Daily News related to the Foreclosure Crisis

The biggest unpunished heist in human history - Max Keiser

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11/22/24

Miami senator’s bill targets rigged foreclosure auctions, following Miami Herald exposé
Taking aim at what she called “predatory practices,” a Miami state senator filed a bill this week to close loopholes that allowed a South Florida attorney to manipulate condo foreclosure auctions. Sen. Ileana Garcia, R-Miami, said the Miami Herald’s “Rigged” reports earlier this year dissecting the maneuvers of South Florida attorney Brad Schandler provided the framework for her proposed legislation (SB 48). Schandler’s strategy for winning foreclosure auctions would be rendered impossible under the bill Garcia filed on Wednesday.

11/22/24

Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast Episode: Post-Election Insights: Impacts on the Banking and Consumer Financial Services Industry
Today’s podcast episode is a re-purposing of a webinar we recorded on November 12, 2024. Our special guests for that webinar were Colin Carr, Vice-President of Congressional affairs at the Consumer Bankers Association and Ian Katz, Managing Director at Capital Alpha Partners. John Culhane, a partner in the Consumer Financial Services Group at our firm.

11/22/24

When Pam Bondi Protected Foreclosure Fraudsters
June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards were attorneys in the Economic Crimes division of the Florida attorney general’s office, based in Fort Lauderdale. They joined the government to prevent companies from ripping off their customers. In 2010, they heard from an oncology nurse named Lisa Epstein, who delivered information about how law firms across the state were using hundreds of thousands of phony documents to foreclose on homeowners. Lisa knew this because the banks tried to do it to her.
A group of foreclosure victims had found documents that were literally signed “Bogus Assignee.” They had documents dated 9/9/9999. They had documents notarized on dates before they were allegedly created. They traced these documents back to Florida’s “foreclosure mills,” law firms that churned out foreclosures the way a factory churns out sweaters. The false documents were necessary because banks and lenders, striving during the housing bubble to sell mortgages and deliver them to investors, securitized the loans without maintaining chain of title, botching the true ownership records. Instead of rectifying the situation, the banks had the foreclosure mills concoct false evidence and present it in courts to dispossess people.
Within months, the attorney general’s office had opened investigations into Lender Processing Services, Florida Default Law Group, the Law Office of David J. Stern, Marshall C. Watson, Shapiro & Fishman, and other components of Florida’s great foreclosure machine. In the course of the investigation, Clarkson and Edwards deposed Tammie Lou Kapusta, a former paralegal with David J. Stern, who testified that the firm employed offshore foreclosure document shops in Guam and the Philippines, receiving fake documents that the paralegals would sign. Notary stamps were sitting around the office, and anyone on the team would use them and forge the signatures of the notaries.

11/22/24

ICE: Mortgage Delinquencies Down Slightly in October
The U.S. mortgage delinquency rate dropped slightly in October compared with September to reach 3.45% of all loans, according to ICE Mortgage Technology’s First Look report. Still, the delinquency rate was up 6% compared with October 2023. As of the end of the month there were about 1,869,000 properties in some stage of delinquency (30 days or more past due but not in foreclosure), down about 11,000 compared with September but up by about 135,000 compared with October 2023. Although 30- and 60-day delinquencies decreased compared with September, seriously past due loans (90+ days) continued their slow rise, up 7.3% from a year ago and at the highest level since May 2023.

11/21/24

District Court Dismisses FDCPA and TILA Claims Against Mortgage Servicer
On November 14, 2024, the United States Court for the District of Arizona dismissed a pro se litigant’s claims against Sun West Mortgage Company, Inc. (Sun West) and Cody N. Crosier, foreclosure counsel for Sun West (collectively, Defendants) for, inter alia, alleged violations of the Fair Debt Collections Practice Act (FDCPA), 15 U.S.C. § 1692 and the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), 15 U.S.C. § 1640(k). The court ruled that a third party could foreclose on a property after the original lender sold its interest in the promissory note and deed of trust associated with the property.

11/18/24

Trump Makes Second Attempt to Install Wall Street’s Lawyer, Jay Clayton, to Oversee Prosecutions of Wall Street
Last week President-elect Donald Trump announced the nomination of Jay Clayton to become U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York – the regional office of the U.S. Department of Justice that brings (or passes on bringing) criminal prosecutions against the Wall Street megabanks for their serial looting of the American people.
In Trump’s first term as President, Clayton was tapped by Trump to serve as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission – notwithstanding that Clayton had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks in the prior three years as a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the oldest Wall Street go-to law firms. Clayton returned to Sullivan & Cromwell after his stint at the SEC and currently serves there as Senior Policy Advisor and Of Counsel.

11/14/24

Are debt collectors calling you about a zombie 2nd mortgage? NOVEMBER 14, 20244:51
NPR's investigations team has been doing stories about what are called zombie second mortgages. These are loans taken out 20 years ago that homeowners thought were dead and gone. Often homeowners say they were told by their mortgage lender that the loans were resolved or forgiven through a loan modification. But then the loans rise from the grave when companies try to collect or foreclose. Some companies are allegedly breaking state and federal rules trying to collect on these old loans.

11/14/24

Here Come the HELOCs: Mortgages, the Burden of Housing Debt, Serious Delinquencies, and Foreclosures in Q3 2024
Mortgage balances rose by just $71 billion, or by 0.57% in Q3 from Q2, the smallest percentage increase since the dip in Q2 2023, and the second smallest since 2018, to $12.6 trillion, as demand for existing homes in Q3 plunged to the lowest since 1995, while more and more people who could buy are renting, thereby profiting from an arbitrage between two similar products with very different prices.

11/05/24

The U.S. Has Failed Its Children – In the Most Unconscionable Ways
Yesterday, the National Association of Realtors released their annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. It showed that by the time Americans have saved enough money for a downpayment to buy their first home in America, they will be close to middle age. The study recorded the median age of first-time home buyers as the oldest in the history of the study, at 38 years of age. (In the 1980s, first-time home buyers were in their 20s.) At the same time the age of first-time home buyers was hitting a record high, the percentage of first-time buyers was hitting a record low – just 24 percent of the market in the latest survey. That is the lowest percentage share of first-time home buyers since the National Association of Realtors began conducting the survey in 1981.

11/05/24

Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast Episode: CFPB’s Proposed Mortgage Servicing Rule Amendments: Understanding the Impact on Loss Mitigation, Foreclosure, and Language Access
This summer, the CFPB issued its long-awaited proposed rule amending the mortgage servicing rules under Regulation X, with a focus on loss mitigation procedures, foreclosure protections, and language access. These changes were previewed by the CFPB as a means to streamline, and add flexibility to, the loss mitigation process, in light of the industry’s successful efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the CFPB’s proposal also significantly expands borrower protections during the loss mitigation process, creates extensive new operational challenges for servicers, and leaves many concerning questions based on the proposed language. The mortgage servicing industry responded by submitting numerous comment letters, appropriately voicing a range of concerns with the proposed changes. We now await further action from the CFPB.

11/04/24

Fannie Mae says it suffered losses from commercial mortgage fraud
Fannie Mae confirmed for the first time an ongoing investigation into a litany of schemes that may be far more pervasive than was initially thought. The agency also listed financial losses from mortgage fraud as its top risk factor in its third-quarter earnings filing. “We have discovered instances of multifamily lending transactions in which one or more of the parties involved engaged in mortgage fraud or possible mortgage fraud,” Fannie Mae disclosed in its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Real Deal and other outlets have reported on Fannie and Freddie Mac’s efforts to weed out fraud in the industry. Fannie, however, has not publicly commented on the investigation.

11/04/24

Jamie Dimon’s House of Frauds Is the Target of More than 200 Investigations, Costing $2 Billion in Legal Expenses in Less than Two Years
The largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, has a rap sheet that rivals that of a crime family — and those crimes show no signs of slowing down. The financial institution is, in effect, a criminal enterprise in drag as a federally-insured banking powerhouse. The facts backing the above assertions are so strong that two trial attorneys, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, wrote a book in which they compared the bank to the Gambino crime family and suggested JPMorgan Chase should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

11/01/24

Top 10 Zombified Metros in Fourth Quarter 2024
According to ATTOM’s newly released Q4 2024 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, approximately 1.4 million (1,355,909) residential properties in the United States are vacant. This accounts for 1.3 percent of the total housing stock, or one in every 77 homes nationwide. This figure is nearly unchanged from the previous quarter and has increased only slightly compared to last year.

11/01/24

Massachusetts is going after a company collecting on 'zombie second mortgages'
The Massachusetts AG is cracking down on a company collecting on "zombie second mortgages" — old loans that homeowners thought were dead but rise from the grave. People are losing houses over them.
Maybe you saw kids trick-or-treating last night dressed as zombies. Well, there is another kind of zombie that's much scarier. NPR's investigations team has been looking into what are called zombie second mortgages. These are loans taken out 20 years ago that homeowners thought were dead, but they rise from the grave when companies try to collect or foreclose. Now, Massachusetts is going after one of those companies and helping hundreds of homeowners. NPR's Chris Arnold reports.

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