Archive for the 'States' Category

Volunteer lawyers in Florida have been helping homeowners save their homes from becoming a foreclosure property since 2007 under the Florida Attorneys Saving Homes foreclosure prevention project. The state’s chief financial officer Alex Sink created this program in partnership with the Florida Bar, Florida Bar Foundation and Florida Legal Services to help distressed homeowners and to stop the rapidly rising number of bank foreclosure properties across the state.

Figures on Florida foreclosures in 2008 and in the first months of 2009 are among the highest in the country, based on studies by foreclosure tracking firms such as RealtyTrac and Foreclosures.com.

This week in a news conference, CFO Sink announced a summit involving volunteer lawyers, mortgage lenders and housing officials to be held in Tampa on April 20 to discuss solutions to new problems faced by lawyers in their foreclosure prevention work.

Sink said some mortgage holders are questioning the legitimacy of the program. The program’s hotline is also being overwhelmed with calls from homeowners who fear their houses would become foreclosure properties.

As of the first week of April, over 8,500 HUD houses in Central Florida are already in inventories of foreclosure properties, including 4,330 units in Orange; 1,412 units in Osceola; 1,114 units in Lake; 970 units in Volusia; and 726 in Seminole.

Sink and other housing officials are warning homeowners to ignore online ads and outdoor ads from fraudulent mortgage firms and not to pay hire paid foreclosure prevention counselors.

Sink said troubled homeowners should call the program’s toll-free hotline at 866-607-2187 on weekdays during office hours. They can also visit Sink’s website on www.MyFloridaCFO.com.

Lawyers who like to help solve the state’s foreclosure problem are invited to visit www.floridaprobono.org. More lawyers are needed to help distressed homeowners on waiting lists generated by the Legal Services hotline program.

Kent Spuhler, head of the Florida Legal Services, said volunteer lawyers talk with mortgage bank officers on behalf of homeowners who want to save their homes from becoming foreclosure properties. Over 500 mortgage cases have been given to lawyers to work out.

In addition, over 1,000 borrowers have participated in sessions and seminars under the Safe at Home program to learn about renegotiating mortgages, arranging affordable payment plans and taking other steps to protect their families from being evicted from foreclosure properties.

Homeowners in Florida are hoping new efforts by the state to help them prevent their houses from becoming foreclosed homes will push through.

Florida’s chief financial officer Alex Sink has set a summit on April 20 in Tampa for the 12 largest mortgage lenders in Florida to discuss how the lenders can solve one of the homeowners’ biggest blocks to loan modification and foreclosure prevention–the failure of lenders and borrowers to identify whom the borrowers should negotiate with.

Because many mortgage loans were packaged as securities and sold and resold to various investors, it has become difficult for the borrowers and lenders to identify the real owner of the loans, thereby delaying borrowers from negotiating for loan modification and increasing the number of foreclosed homes.

According to the Florida Bar Foundation, 25,000 homeowners have already called its hotline since it was launched in June 2008 asking for help to prevent their homes from following the fate of foreclosed homes. Florida’s volunteer lawyers have helped a lot of these callers, but many of those borrowers whose mortgage loans cannot be traced to their real lenders have not been helped.

Among these borrowers whose mortgage loan owner cannot be traced is 83-year-old Daniel represented by lawyer Jamie Ito. Daniel said he has always been independent, and has nowhere to go, so his top goal these days is to save his house from being added to the unending lists of foreclosed homes. His lawyer said they have been sending documents to companies they have traced to have connections to Daniel’s loan; but when they make follow-ups, the companies say their sent documents are nowhere to be found.

Florida’s volunteer lawyers are asking the mortgage lenders to appoint a point person whom the lawyers can contact to resolve problems related to the ownership of certain mortgage loans.

In response to the issue, the mortgage bankers said they also want to help distressed borrowers, as large numbers of bank foreclosed homes also batter their books, but they admit the sale and subsequent resale of mortgage securities has made loan modifications difficult.

Florida financial chief Sink hopes that the summit will enable the lenders to discuss mortgage issues and how they can help solve Florida foreclosures and help prevent the eviction of Floridian families from foreclosed homes.

More and more renters who are updated on their monthly payments are being evicted unceremoniously as their landlords failed to inform them that the houses they are renting are under bank and government foreclosures.

California is one of the states hardest hit by bank and government foreclosures. In February of this year, about 80, 755 foreclosure filings were reported in the state. Data from RealtyTrac showed that bank and government foreclosures in California increased by 5 percent from January to February of the current year.

California foreclosures posted an increase of 51 percent in 2009 compared to figures of last year. In 2008, about a third of the state’s total foreclosure sales of 267,000 were rental houses, according to Dean Preston, Tenants Together executive director.

California is home to about 5 million rental units. And more and more renters are scampering to find an affordable place to live as bank and government foreclosures continue to soar.

Benchmark Co. LLC analyst William Acheson said that banks and mortgage lenders would rather flood the housing market with vacant properties than act as landlords. He added that banks do not have the staff or infrastructure to handle rental buildings.

He pointed out that banks are very ineffective as property managers and would prefer to sell foreclosed properties at 60 percent discount rather than hold on to them for rent.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition reported that over 20 percent of distressed properties in the country facing bank and government foreclosures were rentals as of December last year. The report also pointed out that these tenants accounted for nearly 40 percent of people who are facing eviction due to bank and government foreclosures.

Meanwhile, mortgage finance companies Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. and Federal National Mortgage Corp. have employed property managers to coordinate with tenants and offer them affordable lease rates.

Nearly 20 percent of about 29,000 homes that Federal Home Loan owns are occupied by former renters or owners.

On the other hand, over 225,000 tenants in California lived in houses that went through bank and government foreclosures in 2008, according to Tenants Together. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that if banks will rent all the properties they foreclosed, they could collect as much as $1 billion in payment yearly.

California’s Department of Consumer Affairs said that state policy requires landlords to notify renters a month or two before the eviction.

A plan aimed at preventing bank and government foreclosures has been signed into law by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The plan, which includes a 90-day suspension on bank and government foreclosures, will take effect on May 22 of this year.

Sterling Green South, one of several developments on the periphery of Houston, Texas, is just one of many neighborhoods across the country experiencing deterioration because of too many foreclosed homes. Walls of abandoned foreclosed homes are sprayed with graffiti, playground equipment and street signs are destroyed and a nearby swimming pool is covered with litter.

The continued rise in Florida foreclosures has affected schools throughout the state, similarly to how lender and government foreclosures have affected schools in other areas of the country.

The Obama Administration’s tax break proposal has caused quite a stir among homeowners who have gross income not less than $250,000.

Orange County property valuator Bill Donegan said Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s property tax proposal would transfer the tax burden from first-time homebuyers to existing-home owners. Previously, Crist released his property tax proposal which was aimed at energizing the state’s housing market downed by Florida foreclosures. The tax proposal would lighten the tax bill of first-time homebuyers to attract more new homebuyers.

As Florida foreclosures continue to soar in January, courts in the state have been conducting rocket docket hearings to clear their backlogs of foreclosure filings. Rocket docket takes just a few seconds.

In rocket docket, the judge just asks two questions: whether the homeowner is currently occupying the home and whether he is current with his monthly amortization. While the answer to the first question could be yes or no, the answer to the second question is always no. The judge will then inform the homeowner how many days he is allowed to stay in the house if he is unable to negotiate a deal with the lender.

Atlantic City, New Jersey’s first casino operator, Resorts Atlantic City is facing a threat of foreclosure from its mortgage servicer, Column Financial Inc. Because of this, the troubled casino has asked the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to block foreclosure attempts of Column Financial.