Lenders have come up with a lot of products that have turned out to be bad news for consumers-exploding ARMS, payment option loans, just to name a couple-but the one I heard about this weekend may have far greater negative potential for consumers than any of the others.  Bank of America is offering some of [...]

On May 4, 2009, the South Carolina Supreme Court took the unusual step of issuing a temporary restraining order to stop foreclosure sales on mortgages owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or that are otherwise eligible for modification under the Home Affordable Modification Program [HAMP].  Blogger Russ Demott points out the importance of the [...]

Despite reports of higher-than-expected losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Obama administration’s effort to stem the burgeoning foreclosure crisis, Democrats in the House could not muster the votes needed to pass a key element of those proposals.
Foreclosures also were an issue in the House, where an expected vote on a housing relief [...]

I ran across this quote, which could have been written about the mortgage industry in the last year:
“… [W]e as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more [...]

My friend and colleague Gene Melchionne and I have both written about the problem of foreclosure pets. It shouldn’t come and any surprise, therefore, to learn that more and more horses are also being left behind in the wake of job loss, income reduction, foreclosure, or other financial distress.

[T]he economic downturn has hit the [...]

I have written elsewhere about the joint report of the Comptroller of the Currency and Office of Thrift Supervision showing that a rising number of borrowers who had worked out payment plans or mortgage modifications with their lenders were in default again.  The reason for those re-defaults?  The mortgage modifications often don’t lower payments.  In [...]

It is perhaps a sign of the times and the deepening foreclosure crisis when a legal aid lawyer is the subject of a major MSNBC.com profile.  Now, if the world were a just place, every legal aid lawyer would be famous, but usually those who fight for justice do so in obscurity.  Not so April [...]

In the last few weeks support for changing bankruptcy laws to allow bankruptcy judges to modify home mortgages appears to be growing.  Not only does the foreclosure crisis appear to be deepening, but voluntary mortgage modifications are not working.  There seems to be inadequate incentive for mortgage companies to modify loans on their own, and [...]

One of the more distasteful lines of commentary and reporting concerning the credit and mortgage crisis is exploded by Daniel Gross in a Slate post concerning the Community Reinvestment Act, which encourages banks to lend to underserved populations, including poor and minority borrowers. If you listen to some of the so-called pundits, you would [...]

Ian Welsh at FireDogLake has a proposal for the federal government to help homeowners save their homes from foreclosure, instead of just bailing out financial institutions:
What the government should do instead is set up a Trust to buy mortgages at a discount, then reset them to 20, 30 or 50 year fixed mortgages with a [...]