Reverse mortgages: Evict woman, 92, over 27¢?

Actor and pitchman Tom Selleck, among others, has helped persuade more than 1 million seniors in markets like Palm Beach County that reverse mortgages are not “too good to be true.”

But a federal agency overseen by Housing Secretary Ben Carson of Palm Beach Gardens says an insurance program backing reverse mortgages is “losing money and can no longer remain viable in its present form.”

Foreclosures in reverse mortgages climbed to more than 3,600 a month last year, up from less than 500 a month in prior years, according to government data analyzed by nonprofit groups.

A 92-year-old Florida woman with a reverse mortgage faced a foreclosure filing because she owed 27 cents, a legal aid group said.

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Lenders limited to one foreclosure proceeding per property

A mortgage company can’t bring a second foreclosure action against a borrower after losing a similar foreclosure in the court system, Maine’s supreme court ruled.

The court on Thursday unanimously upheld a ruling against mortgage giant Fannie Mae, which tried to launch a second foreclosure on a property in Lincoln after a judge threw out the original case.

“It reinforces case law that says you really get only one bite of the apple,” said James Cloutier, attorney for Patricia and Paul Deschaine, who own the home in Lincoln.

The Deschaines took out a loan on principal of $127,920 to buy the property in October 2004, and Fannie Mae brought a foreclosure proceeding in 2011 after finding the Deschaines in default.

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Veteran’s family facing foreclosure claims they’re robo-signing victims

Here we go again…

Sonia Kirkland, 58, says she spends most of her time caring for her mother, who is 104 years old, inside the home on Berkeley Place.

The house is owned by Kirkland’s son, a 34-year-old U.S. Army combat veteran who now works for an international nonprofit group and is serving in Iraq to help rebuild a country devastated by war.

Kirkland says she recently found out that her son had become the victim of “robo-signing” — the controversial practice by banks and other lenders of improperly foreclosing on homeowners by using the robotic signing of documents that deprives them of a fair and legal process.

She says the judge will hear her request for an emergency extension next week

Homeowner, Wells Fargo settle lawsuit over alleged theft during foreclosure process

An Easton man and the bank that was foreclosing on his home reached a settlement in a dispute that arose when the man alleged his belongings were stolen by workers sent to secure the property.

John Barber sued Wells Fargo, alleging “his home had been broken into, the locks changed, the premises ransacked, and a large quantity of personal property belonging to him was missing.”

He told me there was no reason to secure the premises because he still was living there at the time of the alleged theft in April 2014 and was preparing to sell the home at a short sale, which the bank had approved. The missing items included a coin collection and an antique firearm, according to the lawsuit.

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Saugus Family At Risk Of Foreclosure Due To ‘Immoral, Outrageous’ Behavior By Carrington Mortgage

The family’s home loan was sold to a servicer called Carrington Mortgage, who Kelly says was incredibly difficult to communicate with as she tried to avoid foreclosure on her Saugus home of eight years.

“We couldn’t get them to talk to us,” Kelly told KHTS last week, with a foreclosure date of July 17 looming over her. “They were telling us they had no records of our stuff; they had no payments, (but) they weren’t sending us payment notices… It was really just confusing.”

When all hope seemed lost, what Kelly called a “godsend” came into their lives: the help of a Santa Clarita realtor who provides free loan modification and foreclosure defense services to the public.

Rich Szerman of Alta Realty Group promptly got to work on submitting a loan modification request to Carrington Mortgage, and quickly realized this seemingly simple task would be nearly impossible.

While Szerman claims he’s been attempting to submit the Kinneys’ completed file since May 15, Carrington officials have allegedly put up obstacle after obstacle, ranging from losing paperwork to requiring a “special code” that no one seemed to know before any action could be taken.

“They have lied and cheated and done everything they possibly can to avoid doing this loan modification since the day we got the file,” Szerman said.

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Banks Accused Of Pocketing $240M In Foreclosure Billings To US

Law360, New York (June 27, 2017, 3:58 PM EDT) — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are accused of scamming U.S. agencies out of some $240 million in a False Claims Act suit unsealed Friday in Illinois federal court, which the government has said it will not join.

Relator Timothy Morgan’s March complaint was unsealed Friday after the U.S. declined to intervene. Morgan claims that the banks refused to pay vendors’ bills for foreclosure activity but still turned around and billed the U.S. for the supposed expenses.

Source: Law360

Brooklyn Court Quietly Moves to Toss Out Hundreds of Foreclosure Cases

BROOKLYN — Kings County Supreme Court is about to quietly dismiss thousands of foreclosure cases on Tuesday — in what lawyers say will deal a severe blow to homeowners with pending cases.

The court said it planned to dismiss all cases filed before Jan. 1, 2016 that have seen no court activity after Sept. 30, 2016.  It quietly published a notice of the administrative dismissal in the New York Law Journal on Thursday, April 27, giving parties until Monday, May 1 to contact the court to keep their cases alive.

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Repeat foreclosures in the city have reached an all-time high

New York homeowners are in default mode — again.

The city leads the nation in repeat foreclosure filings

And the winner in all this is the residential mortgage servicing industry, which collects monthly payments and cashes in on fees for every homeowner’s misfortune.

The number of repeat foreclosure filings in New York City far outstrips that of other major cities like Los Angeles, while New York state is No. 1 for repeat foreclosures, outpacing every other state and the US as a whole.

In a report prepared exclusively for The Post, Attom Data Solutions found that in New York City last year, roughly 4,900 — or more than half of all new foreclosures filed — were repeats, up from just 5 percent in 2008.

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How the FHA May Impact the Supreme Court Foreclosure Ruling

In a 5-3 decision on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that cities can sue banks over lost tax revenue on foreclosed properties from urban blight. Law360 reported that Miami has the standing to sue Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. under the Fair Housing Act, stating that the banks’ discriminatory and predatory lending practices led to a major shortfall in city tax revenues.

The final ruling is not up to the high court, however, as the Supreme court sent the case back to the Eleventh District, in order to determine whether the banks’ lending practices were “proximate cause” for the damages. Law360 reported that all eight justices rejected the probable cause argument.

“The ruling is clearly a concern for lenders who believed cities did not have sufficient standing in order to assert claims that are more appropriate to be brought by the ultimate aggrieved parties, which should be the borrowers, assuming of course the allegations are true,” said Shaun K. Ramey, Shareholder, Sirote and Permutt, P.C. “That being said, although the Court granted cities the right to file suit, they set a high bar for proving proximate causation so the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision may not be as broad as it appears at first blush.”

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Local vet urges changes in Dept of Veterans Affairs rules on foreclosures

SPARROWBUSH – Any day now, DJ Gonzalez will be escorted out of his home, and the doors will be locked behind him.

Gonzalez, a 62-year-old Vietnam War veteran, is on the verge of homelessness, due to a string of circumstances that could befall anyone: divorce, health problems and tight finances.

Disabled and unable to work full time, Gonzalez said Social Security payments weren’t enough to keep the home on Academy Avenue where he has lived since 2005 when he purchased it for $164,900, with a loan backed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

As the former manager of the Empowering Port Jervis community center, Gonzalez knows how to help people who have fallen on hard times, he said.

Now, being there himself, he wants to address the holes in the system.

In April 2016, the VA bought Gonzalez’s foreclosed home from the mortgage company for $58,800, according to Jennifer Toth, a loan guarantee officer with the VA.

Gonzalez purchased the home for $164,900 in 2005 – near the height of the housing market – but the 2016 appraisal for the home was $70,000, Toth said.

The VA paid the mortgage company an additional $41,650 because it was responsible for up to 25 percent of the loan, she said.

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