It’s election season. Every single Florida lawmaker is up for reelection this year because this is a redistricting year. The Florida House, Florida Senate, and US Congressional district lines were redrawn after the release of the population and demographic data from the 2010 census. Redistricting happens every ten years after the census is done. Then…
Continue reading ›David Dayen has a fantastic post up on Firedoglake.com debunking all the much celebrated recent good news in the media on housing issues. Headlines proclaim home sales are up, prices are up, bidding wars, realtors going door to door begging people to sell, inventory down, home-builder industry exuding “confidence”. On the ground, we know what’s…
Continue reading ›Got mortgage servicing abuses? Got foreclosure fraud? Got bank break-ins? Got gut wrenching run-around? Got a modification yanked out from under you? Got misapplied payments? Got bogus, unexplained fees on your mortgage statement? The new consumer regulatory agency, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is up against tremendous vitriol from Wall Street and bank-puppet politicians. Unfortunately,…
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