Mortgage Law Network

Workouts for borrowers with defaulted home loans are a reality.  Unfortunately, it appears to be the small, specialized sub-prime loan servicers that understand the problem and have figured out how to best solve it.  Large lenders have yet to establish procedures for handing defaulted loans quickly and efficiently without resorting to foreclosure.
In an article I […]

Popularity: 25% [?]

Most of us receive them in the mail on a pretty regular basis - those official-looking envelopes that resemble a communication from a government agency, or our home lender, or someone else we cannot afford to ignore.  If we open the letter, it is likely to contain a solicitation for questionable financial services.
Having recently worked with a client […]

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The change in thinking about homes from shelter to investment that Gene Melchionne pointed out was promoted by the marketing of financial products:  unlock the equity in your home;  put your home’s equity to work, screamed the ads.
Now, that equity wasn’t harming anyone, sitting there idle.  In fact, as we see too vividly today, it […]

Popularity: 18% [?]

According to the New York Times, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service have formed a task force to examine mortgages that were made with little or no proof of the earnings or assets of borrowers. Federal prosecutors in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas and Atlanta […]

Popularity: 40% [?]

For some homeowners who refinanced their homes in those heady days when home prices were increasing daily and loans were available to nearly anyone who could fog a mirror, a day of reckoning has arrived.  Many of the loans sold to borrowers with questionable credit or limited ability to make payments are of a type […]

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Clients ask my opinion daily about what to do with homes subject to mortgages with rate adjustments in the offing.  There is no pat formula that provides a universal answer, but here are the factors to consider.

What is present spread between the monthly mortgage payment and the cost of renting comparable housing?  That spread, with […]

Popularity: 26% [?]

I got a taste of the present, bizarre aspect of bankruptcy law this week when I could help one new client strip down an underwater second mortgage on an investment property, but could not do the same for the next client’s family home.
What’s wrong with this picture when the investor who buys a single family […]

Popularity: 45% [?]

Fuelling the over-heated housing market a couple of years back was real estate investing, and the result today is a condo market where units are selling for half of what people paid for them in 2005. Anyone who purchased a condominium as an investment must have realized the potential to lose money, no matter how […]

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It sounds exactly like the standard consumer mortgage nightmare: Buying a place that’s really bigger than you need. For more than you really can afford to pay. Then your income gets cut. And the financing gets more expensive too. Stop me if you think you’ve heard this story before.
No, you […]

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Many of us have blogged in vain thus far, as Congress and the Fed continue to dole out billions to bail out the mortgage companies and investment bankers, while ignoring bankruptcy law reform that would cost the taxpayer nothing.
And the Fed, who caused the sub-prime crisis with Greenspan’s bubble, […]

Popularity: 69% [?]