There are so many fronts to the foreclosure crisis that it’s now becoming difficult to stay on top of all of them.
One development Monday that didn’t get the attention it deserved is the fact that Bank of America is now eating title insurance liability on foreclosed properties sold by its servicer. Per Bloomberg:
Bank of America’s agreement with Jacksonville, Florida- based Fidelity National calls for the lender to cover the title insurer’s costs in the event of an error in the company’s processing of foreclosure documents, Sadowski said. The bank will notify the insurer in each case that the foreclosure complies with state laws and regulations.
Bank of America is in talks with other title insurers for similar agreements, said Richard Bramhall, the bank’s chief title officer. He declined to name the other companies.
This is a big deal for several reasons:
1. The liability in case of a wrongful foreclosure is large. There is no way for the wronged borrower to get his house back, so title insurance is the only recourse. As Bob Lawless explained in Credit Slips:
…most every (or maybe even every–I’ll let someone else do the 50-state survey) state provides the strongest possible finality protections for deeds obtained through foreclosure sales. We also see similar rules for other judicially supervised sales in other contexts such as sales of personal property subject to a security interest or bankruptcy sales….
Suppose Henry and Helen Homeowner lost their home in foreclosure proceeding, and it has since been purchased by Bill and Betty Buyer. Now, Henry and Helen discover the affidavits in their foreclosure proceeding had some of the very same apparently fraudulent signatures reported in the media. When Henry and Helen complain to the court, the answer should be: “Your complaint is against Deutsche Bank (or whoever foreclosed) and not against Bill and Betty. You can recover damages from Deutsche Bank but not eject Henry and Helen from possession.” In turn, this will mean that that Bill and Betty (or their lender) will not have to look to the title insurer for recovery.
2. This means the large banks now effectively have direct exposure to borrowers for screw ups in foreclosures (note that they did earlier, in theory, but this move shortens the process of the money coming from the bank).
3. The liability is via the bank servicer. Note the Bank of American is now the largest servicer in the US (Wells is a close second) by virtue of having bought Countrywide.
4. Some contend that the risk of clouded title means that title insurers may come to require warranties from banks for all properties sold that has securitized mortgages. As Adam Levitin indicated in a Citigroup report, documentation lapses could “cloud title on not just foreclosed mortgages but on performing mortgages.”
It isn’t hard to see that other banks are likely to be required to take the same step as Bank of America, at least if they want to unload foreclosed property.
It isn’t hard to see where this is going. The biggest servicers are part of TBTF banks. The biggest trustees (the folks who were supposed to make sure that the loans all got to the securitization trust properly) are part of TBTF banks. The major structurer/packagers are now all part of TBTF banks.
Isn’t a concentrated financial services industry grand? Any time they screw up, they are too large to be made to pay for their crimes. The die was cast at the beginning of the Obama administration. It was a critical window of opportunity to take over and put new management in the weakest of the big banks (and probably force them to shed operations too) and they instead were coddled and sent back on their merry way.
I guarantee that the losses, between extend and pretend that will no longer be viable (in particular, the unrealistic marks on second mortgages) and the liabilities resulting from this colossal mess, at least one major bank will be insolvent. But the odds of the new special resolution authority being used? I put the odds at pretty much zero.
Just when it looked like the Ally Financial/GMAC Mortgage robo-signing drama couldn't get any more, well, dramatic -- it did. Last week, the fourth-largest mortgage lender in America revealed that the foreclosure documents for potentially all its foreclosures over the last five years had simply not been read, because the staffer tasked with signing them had been assigned the inhuman job of "reading" and signing over 10,000 documents per month.
More than 50,000 foreclosures, evictions and resales of foreclosed homes on home loans held or serviced by GMAC Mortgage were frozen across 23 states; within the week, the California attorney general had asked GMAC to stop foreclosures in the nation's largest state until the company could prove it was complying with state foreclosure laws, Connecticut's attorney general had requested a court order halting all banks from foreclosing on homes there for 60 days and the attorneys general of Ohio and Florida had initiated investigations into GMAC foreclosures.
This week, though, the debacle flew straight up the food chain of the mortgage lending industry. Executives at JP Morgan Chase and the country's largest mortgage lender, Bank of America, have also confessed to signing tens of thousands of foreclosure documents without reading them, causing these banks to also halt foreclosures in the 23 states that require judicial involvement to consummate a foreclosure and evict the former homeowner.
The latest? Yesterday, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ordered the seven largest mortgage lenders in the country to review their foreclosure processes for flaws in their document management systems.
For tips on what this means to those who are facing or have already experienced foreclosure, and think their documents might have been "robo-signed," check out this report we filed when the Ally Financial/GMAC Mortgage foreclosure mill story first broke.
eric seiger do
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iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum ...
eric seiger
There are so many fronts to the foreclosure crisis that it’s now becoming difficult to stay on top of all of them.
One development Monday that didn’t get the attention it deserved is the fact that Bank of America is now eating title insurance liability on foreclosed properties sold by its servicer. Per Bloomberg:
Bank of America’s agreement with Jacksonville, Florida- based Fidelity National calls for the lender to cover the title insurer’s costs in the event of an error in the company’s processing of foreclosure documents, Sadowski said. The bank will notify the insurer in each case that the foreclosure complies with state laws and regulations.
Bank of America is in talks with other title insurers for similar agreements, said Richard Bramhall, the bank’s chief title officer. He declined to name the other companies.
This is a big deal for several reasons:
1. The liability in case of a wrongful foreclosure is large. There is no way for the wronged borrower to get his house back, so title insurance is the only recourse. As Bob Lawless explained in Credit Slips:
…most every (or maybe even every–I’ll let someone else do the 50-state survey) state provides the strongest possible finality protections for deeds obtained through foreclosure sales. We also see similar rules for other judicially supervised sales in other contexts such as sales of personal property subject to a security interest or bankruptcy sales….
Suppose Henry and Helen Homeowner lost their home in foreclosure proceeding, and it has since been purchased by Bill and Betty Buyer. Now, Henry and Helen discover the affidavits in their foreclosure proceeding had some of the very same apparently fraudulent signatures reported in the media. When Henry and Helen complain to the court, the answer should be: “Your complaint is against Deutsche Bank (or whoever foreclosed) and not against Bill and Betty. You can recover damages from Deutsche Bank but not eject Henry and Helen from possession.” In turn, this will mean that that Bill and Betty (or their lender) will not have to look to the title insurer for recovery.
2. This means the large banks now effectively have direct exposure to borrowers for screw ups in foreclosures (note that they did earlier, in theory, but this move shortens the process of the money coming from the bank).
3. The liability is via the bank servicer. Note the Bank of American is now the largest servicer in the US (Wells is a close second) by virtue of having bought Countrywide.
4. Some contend that the risk of clouded title means that title insurers may come to require warranties from banks for all properties sold that has securitized mortgages. As Adam Levitin indicated in a Citigroup report, documentation lapses could “cloud title on not just foreclosed mortgages but on performing mortgages.”
It isn’t hard to see that other banks are likely to be required to take the same step as Bank of America, at least if they want to unload foreclosed property.
It isn’t hard to see where this is going. The biggest servicers are part of TBTF banks. The biggest trustees (the folks who were supposed to make sure that the loans all got to the securitization trust properly) are part of TBTF banks. The major structurer/packagers are now all part of TBTF banks.
Isn’t a concentrated financial services industry grand? Any time they screw up, they are too large to be made to pay for their crimes. The die was cast at the beginning of the Obama administration. It was a critical window of opportunity to take over and put new management in the weakest of the big banks (and probably force them to shed operations too) and they instead were coddled and sent back on their merry way.
I guarantee that the losses, between extend and pretend that will no longer be viable (in particular, the unrealistic marks on second mortgages) and the liabilities resulting from this colossal mess, at least one major bank will be insolvent. But the odds of the new special resolution authority being used? I put the odds at pretty much zero.
Just when it looked like the Ally Financial/GMAC Mortgage robo-signing drama couldn't get any more, well, dramatic -- it did. Last week, the fourth-largest mortgage lender in America revealed that the foreclosure documents for potentially all its foreclosures over the last five years had simply not been read, because the staffer tasked with signing them had been assigned the inhuman job of "reading" and signing over 10,000 documents per month.
More than 50,000 foreclosures, evictions and resales of foreclosed homes on home loans held or serviced by GMAC Mortgage were frozen across 23 states; within the week, the California attorney general had asked GMAC to stop foreclosures in the nation's largest state until the company could prove it was complying with state foreclosure laws, Connecticut's attorney general had requested a court order halting all banks from foreclosing on homes there for 60 days and the attorneys general of Ohio and Florida had initiated investigations into GMAC foreclosures.
This week, though, the debacle flew straight up the food chain of the mortgage lending industry. Executives at JP Morgan Chase and the country's largest mortgage lender, Bank of America, have also confessed to signing tens of thousands of foreclosure documents without reading them, causing these banks to also halt foreclosures in the 23 states that require judicial involvement to consummate a foreclosure and evict the former homeowner.
The latest? Yesterday, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ordered the seven largest mortgage lenders in the country to review their foreclosure processes for flaws in their document management systems.
For tips on what this means to those who are facing or have already experienced foreclosure, and think their documents might have been "robo-signed," check out this report we filed when the Ally Financial/GMAC Mortgage foreclosure mill story first broke.
skin
and vein center
Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
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Dr. eric seiger
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Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum ...
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There are so many fronts to the foreclosure crisis that it’s now becoming difficult to stay on top of all of them.
One development Monday that didn’t get the attention it deserved is the fact that Bank of America is now eating title insurance liability on foreclosed properties sold by its servicer. Per Bloomberg:
Bank of America’s agreement with Jacksonville, Florida- based Fidelity National calls for the lender to cover the title insurer’s costs in the event of an error in the company’s processing of foreclosure documents, Sadowski said. The bank will notify the insurer in each case that the foreclosure complies with state laws and regulations.
Bank of America is in talks with other title insurers for similar agreements, said Richard Bramhall, the bank’s chief title officer. He declined to name the other companies.
This is a big deal for several reasons:
1. The liability in case of a wrongful foreclosure is large. There is no way for the wronged borrower to get his house back, so title insurance is the only recourse. As Bob Lawless explained in Credit Slips:
…most every (or maybe even every–I’ll let someone else do the 50-state survey) state provides the strongest possible finality protections for deeds obtained through foreclosure sales. We also see similar rules for other judicially supervised sales in other contexts such as sales of personal property subject to a security interest or bankruptcy sales….
Suppose Henry and Helen Homeowner lost their home in foreclosure proceeding, and it has since been purchased by Bill and Betty Buyer. Now, Henry and Helen discover the affidavits in their foreclosure proceeding had some of the very same apparently fraudulent signatures reported in the media. When Henry and Helen complain to the court, the answer should be: “Your complaint is against Deutsche Bank (or whoever foreclosed) and not against Bill and Betty. You can recover damages from Deutsche Bank but not eject Henry and Helen from possession.” In turn, this will mean that that Bill and Betty (or their lender) will not have to look to the title insurer for recovery.
2. This means the large banks now effectively have direct exposure to borrowers for screw ups in foreclosures (note that they did earlier, in theory, but this move shortens the process of the money coming from the bank).
3. The liability is via the bank servicer. Note the Bank of American is now the largest servicer in the US (Wells is a close second) by virtue of having bought Countrywide.
4. Some contend that the risk of clouded title means that title insurers may come to require warranties from banks for all properties sold that has securitized mortgages. As Adam Levitin indicated in a Citigroup report, documentation lapses could “cloud title on not just foreclosed mortgages but on performing mortgages.”
It isn’t hard to see that other banks are likely to be required to take the same step as Bank of America, at least if they want to unload foreclosed property.
It isn’t hard to see where this is going. The biggest servicers are part of TBTF banks. The biggest trustees (the folks who were supposed to make sure that the loans all got to the securitization trust properly) are part of TBTF banks. The major structurer/packagers are now all part of TBTF banks.
Isn’t a concentrated financial services industry grand? Any time they screw up, they are too large to be made to pay for their crimes. The die was cast at the beginning of the Obama administration. It was a critical window of opportunity to take over and put new management in the weakest of the big banks (and probably force them to shed operations too) and they instead were coddled and sent back on their merry way.
I guarantee that the losses, between extend and pretend that will no longer be viable (in particular, the unrealistic marks on second mortgages) and the liabilities resulting from this colossal mess, at least one major bank will be insolvent. But the odds of the new special resolution authority being used? I put the odds at pretty much zero.
Just when it looked like the Ally Financial/GMAC Mortgage robo-signing drama couldn't get any more, well, dramatic -- it did. Last week, the fourth-largest mortgage lender in America revealed that the foreclosure documents for potentially all its foreclosures over the last five years had simply not been read, because the staffer tasked with signing them had been assigned the inhuman job of "reading" and signing over 10,000 documents per month.
More than 50,000 foreclosures, evictions and resales of foreclosed homes on home loans held or serviced by GMAC Mortgage were frozen across 23 states; within the week, the California attorney general had asked GMAC to stop foreclosures in the nation's largest state until the company could prove it was complying with state foreclosure laws, Connecticut's attorney general had requested a court order halting all banks from foreclosing on homes there for 60 days and the attorneys general of Ohio and Florida had initiated investigations into GMAC foreclosures.
This week, though, the debacle flew straight up the food chain of the mortgage lending industry. Executives at JP Morgan Chase and the country's largest mortgage lender, Bank of America, have also confessed to signing tens of thousands of foreclosure documents without reading them, causing these banks to also halt foreclosures in the 23 states that require judicial involvement to consummate a foreclosure and evict the former homeowner.
The latest? Yesterday, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ordered the seven largest mortgage lenders in the country to review their foreclosure processes for flaws in their document management systems.
For tips on what this means to those who are facing or have already experienced foreclosure, and think their documents might have been "robo-signed," check out this report we filed when the Ally Financial/GMAC Mortgage foreclosure mill story first broke.
eric seiger dermatologist
skin
and vein center
Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum ...
eric seiger dermatologist
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Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum ...
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Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum ...
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Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum ...
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Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
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HUD is the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is part of HUD.
The FHA provides mortgage insurance to specifically reimburse mortgage lenders if a buyer defaults on their mortgage. Lenders can file a claim with the FHA when they are forced to foreclose on an FHA-insured home because the owner has defaulted on the payments. The FHA will reimburse the balance due on the mortgage and convey title of that property to HUD, following certain rigid rules and regulations.
Simply put, a "HUD Home" is a residence acquired as a result of foreclosure on an FHA-insured mortgage loan. When these homes are foreclosed on (and it's happening in record numbers), someone has to inspect, cleanup, secure and manage them through the selling process.
With the number of HUD foreclosures on the market today,property management has become an incredible task for HUD. The organization has a need to manage and sell a sizable inventory of single-family homes like never before.
HUD's Foreclosure Cleanup Arms
HUD has arms in the form of M&M Contractors ("Management and Marketing" Contractors). These M&M Contractors market and manage single-family properties owned by, or in the custody of, HUD.
As a foreclosure cleanup business owner, you need to know the M&M's role because their payment guidelines, mandated by HUD, directly affect what you ultimately get paid in your foreclosure cleanup business.
HUD didn't begin outsourcing the disposition of these properties to the private sector until 1999. HUD currently has contracts with several firms who provide M&M services in several contract areas throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, Guam and the Northern Marianna Islands. The organization has an ongoing need for these services and is building on the success of their existing outsourcing program.
HUD's Frontline
The M&M Contractors are part of the frontline for HUD when it comes to managing these properties.
The M&Ms report to one of four HUD Homeownership Centers (HOC). HOCs are located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Atlanta, Georgia; Denver, Colorado; and Santa Ana, California.
Each HOC is responsible for a designated geographic area.
M&M Contractors are administered by a HUD Contracting Officer (CO) and a HUD Government Technical Representative (GTR) located in the Homeownership Center to which they report.
Remember, as a foreclosure cleanup business owner, you need to know the M&M's role because their payment guidelines, mandated by HUD, directly affect what you ultimately get paid in your foreclosure cleanup business. Even if you are not dealing with HUD homes in great numbers now, HUD's pricing guidelines trickle down in the property preservation industry "pricing expectations."
Good luck with your foreclosure cleanup business!
by Cassandra Black, CEO, Foreclosure Cleanup, LLC and Author of Pricing Guide for Foreclosure Cleaning & Real-Estate Service Businesses: How to Price Jobs for Profit eBook and How to Invest in a Home for Under 10K and Have a $45 Per Month Mortgage Payment!
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Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum ...
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Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad | iLounge <b>News</b>
iLounge news discussing the Sam's Club to offer iPhone, iPad. Find more iPad news from leading independent iPod, iPhone, and iPad site.
Worldchanging: Bright Green: Good <b>News</b> x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind
Good News x2 for U.S. Offshore Wind. Yale Environment 360, 13 Oct 10. U.S. Offshore Wind Could Provide 20 Percent of Electricity by 2030. U.S. officials calculate that the total potential for offshore wind generation is more than 4000 ...
Online <b>news</b> gatherer Topix aims for election-ad dollars | VentureBeat
Riley McDermid is a contributing reporter to VentureBeat. She was previously the online editor at institutional investing and trading forum ...
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