Foreclosure limbo: Staying without paying.
Charles and Jill Segal have not made a mortgage payment in nearly five years — but they continue to live in their five-bedroom West Palm Beach, Fla. home.
Lynn, from St. Petersburg, Fla., has been living without paying for three years.
In Thousand Oaks, Calif., an actor has missed 30 payments, and still, he has not lost his home.
They’re not alone. Continue reading
Homeowner Foreclosures on Bank of America (Yes, You Heard That Right)
In a modern-day evocation of David’s slingshot triumph over Goliath, a couple of foreclosed homeowners in Naples, Florida reportedly foreclosed on a Bank of America branch last week, their attorney actually having moving trucks pull up in front of a Naples branch to execute a foreclosure judgment against the bank.
What must have seemed to observers like a scene out of a parallel universe – you can see some video here – was actually the fair and logical conclusion to a situation which, the court had ruled, had an unfair and illogical start. In 2009, retired police officer Warren Nyerges and his wife, Maureen Collier, paid $165,000 cash for their 2,700 square foot home in the Golden Gate Estates subdivision, and never took a mortgage out on it. So imagine their surprise when, in Februrary of 2010, Bank of America initiated foreclosure proceedings against them. The Nyerges hired an attorney, Todd Allen, to defend them against the wrongful foreclosure, and the Bank eventually abandoned the matter. Continue reading
Underwater mortgages rise as home prices fall
WASHINGTON – The number of Americans who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth rose at the end of last year, preventing many people from selling their homes in an already weak housing market.
CoreLogic said Tuesday that about 11.1 million households, or 23.1 percent of all mortgaged homes, were underwater in the October-December quarter. That’s up from 22.5 percent, or 10.8 million households, in the July-September quarter.
The number of underwater mortgages had fallen in the previous three quarters. But that was mostly because more homes had fallen into foreclosure. Continue reading
Obama Proposal Seeks Multibillion-Dollar Settlement of Loan-Servicing Cases
By NICK TIMIRAOS, DAN FITZPATRICK and RUTH SIMON
The Obama administration is trying to push through a settlement over mortgage-servicing breakdowns that could force America’s largest banks to pay for reductions in loan principal worth billions of dollars.
Terms of the administration’s proposal include a commitment from mortgage servicers to reduce the loan balances of troubled borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth, people familiar with the matter said. The cost of those writedowns won’t be borne by investors who purchased mortgage-backed securities, these people said.
If a unified settlement can be reached, some state attorneys general and federal agencies are pushing for banks to pay more than $20 billion in civil fines or to fund a comparable amount of loan modifications for distressed borrowers, these people said.
But forging a comprehensive settlement may be difficult. A deal would have to win approval from federal regulators and state attorneys general, as well as some of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co, and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Those banks declined to comment. Continue reading
