Daily News related to the Foreclosure Crisis

The biggest unpunished heist in human history - Max Keiser

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06/29/23

Tragic Death of JPMorgan Board Member Adds to the Bank’s String of Unusual Deaths

On Sunday, James S. Crown died in an unusual single-car accident, reportedly on a motorsport racetrack at a “member-owned country club” in Aspen, Colorado. The Pitkin County Coroner’s Office said in a statement that “The official cause of death is pending autopsy, although multiple blunt force trauma is evident.” The Sheriff’s Office indicated that the earliest new information would be made available to the public is next week.
In August of last year, Wall Street On Parade made a referral to the U.S. Department of Justice involving James S. Crown, who was a long-term member of the Board of Directors of JPMorgan Chase and two predecessor banks, Bank One Corporation (previously Banc One) and First Chicago Corporation. Following mergers between the banks, Crown seamlessly went from First Chicago (1991 to 1996) to Bank One (1996–2004) to JPMorgan Chase (2004 to the present) – a stunning tenure of 32 years for a Board Member dubbed an “Independent Director.”
Wall Street On Parade’s referral to the Justice Department concerned financial dealings between Crown and JPMorgan Chase that were not disclosed in public filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission or to shareholders. We reported at the time:
For more than a decade, JPMorgan Chase has been asserting in its proxy statement that its entire Board of Directors, other than Jamie Dimon, its Chairman and CEO, consists of independent directors. In its most recent proxy statement for 2022, JPMorgan Chase asserts that “The Board, having reviewed the relevant relationships between the Firm and each director, determined, in accordance with the NYSE’s listing standards and the Firm’s independence standards, that each non-management director…had only immaterial relationships with JPMorgan Chase and accordingly is independent”…
But JPMorgan Chase has failed to disclose the granular details of a string of financial dealings it has had with companies tied to its Board member James S. Crown, Chairman and CEO of Henry Crown and Company, a private company owned by Crown and his siblings that invest in a sprawling array of businesses…

06/27/23

CFPB Takes Action Against ACI Worldwide for Illegally Processing $2.3 Billion in Mortgage Payments that Homeowners Did Not Authorize

ACI will pay a $25 million penalty for data handling practices that negatively impacted nearly 500,000 homeowners whose mortgages were serviced by Mr. Cooper
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an order against ACI Worldwide and one of its subsidiaries, ACI Payments, for improperly initiating approximately $2.3 billion in unlawful mortgage payment transactions. ACI’s data handling practices negatively impacted nearly 500,000 homeowners with mortgages serviced by Mr. Cooper (formerly known as Nationstar). By unlawfully processing erroneous and unauthorized transactions, ACI opened homeowners to overdraft and insufficient funds fees from their financial institutions. Today’s order requires ACI, among other things, to pay a $25 million civil money penalty.
“The CFPB’s investigation found that ACI perpetrated the 2021 Mr. Cooper mortgage fiasco that impacted homeowners across the country,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “While borrower accounts have now been fixed, we are penalizing ACI for its unlawful actions that created headaches for hundreds of thousands of borrowers.”

06/27/23

This is the Bank Chart that Is Alarming Fed Insiders

Between March 10 and May 1 of this year, three of the largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred.
On March 10 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seized Silicon Valley Bank after $42 billion in deposits had exited the bank the day prior with another $100 billion queued up to leave the next day – meaning it was possible for a federally-insured bank to lose 85 percent of its deposits in the span of 48 hours in the digital age. (For a closer look at what was going on at Silicon Valley Bank, see our report: Silicon Valley Bank Was a Wall Street IPO Pipeline in Drag as a Federally-Insured Bank; FHLB of San Francisco Was Quietly Bailing It Out.)
Two more bank failures followed in short order: Signature Bank on March 12 and First Republic Bank on May 1. Both banks were experiencing bank runs as a result of a loss of confidence by their customers.
First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank were the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history, respectively. (The largest failure was Washington Mutual during the financial crisis of 2008.)

06/23/23

Home Flipping Activity Remains High Across Nation As Investor Profits Show Signs of Improving in First Quarter of 2023

IRVINE, Calif. – June 22, 2023 — ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data, today released its first-quarter 2023 U.S. Home Flipping Report showing that 72,960 single-family homes and condominiums in the United States were flipped in the first quarter. Those transactions represented 9 percent of all sales.
The latest portion was down from 9.4 percent of all home sales in the nation during the first quarter of 2022. But it was still up from 8 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, hitting the second-highest level this century.
The report also revealed that while flipping activity rose, mixed trends emerged for raw profits and profit margins. Profits and investment returns both increased slightly from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of this year. But both also remained near low points over the past decade, reflecting ongoing financial struggles for home flippers.
The quarterly gain in the typical profit margin, of 22 percent, represented a modest reversal of fortune for investors following three years of nearly continuous declines that began well before a slowdown in the broader U.S. housing market last year.

06/23/23

More than 2,600 Nebraska homeowners get help from $50 million pandemic relief fund

OMAHA — More than 2,600 Nebraska property owners have received an average of $13,418 to help stay in their homes since the state early last year launched the pandemic-related Nebraska Homeowner Assistance Fund.
The program — which aimed to prevent Nebraskans from losing their houses over COVID-19 hardships — launched in February 2022 with a $50 million allotment from the U.S. Treasury Department.
It was part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. So far the state has distributed about $31 million. Now officials are about to close the application portal. They are urging income-qualified homeowners to submit requests for funding by June 30.

06/23/23

Serious Delinquencies Continue to Improve in May

According to Black Knight, reversing much of April's calendar-driven spike, the national delinquency rate fell 11 basis points in May 2023 to 3.10%–the lowest reported total rate since March 2023's record low of 2.92% The number of borrowers who were a single payment past due improved by 94,000 (-9.5%), erasing nearly half of the prior month's increase.
Serious delinquencies (loans 90 or more days past due) continued to improve nationally, sliding by 18,000 (-3.7%) from April 2023’s reported total, putting the population of such loans down more than 200,000 (nearly 30%) since May of 2022

06/22/23

Mortgage Reserve Accounts Aimed at Averting Foreclosure Could Help Narrow Black-White Homeownership Gap

New research from FHLBank San Francisco and Urban Institute collaboration investigates ways to reduce mortgage default risk for vulnerable homeowners SAN FRANCISCO and WASHINGTON, June 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Efforts to close the persistent and detrimental Black-white homeownership gap, currently at 30 percentage points, must include not only measures to decrease the barriers to Black homeownership opportunity, but also mechanisms to ensure that homeownership is sustainable once achieved. Mortgage reserve accounts are among the innovative solutions that could help homeowners overcome temporary hardships and get back on track with their mortgage payments, instead of falling into foreclosure.

06/21/23

Wall Street’s Most Dangerous Derivative Secrets Are Hiding in Plain Sight in a Regulator’s Report

On March 17, 2022, the Federal Reserve began its interest rate hiking cycle, which has, thus far, evolved into 10 consecutive rate hikes, making it the fastest rate increases in 40 years. The Fed’s actions to tame inflation included four consecutive interest rate hikes of an aggressive 75 basis point hike (three quarters of one percent) on June 16, July 28, September 22, and November 3 of last year.
At that point, every trading veteran on Wall Street was scratching their head and asking themselves the same question: why aren’t we hearing about interest rate derivatives blowing up and taking down either a U.S. mega bank or its counterparty on the wrong side of the trade?

06/15/23

The CFPB intends to identify ways to simplify and streamline the existing mortgage servicing rules

Borrowing to buy a home is one of the biggest financial decisions a family will make. Mortgage servicers are the companies responsible for processing payments and managing mortgage accounts, and they play a critical role in assisting homeowners with repayment. Borrowers don’t choose these companies – servicers are chosen by the lender or investor that owns the mortgage.
In the mid-2000s, predatory mortgage practices spread throughout the country. Many large financial institutions with mortgage servicing operations experienced serious breakdowns. This resulted in a crisis where 10 million homes ended up in foreclosure between 2006 and 2014.
The foreclosure crisis was an important catalyst for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Congress required the CFPB to implement new rules to make the mortgage market work better. These new rules first took effect in 2014. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw how these rules worked when unemployment spiked. The CFPB observed that there were places where the rules could be revised to reduce unnecessary complexity.

06/15/23

Housing Market Slowdown Across U.S. Starting to Affect Upscale and Western Markets More Than Others

IRVINE, Calif. — June 15, 2023 — ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data, today released a Special Housing Impact Report spotlighting how the recent downturn in the U.S. housing market is starting to affect counties around the nation, based on key measures from the first quarter of 2023. The report shows that the Western region and other more-upscale areas around the country are bearing the greater brunt so far from the slowdown, than other parts of the U.S., with larger-than-average declines in home values or increases in underwater mortgage rates and foreclosure activity. In contrast, lower-priced markets across the country have experienced relatively less impact from the market downturn that started in the middle of last year.

06/14/23

FHA Offers New Multi-Language Resources

Home / Market Trends / Affordability / FHA Offers New Multi-Language Resources Print This Post Print This Post FHA Offers New Multi-Language Resources in Affordability, D&I, Daily Dose, Default Servicing, DEI, Featured, FHA/VA/HUD, Government, Government, Lending and Originations, Loss Mitigation, Market Trends, News, Real Estate, REO, Traditional 4 days ago The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is making available in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, more than 30 single-family mortgage documents and related resources used in the origination of FHA-insured mortgages. The educational resources are accessible from FHA’s new language access web page and are intended to assist lenders, servicers, housing counselors, and other FHA program participants in explaining information related to FHA-insured mortgages to those with limited English proficiency prior to borrowers executing legal documents in English, as required by law. This first set of translations is part of ongoing efforts by FHA to remove language access barriers for consumers whose preferred language may not be English, and a part of HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge’s commitment to making equity a leading compass within the Biden-Harris Administration.

06/12/23

Rhode Island General Assembly passes bill sponsored by Sen. Euer that extends foreclosure protections

STATE HOUSE – A bill sponsored by Sen. Dawn Euer and Rep. Leonela Felix that would help homeowners facing foreclosure has passed the House and Senate and heads to the governor’s desk for his signature.
“I know how devastating foreclosures can be for families and communities firsthand. When I was a kid, my mom got seriously sick and had to stop working for a while. She fell behind on payments and the bank refused to work with her,” said Representative Felix (D-Dist. 61, Pawtucket) in a statement. “If we had had this program back then, we could have gotten on a payment plan we could afford and stayed in our home. This program has given other families security we didn’t have. It works and I’m glad we’re keeping it going.”
The legislation (2023-S 0163, 2023-H 5761Aaa) preserves the process established by the 2013 Foreclosure Mediation Act. Before 2013, the foreclosure processes in Rhode Island had relatively few restrictions.

06/08/23

In search of the perfect foreclosure victim Readers take issue with portrayal of Brooklyn homeowner battling lender

Home foreclosure stories, like eviction stories, trigger two very different reactions. One is sympathy for the homeowner, who is enduring a traumatic, life-changing event that could have been avoided. Inevitably some observers call the lenders cruel, the courts uncaring and the politicians corrupt. The other reaction is from those who consider foreclosures essential for a functioning housing market (foreclosure makes mortgages possible) and focus on the homeowner’s role. They look for evidence that the borrower made irresponsible decisions and should deal with the consequences. Which brings us to a Gothamist story Wednesday about New York’s courts pushing foreclosure cases along without assessing — as state law requires — whether the homeowner can afford a lawyer or should be given free representation.
It’s obviously important for the court system which declined Gothamist’s request for comment to follow the law. Advocacy groups and a Brooklyn homeowner have sued to ensure that it does, the article reported. But readers were more interested in why the homeowner, Carl Fanfair, stands to lose the Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone he bought in 1999 for $200,000. Gothamist reported that Fanfair, 47, fell more than $80,000 behind on his mortgage after losing his appliance-repair job in the pandemic and taking time to care for his wife and her elderly mother. Fanfair, a Yoruba priest, told Gothamist the court referee at his settlement conference never considered his need for a lawyer, and his lender, Reliance First Capital, sent no information about a loan modification. “There’s no personal type of interaction,” he told the reporter. “You’re just a number.”

06/08/23

U.S. Foreclosure Activity Sees Spike In May 2023

IRVINE, Calif. — June 8, 2023 — ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data, today released its May 2023 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows there were a total of 35,196 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions — up 7 percent from a month ago and up 14 percent from a year ago.

06/06/23

JPMorgan and Citigroup Are Using the Same Accounting Maneuver as Silicon Valley Bank on Hundreds of Billions of Underwater Debt Securities

As we reported yesterday, Silicon Valley Bank was not even on the “Problem Bank List” maintained by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) when it imploded in a span of 48 hours in March. According to testimony by the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chairman for Supervision, Michael Barr, on March 28 before the Senate Banking Committee, depositors had yanked $42 billion of their deposits from the bank on March 9 and had queued up to grab another $100 billion on March 10 when it was abruptly put into FDIC receivership. Had the FDIC not stepped in, Silicon Valley Bank would have lost 85 percent of its deposits in a two-day stretch.

06/05/23

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Issues “Zombie Mortgage” Advisory Opinion

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an advisory opinion last month to affirm that the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and its implementing Regulation F prohibit a debt collector, as that term is defined in the statute and regulation, from suing or threatening to sue to collect a time-barred debt. The advisory opinion concerns “piggyback” mortgages “in which high-interest second mortgages were issued simultaneously with the origination of the first mortgage.”

06/05/23

This ‘Retired’ Big Island Attorney Is Still A Fierce Advocate For The Little Guy

Courts This ‘Retired’ Big Island Attorney Is Still A Fierce Advocate For The Little Guy Will Rosdil came out of retirement to take on the case of a man who lost his home to foreclosure. He's still at it.

06/02/23

Disgraced Silvergate Bank Hints It May Not Be Able to Cover All of Its Deposits; Fed Slaps It with a Cease and Desist Consent Order

Last week, on Tuesday, May 23, the Federal Reserve and California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (the state banking regulator) hit the collapsed federally-insured bank, Silvergate Bank, and its parent, Silvergate Capital Corporation, with an enforcement action called a “Cease and Desist Consent Order.” The action was not announced to the public until yesterday.
A Consent Order is meant to function along the lines of a legal settlement, with the bank agreeing to the detailed terms of the Consent Order and waiving its right to judicial review. The individual signing the Consent Order on behalf of the bank was its controversial CEO, Alan Lane, who had allowed his federally-insured bank to get in bed with Sam Bankman-Fried’s house of frauds, including the FTX crypto exchange and Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research. Lane also had allowed his deposit base to become heavily involved with other crypto-related companies.

06/01/23

Nonprofit Alliance of Consumer Advocates Steps in to Prevent Foreclosure on Elizabeth Siliezar's Home

OAKLEY, CA, USA, June 1, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- In a heartwarming turn of events, Elizabeth Siliezar, a resident of Oakley, CA, has been spared from the devastating consequences of foreclosure, thanks to the relentless efforts of the Nonprofit Alliance of Consumer Advocates. Facing financial hardship after her husband abandoned her and struggling to raise her grandchildren, Siliezar found herself on the verge of losing her cherished home due to mounting debts and exorbitant fees charged by the bank.
She contacted the Nonprofit Alliance of Consumer Advocates on October 7, 2022, to seek help regarding the foreclosure date of November 26, 2022. Siliezar had been managing two loans on her property, with the first mortgage being current. However, the second mortgage had become a significant burden, as she was $36,000 Delinquent with a 9% interest rate and a $197 monthly payment. She struggled to keep up with the payments amidst the emotional and financial toll of her husband's departure. The mounting interest and additional fees imposed by the bank compounded her challenges, leaving her in a precarious position.
Recognizing the urgency of Siliezar's situation, the Nonprofit Alliance of Consumer Advocates refers to the Consumer Defense Law Group. With the expertise and dedication of the attorneys at the Consumer Defense Law Group, a lawsuit, case # C23-00835 was filed against the lender to halt the foreclosure proceedings and secure a more favorable outcome for Siliezar.
The lawsuit, backed by a comprehensive analysis of Siliezar's financial situation and the lender's predatory lending practices, revealed the unjust burden she had been facing. The Consumer Defense Law Group argued that the lender had taken advantage of Siliezar's vulnerable circumstances, and their actions violated consumer protection laws and regulations.

06/01/23

Advocates call for foreclosure protection and rent control in Massachusetts

BOSTON (WWLP) – With the housing crisis in the state and effects still being felt by the pandemic, housing advocates rallied at the State House Thursday in support of foreclosure protection and rent control.
According for the Homes for All coalition, Massachusetts is the fifth most expensive state in the country to rent a home and the city of Boston is the second most expensive rental market in the nation.
Poll shows support for local option rent control The two bills the group were lobbying for are An Act Establishing Foreclosure Prevention Program and An Act Enabling Cities and Towns to Stabilize Rents and Protect Tenants.
The first bill on Thursday’s agenda deals with foreclosure protection. It would require service providers to provide accurate loan information and be a part of foreclosure prevention conferences. Every other state in New England has some sort of foreclosure conference or mediation.

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