American Recourse
AMERICANRECOURSE
Recourse |'re?kôrs; ri'kôrs|
noun [in sing.]
» a source of help in a difficult situation
» ( recourse to) the use of someone or something as a source of help in a difficult situation
" American Recourse is America's Recourse "
" The following is a letter we received from one of our clients who has one property
already in the American Recourse Program. She writes:
.... my house in Mtns Edge (Las Vegas) I did not place
into the program hoping that the loan modification would work out. Needless to
say, something w...
read more
Ms. P.A.
Your seminar in las Vegas was wonderful, It has opened my eyes and showed me that I do not have to be pushed around by these big banks, who cannot prove that they own my Note. Thank You, American Recourse. Michael - Las Vegas
The program has helped my family and Me stay in our house without the fear of one day coming home with a padlocked door! BM
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October 23, 2009
Dont Forbet About My Mortgage
1. Upon application of the judgment creditor or the beneficiary of the deed of trust within 6 months after the date of the foreclosure sale or the trustee’s sale held pursuant to NRS 107.080, respectively, and after the required hearing, the court shall award a deficiency judgment to the judgment creditor or the beneficiary of the deed of trust if it appears from the sheriff’s return or the recital of consideration in the trustee’s deed that there is a deficiency of the proceeds of the sale and a balance remaining due to the judgment creditor or the beneficiary of the deed of trust, respectively.
2. If the indebtedness is secured by more than one parcel of real property, more than one interest in the real property or more than one mortgage or deed of trust, the 6-month period begins to run after the date of the foreclosure sale or trustee’s sale of the last parcel or other interest in the real property securing the indebtedness, but in no event may the application be filed more than 2 years after the initial foreclosure sale or trustee’s sale.
(Added to NRS by 1969, 573; A 1979, 450; 1985, 371; 1987, 1345)
September 01, 2009 NV Judge Riegle-MERS Judge's ruling deals blow to national mortgage servicer BY TIM O'REILEY A Las Vegas bankruptcy judge has dealt a blow to an obscure but critical piece of the mortgage enforcement machinery that could slow foreclosures. After a rare hearing in front of three judges last year that initially encompassed 27 cases, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Linda Riegle has ruled that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) could not represent lenders seeking to foreclose on delinquent homeowners already in bankruptcy unless it could produce the actual loan note. This goes to the heart of how home lending has evolved over the past two decades, with a loan rarely staying on the books of the originator but often being sold several times to other institutions or investment groups. As a result, producing a loan document is far more complex than opening a drawer in a filing cabinet. MERS, a joint venture of numerous lenders launched in 1993, is a database tracking an estimated 60 million mortgages and promising to take responsibility for functions such as foreclosure as long as a mortgage stays with a MERS member. To reach this point, en route to its self-professed goal of "register(ing) every mortgage loan in the United States," it has fought off court challenges to its status across the country and challenged the argument that it must possess a loan document to have legal standing. MERS has represented hundreds of different lenders in Las Vegas in recent years. For that reason, MERS quickly appealed Riegle's decision in April. Although not commenting directly on the case, a MERS spokeswoman points to other states such as Florida, where MERS lost at the trial-court level but ultimately won on appeal. The case has attracted industrywide attention. Writing last October in the American Bankruptcy Institute newsletter, Johnathan Bolton, a bankruptcy attorney with the Houston firm of Fulbright & Jaworski, noted that the local case "could have a great impact on the ability to enforce mortgages in the United States." "Since Nevada is a nonjudicial foreclosure state, this issue is only now coming to a head," said Bill Uffelman, president of the Nevada Bankers Association. "If in fact you can't produce the note, it puts the whole thing (a foreclosure) into abeyance." But for people with homes worth far less than the loan balance or without the income to cover monthly payments, the ruling may buy only a few months of breathing room. "Whether this changes the outcomes of foreclosures remains to be seen," said Henderson attorney Robert Massi, who represents debtors. "But it does buy time and gains some negotiating leverage" even before a bankruptcy. Lenard Schwartzer, a private attorney and a bankruptcy trustee who won the case, has come to doubt its practical significance. "In most cases, it buys an additional three to six months," he said. "But not many people seem to care." Because people tire of living under the threat of a forced move-out, especially when a house has negative equity, he now describes his work on the case as "50 to 100 hours of wasted legal time." The ruling comes amid swelling complaints that mortgage servicers have exacerbated the deluge of foreclosures in the past couple of years. Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley has introduced a bill in the current legislative session to allow financially besieged homeowners to request arbitration of a default, partly to bypass servicers and force lenders to the table. MERS claims credit for an integral role in the widespread expansion of mortgage lending options for consumers by providing the mechanism not only to follow loans from owner to owner but avoid tens of millions of dollars of recording fees every year and the piles of paperwork that come with it. MERS highlights one section of a Florida court decision that called it "an innovative instrument of commerce." Nevertheless, Riegle's ruling not only parsed federal and state law but at least implicitly rapped MERS on the knuckles for its practices. For example, she noted that MERS acted as the attorney on several loans in Las Vegas even after they were transferred to non-MERS members. She also rejected the argument that lenders who belong to MERS and designated it to be their legal representative should be good enough for the court. Without the loan papers, she concluded, MERS' terms and conditions for its members do not give it any rights to foreclose under Nevada law. "To reverse an old adage," she wrote, "if it doesn't walk like a duck, talk like a duck and quack like a duck, then it's not a duck."
June 13, 2009 Why your lender may not have your mortgage papers USC professor Kerry Fields, a professor of clinical finance & business economics, and Bill Uffelman, president of the Nevada Bankers Association, walk us through a typical scenario of the movement of these documents.
May 19, 2009 House Price Drops- Leave More Underwater House-Price Drops Leave More Underwater by Ruth Simon and James R. Hagerty Monday, May 18, 2009 provided by  The downturn in home prices has left about 20% of U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than their homes are worth, according to one new study, signaling additional challenges to the Obama administration's efforts to stabilize the housing market. The increase in the number of such "underwater" borrowers comes amid signs that falling prices are making homes more affordable for first- time buyers and others who have been shut out of the housing market. But falling prices also make it more difficult for homeowners who get into financial trouble to refinance or sell their homes, and for others to take advantage of lower interest rates. For instance, fewer will qualify to take advantage of a key component of the Obama administration's plan to stabilize the housing market. Under the plan, announced in February, as many as five million homeowners whose loans are owned or guaranteed by government- controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can refinance their mortgages, but only if the mortgage loan is a maximum of 105% of the home's value. Government officials are considering an increase in that limit. "It's a question that we're looking at," said James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie. Real-estate Web site Zillow.com said that overall, the number of borrowers who are underwater climbed to 20.4 million at the end of the first quarter from 16.3 million at the end of the fourth quarter. The latest figure represents 21.9% of all homeowners, according to Zillow, up from 17.6% in the fourth quarter and 14.3% in the third quarter. "What's going on here is that you don't have any markets that have turned around and you have new markets, like Dallas, that have joined the ranks" of communities where home prices have fallen, said Stan Humphries, a Zillow.com vice president. Borrowers who owe far more than their home is worth may also be less likely to participate in another part of the government's housing plan, which provides incentives for mortgage companies to modify loans to make payments more affordable. Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist, said borrowers who owe 30% more than their homes are worth are far more likely to walk away from their property than those who owe just 5% or 10% more and expect prices to rebound. More than one in 10 borrowers with a mortgage owed 110% or more of their home's value at the end of last year, according to First American CoreLogic. There are some recent indications that the housing market could be beginning to stabilize. The National Association of Realtors pending home-sales index, for instance, increased 3.2% in March.  Just how many borrowers are underwater is a matter of some dispute, with the answer depending in part on assumptions regarding home values and mortgage debt outstanding. Variations in home-price estimates can make a major difference in the number of borrowers who are underwater. In addition, borrowers who are already in the foreclosure process may be counted as being underwater if the title to their property hasn't changed hands. Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said underwater estimates can be too high if they use price data that includes a large number of foreclosures. Foreclosed homes tend to sell at a discount, he said, making it appear that prices have fallen more than they actually have. Moody's Economy.com estimates that of 78.2 million owner-occupied single-family homes, 14.8 million borrowers, or 19%, owed more than their homes were worth at the end of the first quarter, up from 13.6 million at the end of last year. Part of the reason Zillow's numbers are higher may be that it looks at mortgage debt taken out at the time the home was purchased and doesn't adjust for any payments since made toward the outstanding mortgage balance. It also assumes that borrowers who took out home- equity lines of credit at the time of purchase have fully tapped the amount they can borrow. That approach can overstate the portion of borrowers who are underwater, Mr. Zandi said. Mr. Humphries of Zillow calls his methodology conservative and said Zillow's use of pricing for individual homes provides a better measure of home valuations than Mr. Zandi's approach, which relies on market-level estimates of home values. He adds that Zillow doesn't include foreclosures in its pricing models. House-Price Drops Leave More Underwater by Ruth Simon and James R. Hagerty Monday, May 18, 2009 provided by The downturn in home prices has left about 20% of U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than their homes are worth, according to one new study, signaling additional challenges to the Obama administration's efforts to stabilize the housing market. The increase in the number of such "underwater" borrowers comes amid signs that falling prices are making homes more affordable for first-time buyers and others who have been shut out of the housing market. But falling prices also make it more difficult for homeowners who get into financial trouble to refinance or sell their homes, and for others to take advantage of lower interest rates. For instance, fewer will qualify to take advantage of a key component of the Obama administration's plan to stabilize the housing market. Under the plan, announced in February, as many as five million homeowners whose loans are owned or guaranteed by government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can refinance their mortgages, but only if the mortgage loan is a maximum of 105% of the home's value. Government officials are considering an increase in that limit. "It's a question that we're looking at," said James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie. Real-estate Web site Zillow.com said that overall, the number of borrowers who are underwater climbed to 20.4 million at the end of the first quarter from 16.3 million at the end of the fourth quarter. The latest figure represents 21.9% of all homeowners, according to Zillow, up from 17.6% in the fourth quarter and 14.3% in the third quarter. "What's going on here is that you don't have any markets that have turned around and you have new markets, like Dallas, that have joined the ranks" of communities where home prices have fallen, said Stan Humphries, a Zillow.com vice president. Borrowers who owe far more than their home is worth may also be less likely to participate in another part of the government's housing plan, which provides incentives for mortgage companies to modify loans to make payments more affordable. Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist, said borrowers who owe 30% more than their homes are worth are far more likely to walk away from their property than those who owe just 5% or 10% more and expect prices to rebound. More than one in 10 borrowers with a mortgage owed 110% or more of their home's value at the end of last year, according to First American CoreLogic. There are some recent indications that the housing market could be beginning to stabilize. The National Association of Realtors pending home-sales index, for instance, increased 3.2% in March. Just how many borrowers are underwater is a matter of some dispute, with the answer depending in part on assumptions regarding home values and mortgage debt outstanding. Variations in home-price estimates can make a major difference in the number of borrowers who are underwater. In addition, borrowers who are already in the foreclosure process may be counted as being underwater if the title to their property hasn't changed hands. Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said underwater estimates can be too high if they use price data that includes a large number of foreclosures. Foreclosed homes tend to sell at a discount, he said, making it appear that prices have fallen more than they actually have. Moody's Economy.com estimates that of 78.2 million owner-occupied single-family homes, 14.8 million borrowers, or 19%, owed more than their homes were worth at the end of the first quarter, up from 13.6 million at the end of last year. Part of the reason Zillow's numbers are higher may be that it looks at mortgage debt taken out at the time the home was purchased and doesn't adjust for any payments since made toward the outstanding mortgage balance. It also assumes that borrowers who took out home-equity lines of credit at the time of purchase have fully tapped the amount they can borrow. That approach can overstate the portion of borrowers who are underwater, Mr. Zandi said. Mr. Humphries of Zillow calls his methodology conservative and said Zillow's use of pricing for individual homes provides a better measure of home valuations than Mr. Zandi's approach, which relies on market-level estimates of home values. He adds that Zillow doesn't include foreclosures in its pricing models.
May 19, 2009 American Chronicle/"Take Your Propert Back Free and Clear" Believe it or not, Attorneys, of all people, are quickly developing a national reputation as champions of homeowners facing foreclosure, and are becoming a serious adversary for those banks attempting to fraudulently take possession of the homes of troubled homeowner´s, and in some cases receiving the homeowner's property back free & clear, by filing a notice of rescission, and a quiet title action, based on Federal violations pursuant to the Truth In Lending Act (TILA), or the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA).
May 13, 2009 Realty Trac..April April forclosure rise to 32 percent. More than 342,000 households received at least one foreclosure-related notice in April, RealtyTrac Inc. said. That means one in every 374 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing last month, the highest monthly rate since the Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure listing firm began its report in January 2005.
March 10, 2009 Missing Mortgage Notes Delay Some Foreclosures Many mortgages are not held by banks, but by securitized trusts — complicated arrangements that involve many investors and byzantine legal documents.
March 04, 2009 Late HOA dues lead to Foreclosure Threat IRVING - With mounting bills and shrinking paychecks, many people have been forced to make tough decisions. One Irving man is among those.
March 02, 2009 Maintaining Properties: Borrowers Seek Fore ... Servicers are seeing increased cases where borrowers are trying to stall or stop foreclosures by filing “right to rescind” notices as violations of the Truth in Lending Act. Legislative Action Panelists on a mortgage ...
February 25, 2009 MFI-Miami Investigates Illegal Foreclosures ... S MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MFI-Miami, LLC announced today that it’s narrowing its multistate investigation into illegal foreclosures and is focusing exclusively on Deutsche Bank. “Deutsche Bank is named as the trustee ...
February 25, 2009 Mortgage woes break records again in 4Q NEW YORK (AP) -- Foreclosures are spreading by epidemic proportions, expanding beyond a handful of problem states and now affecting almost 1 in every 8 American homeowners. In this Nov. 20, 2008 file photo, a home in Levittown, N.Y. ...
February 01, 2009 $3.4 Million Dollar Jury Verdict In Las Vegas For Wrongful Foreclosure A Las Vegas Jury recently awarded a family $3.4 million in a wrongful foreclosure case. As you can guess, this wasn’t your everyday foreclosure. It kind of reminds you of the McDonalds hot coffee case.....
September 09, 2008 Bear Stearns and EMC Mortg... The Bear Stearns Companies, LLC and its subsidiary, EMC Mortgage Corporation, have agreed to pay $28 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they engaged in unlawful practices in servicing consumers’ home mortgage loans.
September 11, 2006 Nightmare Mortgages For cash-strapped homeowners, it was a pitch they couldn't refuse: Refinance your mortgage at a bargain rate and cut your payments in half. New home buyers, stretching to afford something in a super-heated market, didn't even need to produce documentation,...
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September 01, 2009 NV Judge Riegle-MERS Judge's ruling deals blow to national mortgage servicer BY TIM O'REILEY A Las Vegas bankruptcy judge has dealt a blow to an obscure but critical piece of the mortgage enforcement machinery that could slow foreclosures. After a rare hearing in front of three judges last year that initially encompassed 27 cases, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Linda Riegle has ruled that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) could not represent lenders seeking to foreclose on delinquent homeowners already in bankruptcy unless it could produce the actual loan note. This goes to the heart of how home lending has evolved over the past two decades, with a loan rarely staying on the books of the originator but often being sold several times to other institutions or investment groups. As a result, producing a loan document is far more complex than opening a drawer in a filing cabinet. MERS, a joint venture of numerous lenders launched in 1993, is a database tracking an estimated 60 million mortgages and promising to take responsibility for functions such as foreclosure as long as a mortgage stays with a MERS member. To reach this point, en route to its self-professed goal of "register(ing) every mortgage loan in the United States," it has fought off court challenges to its status across the country and challenged the argument that it must possess a loan document to have legal standing. MERS has represented hundreds of different lenders in Las Vegas in recent years. For that reason, MERS quickly appealed Riegle's decision in April. Although not commenting directly on the case, a MERS spokeswoman points to other states such as Florida, where MERS lost at the trial-court level but ultimately won on appeal. The case has attracted industrywide attention. Writing last October in the American Bankruptcy Institute newsletter, Johnathan Bolton, a bankruptcy attorney with the Houston firm of Fulbright & Jaworski, noted that the local case "could have a great impact on the ability to enforce mortgages in the United States." "Since Nevada is a nonjudicial foreclosure state, this issue is only now coming to a head," said Bill Uffelman, president of the Nevada Bankers Association. "If in fact you can't produce the note, it puts the whole thing (a foreclosure) into abeyance." But for people with homes worth far less than the loan balance or without the income to cover monthly payments, the ruling may buy only a few months of breathing room. "Whether this changes the outcomes of foreclosures remains to be seen," said Henderson attorney Robert Massi, who represents debtors. "But it does buy time and gains some negotiating leverage" even before a bankruptcy. Lenard Schwartzer, a private attorney and a bankruptcy trustee who won the case, has come to doubt its practical significance. "In most cases, it buys an additional three to six months," he said. "But not many people seem to care." Because people tire of living under the threat of a forced move-out, especially when a house has negative equity, he now describes his work on the case as "50 to 100 hours of wasted legal time." The ruling comes amid swelling complaints that mortgage servicers have exacerbated the deluge of foreclosures in the past couple of years. Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley has introduced a bill in the current legislative session to allow financially besieged homeowners to request arbitration of a default, partly to bypass servicers and force lenders to the table. MERS claims credit for an integral role in the widespread expansion of mortgage lending options for consumers by providing the mechanism not only to follow loans from owner to owner but avoid tens of millions of dollars of recording fees every year and the piles of paperwork that come with it. MERS highlights one section of a Florida court decision that called it "an innovative instrument of commerce." Nevertheless, Riegle's ruling not only parsed federal and state law but at least implicitly rapped MERS on the knuckles for its practices. For example, she noted that MERS acted as the attorney on several loans in Las Vegas even after they were transferred to non-MERS members. She also rejected the argument that lenders who belong to MERS and designated it to be their legal representative should be good enough for the court. Without the loan papers, she concluded, MERS' terms and conditions for its members do not give it any rights to foreclose under Nevada law. "To reverse an old adage," she wrote, "if it doesn't walk like a duck, talk like a duck and quack like a duck, then it's not a duck."
June 13, 2009 Why your lender may not have your mortgage papers USC professor Kerry Fields, a professor of clinical finance & business economics, and Bill Uffelman, president of the Nevada Bankers Association, walk us through a typical scenario of the movement of these documents.
May 19, 2009 House Price Drops- Leave More Underwater House-Price Drops Leave More Underwater by Ruth Simon and James R. Hagerty Monday, May 18, 2009 provided by  The downturn in home prices has left about 20% of U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than their homes are worth, according to one new study, signaling additional challenges to the Obama administration's efforts to stabilize the housing market. The increase in the number of such "underwater" borrowers comes amid signs that falling prices are making homes more affordable for first- time buyers and others who have been shut out of the housing market. But falling prices also make it more difficult for homeowners who get into financial trouble to refinance or sell their homes, and for others to take advantage of lower interest rates. For instance, fewer will qualify to take advantage of a key component of the Obama administration's plan to stabilize the housing market. Under the plan, announced in February, as many as five million homeowners whose loans are owned or guaranteed by government- controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can refinance their mortgages, but only if the mortgage loan is a maximum of 105% of the home's value. Government officials are considering an increase in that limit. "It's a question that we're looking at," said James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie. Real-estate Web site Zillow.com said that overall, the number of borrowers who are underwater climbed to 20.4 million at the end of the first quarter from 16.3 million at the end of the fourth quarter. The latest figure represents 21.9% of all homeowners, according to Zillow, up from 17.6% in the fourth quarter and 14.3% in the third quarter. "What's going on here is that you don't have any markets that have turned around and you have new markets, like Dallas, that have joined the ranks" of communities where home prices have fallen, said Stan Humphries, a Zillow.com vice president. Borrowers who owe far more than their home is worth may also be less likely to participate in another part of the government's housing plan, which provides incentives for mortgage companies to modify loans to make payments more affordable. Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist, said borrowers who owe 30% more than their homes are worth are far more likely to walk away from their property than those who owe just 5% or 10% more and expect prices to rebound. More than one in 10 borrowers with a mortgage owed 110% or more of their home's value at the end of last year, according to First American CoreLogic. There are some recent indications that the housing market could be beginning to stabilize. The National Association of Realtors pending home-sales index, for instance, increased 3.2% in March.  Just how many borrowers are underwater is a matter of some dispute, with the answer depending in part on assumptions regarding home values and mortgage debt outstanding. Variations in home-price estimates can make a major difference in the number of borrowers who are underwater. In addition, borrowers who are already in the foreclosure process may be counted as being underwater if the title to their property hasn't changed hands. Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said underwater estimates can be too high if they use price data that includes a large number of foreclosures. Foreclosed homes tend to sell at a discount, he said, making it appear that prices have fallen more than they actually have. Moody's Economy.com estimates that of 78.2 million owner-occupied single-family homes, 14.8 million borrowers, or 19%, owed more than their homes were worth at the end of the first quarter, up from 13.6 million at the end of last year. Part of the reason Zillow's numbers are higher may be that it looks at mortgage debt taken out at the time the home was purchased and doesn't adjust for any payments since made toward the outstanding mortgage balance. It also assumes that borrowers who took out home- equity lines of credit at the time of purchase have fully tapped the amount they can borrow. That approach can overstate the portion of borrowers who are underwater, Mr. Zandi said. Mr. Humphries of Zillow calls his methodology conservative and said Zillow's use of pricing for individual homes provides a better measure of home valuations than Mr. Zandi's approach, which relies on market-level estimates of home values. He adds that Zillow doesn't include foreclosures in its pricing models. House-Price Drops Leave More Underwater by Ruth Simon and James R. Hagerty Monday, May 18, 2009 provided by The downturn in home prices has left about 20% of U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage than their homes are worth, according to one new study, signaling additional challenges to the Obama administration's efforts to stabilize the housing market. The increase in the number of such "underwater" borrowers comes amid signs that falling prices are making homes more affordable for first-time buyers and others who have been shut out of the housing market. But falling prices also make it more difficult for homeowners who get into financial trouble to refinance or sell their homes, and for others to take advantage of lower interest rates. For instance, fewer will qualify to take advantage of a key component of the Obama administration's plan to stabilize the housing market. Under the plan, announced in February, as many as five million homeowners whose loans are owned or guaranteed by government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can refinance their mortgages, but only if the mortgage loan is a maximum of 105% of the home's value. Government officials are considering an increase in that limit. "It's a question that we're looking at," said James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie. Real-estate Web site Zillow.com said that overall, the number of borrowers who are underwater climbed to 20.4 million at the end of the first quarter from 16.3 million at the end of the fourth quarter. The latest figure represents 21.9% of all homeowners, according to Zillow, up from 17.6% in the fourth quarter and 14.3% in the third quarter. "What's going on here is that you don't have any markets that have turned around and you have new markets, like Dallas, that have joined the ranks" of communities where home prices have fallen, said Stan Humphries, a Zillow.com vice president. Borrowers who owe far more than their home is worth may also be less likely to participate in another part of the government's housing plan, which provides incentives for mortgage companies to modify loans to make payments more affordable. Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist, said borrowers who owe 30% more than their homes are worth are far more likely to walk away from their property than those who owe just 5% or 10% more and expect prices to rebound. More than one in 10 borrowers with a mortgage owed 110% or more of their home's value at the end of last year, according to First American CoreLogic. There are some recent indications that the housing market could be beginning to stabilize. The National Association of Realtors pending home-sales index, for instance, increased 3.2% in March. Just how many borrowers are underwater is a matter of some dispute, with the answer depending in part on assumptions regarding home values and mortgage debt outstanding. Variations in home-price estimates can make a major difference in the number of borrowers who are underwater. In addition, borrowers who are already in the foreclosure process may be counted as being underwater if the title to their property hasn't changed hands. Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, said underwater estimates can be too high if they use price data that includes a large number of foreclosures. Foreclosed homes tend to sell at a discount, he said, making it appear that prices have fallen more than they actually have. Moody's Economy.com estimates that of 78.2 million owner-occupied single-family homes, 14.8 million borrowers, or 19%, owed more than their homes were worth at the end of the first quarter, up from 13.6 million at the end of last year. Part of the reason Zillow's numbers are higher may be that it looks at mortgage debt taken out at the time the home was purchased and doesn't adjust for any payments since made toward the outstanding mortgage balance. It also assumes that borrowers who took out home-equity lines of credit at the time of purchase have fully tapped the amount they can borrow. That approach can overstate the portion of borrowers who are underwater, Mr. Zandi said. Mr. Humphries of Zillow calls his methodology conservative and said Zillow's use of pricing for individual homes provides a better measure of home valuations than Mr. Zandi's approach, which relies on market-level estimates of home values. He adds that Zillow doesn't include foreclosures in its pricing models.
May 19, 2009 American Chronicle/"Take Your Propert Back Free and Clear" Believe it or not, Attorneys, of all people, are quickly developing a national reputation as champions of homeowners facing foreclosure, and are becoming a serious adversary for those banks attempting to fraudulently take possession of the homes of troubled homeowner´s, and in some cases receiving the homeowner's property back free & clear, by filing a notice of rescission, and a quiet title action, based on Federal violations pursuant to the Truth In Lending Act (TILA), or the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA).
May 13, 2009 Realty Trac..April April forclosure rise to 32 percent. More than 342,000 households received at least one foreclosure-related notice in April, RealtyTrac Inc. said. That means one in every 374 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing last month, the highest monthly rate since the Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure listing firm began its report in January 2005.
March 10, 2009 Missing Mortgage Notes Delay Some Foreclosures Many mortgages are not held by banks, but by securitized trusts — complicated arrangements that involve many investors and byzantine legal documents.
March 04, 2009 Late HOA dues lead to Foreclosure Threat IRVING - With mounting bills and shrinking paychecks, many people have been forced to make tough decisions. One Irving man is among those.
March 02, 2009 Maintaining Properties: Borrowers Seek Fore ... Servicers are seeing increased cases where borrowers are trying to stall or stop foreclosures by filing “right to rescind” notices as violations of the Truth in Lending Act. Legislative Action Panelists on a mortgage ...
February 25, 2009 MFI-Miami Investigates Illegal Foreclosures ... S MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MFI-Miami, LLC announced today that it’s narrowing its multistate investigation into illegal foreclosures and is focusing exclusively on Deutsche Bank. “Deutsche Bank is named as the trustee ...
February 25, 2009 Mortgage woes break records again in 4Q NEW YORK (AP) -- Foreclosures are spreading by epidemic proportions, expanding beyond a handful of problem states and now affecting almost 1 in every 8 American homeowners. In this Nov. 20, 2008 file photo, a home in Levittown, N.Y. ...
February 01, 2009 $3.4 Million Dollar Jury Verdict In Las Vegas For Wrongful Foreclosure A Las Vegas Jury recently awarded a family $3.4 million in a wrongful foreclosure case. As you can guess, this wasn’t your everyday foreclosure. It kind of reminds you of the McDonalds hot coffee case.....
September 09, 2008 Bear Stearns and EMC Mortg... The Bear Stearns Companies, LLC and its subsidiary, EMC Mortgage Corporation, have agreed to pay $28 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they engaged in unlawful practices in servicing consumers’ home mortgage loans.
September 11, 2006 Nightmare Mortgages For cash-strapped homeowners, it was a pitch they couldn't refuse: Refinance your mortgage at a bargain rate and cut your payments in half. New home buyers, stretching to afford something in a super-heated market, didn't even need to produce documentation,...
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October 08, 2009 OCTOBER 10 in TEMECULA CANCELLED Please be advised that the October 10 Seminar and Certification in Temecula has been cancelled. We will announce a new August 14, 2009 FORM'S RERQUEST As we have to comply to new laws, all form requests have to be sent to admin@amrecourse.com. Thank You! August 03, 2009 FORMS NEW PROCESS FOR REQUESTING FORMS!!!
click article for more info click here to view announcementsIn The RUSH To Approve Loans And Sell Notes In The Last Mortgage Boom, Most Lenders Committed Technical Errors And Violations That May Legally Work To The Advantage Of A Borrower Whether Current Or In Default
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