The December report of the Congressional Oversight Panel comes as no surprise to consumers and their attorneys; TARP may have prevented a bigger financial crisis for the United States but it has failed to stem the foreclosure crisis

In some states, once bank forecloses and gets your house back, you do not owe them any money.
But not everywhere.
Check with an attorney in your state.
In Michigan, we have foreclosure by publication, an auction process, or through a court.
If the mortgage company bids the amount you owe at the foreclosure auction, you owe them nothing.

A Google search for” Massachusetts foreclosures” won’t easily get you to the information you need, such as what defenses do you have, how long is the foreclosure process, and how long can you stay after the foreclosure sale.
I know.  I’ve just tried it.  I got a long list of properties being sold through foreclosure, targeted [...]

Mortgage companies are well known for having numerous and continuous problems keeping a proper accounting of the mortgages they hold.  This is particularly true in the context of a Chapter 13 case where the mortgage company is paid by the Chapter 13 Trustee for the pre-petition arrears, and by the homeowner for the ongoing post-petition monthly mortgage payments. [...]

One thing you can say about the latest financial meltdown, it has brought a new lingo to everyday usage.  The “too big to fail” concept has been around a long time in banking regulation but not many had heard the term until the last couple years.  The perversity of this is how much it is [...]

A Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing can get rid of a second mortgage if the balance of the first mortgage is greater than your home’s value.  So can a Chapter 7 filing, in some places.
You’re having trouble paying the mortgage, especially for a home that has fallen in value, but you can’t think about moving because [...]

In his presidential campaign Obama promised to support judicial modification of home loans.  This promise remained on his campaign website until he was inaugurated as president.  When the new president’s Obama White House website went up, the promise of support for judicial modification of home loans went down and was nowhere to be found.  The [...]

The other day I wrote a blog containing my thoughts on the recently enacted “Hope for Homeowners Act of 2008″.  After giving the new law more thought and listening to some recent news clips, I decided to detail more problems with the legislation.  This law has no teeth because of the voluntary participation aspect.  That’s right, [...]

Anyone who works with consumers these days–attorneys, housing counselors, lenders, and brokers and, for that matter, anyone who reads media reports on the mortgage crisis–has no doubt reacted to some tale of financial woe like this:  “How could anyone be that dumb!”  We’ve all heard some version of the exploding ARM, the payments which are [...]

Washington Mutual’s history of reckless lending and predatory tactics doomed the 119 year institution to failure in 2008. WaMu specialized in subprime home loans and more than 1/3 of WaMu subprime loans failed.