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Michigan foreclosures projected to continue

December 8, 2010 By 3 Comments

Detroit News

Michigan likely will continue to be a national leader for foreclosures during the next two years, a real estate expert said Tuesday.

States such as Michigan, with the highest numbers of foreclosures, also have high unemployment rates, said Rick Sharga, senior vice president for RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure tracking company.

Michigan’s jobless rate in November was 12.8 percent, the second highest in the country behind Nevada, and it recorded the fifth highest rate of foreclosure filings in October — with one filing for every 235 housing units. Nevada ranked first, with one filing for every 79 housing units, according to RealtyTrac.

Foreclosure rates are being driven higher with the national unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, Sharga said, “so the unemployment rate will probably have to drop back down below 7 or 8 percent before we start to see real relief.”

The comments on Michigan’s foreclosure problems came on a conference call with reporters and in response to an e-mailed question as RealtyTrac and Trulia.com, a website for homebuyers, sellers and renters, released a poll finding that 58 percent of adults expect a housing recovery to take at least another two years.

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20101208/BIZ/12080331/Michigan-foreclosures-projected-to-continue#ixzz17X3HOX8m

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Bank Of America Wants Judge To Throw Out Racketeering Lawsuit Over ‘Robo-Signers,’ Foreclosures

November 12, 2010 By 5 Comments

Jonathan Stempel, Reuters via Huffington Post

Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) has urged a federal judge to throw out a racketeering lawsuit over its alleged use of “robo-signers” in foreclosures.

The largest U.S. bank said the Indiana plaintiffs, who lost their home to foreclosure in 2009, failed to show they were harmed by its alleged practice of routinely submitting perjured affidavits, given they might have lost their home anyway.

It also said the plaintiffs do not deserve relief against Bank of America and its Countrywide Home Loans unit under a federal debt collection law because foreclosures are intended to protect lenders’ interest in homes, not to collect debt.

Wednesday’s filing with the U.S. District Court in Indianapolis provides an early glimpse into how lenders might defend against the growing number of lawsuits over foreclosure paperwork and securities backed by home loans.

Irwin Levin, a partner at Cohen and Malad LLP representing the plaintiffs Dwayne and Melisa Davis, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. The plaintiffs are seeking class-action status on behalf of thousands of homeowners.

Many homeowners and their lawyers accuse robo-signers of signing hundreds of foreclosure documents at a time on behalf of lenders without having read or understood their contents.

On Thursday, real estate company RealtyTrac Inc said banks foreclosed on 9 percent fewer homes in October than September as paperwork issues stalled processing.

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/11/bank-of-america-wants-foreclosures_n_782396.html

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JPMorgan Foreclosure Disputed, Casting Wider Doubts

September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

From The Huffington Post

The integrity of thousands of foreclosure notices issued by JPMorgan Chase could be cast in doubt, as a court battle over one Florida homeowner’s foreclosure might implicate numerous similar filings, reports Bloomberg News. It’s the latest example of a situation that could stall foreclosures across the nation.

Last week, the Washington Post reported that Jeffrey Stephan, a document processor for Ally Financial, who lives in a “modest” two-story house in a small Pennsylvania town, had approved up to 10,000 foreclosure documents a month without actually reading them. The news came to light after Ally said it was putting the brakes on foreclosures in 23 states, citing “corrective action” it needed to take. And when, at the end of the week, Ally began to withdraw foreclosure documents reviewed by another employee, Kristine Wilson, it appeared there might be yet another “robo signer.”

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/27/post_531_n_740331.html

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Obama Foreclosure-Prevention Plan Lagging, New Data Shows

March 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Shahien Nasiripour, Huffington Post

Only about a third of the homeowners who have successfully completed the trial period of the Obama administration’s mortgage modification program have been offered permanent relief, according to new federal data obtained by the Huffington Post.

The conversion rate — about 33 percent — is woefully short of what the Treasury Department had forecast. Treasury thought the rate would be “ranging up to 75 percent,” Herbert M. Allison Jr., assistant secretary for financial stability, told the Congressional Oversight Panel in October.

The other two-thirds of homeowners who have gone through the trial program and made the necessary payments remain in limbo. Some of those homeowners — more than 350,000 of them — will ultimately lose out on the kind of relief the administration has repeatedly promised: averting foreclosure through lower monthly payments.

“I remain very concerned about the relatively small number of conversions from trial to permanent modifications for homeowners,” said Richard H. Neiman, New York’s superintendent of banks and a member of the COP, in an email to HuffPost. “Hundreds of thousands of homeowners are left in limbo by [mortgage] servicers and [are] once again at risk of foreclosure.”

Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/obama-foreclosure-prevent_n_492376.html

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