I frequently have clients tell me that their homes are “in foreclosure.”  Upon reviewing the situation carefully, however, I find that the phrase “in foreclosure” may mean different things to different people, and it may be important to distinguish between those different meanings. To me, as a lawyer in a judicial foreclosure state (where it [...]

Lately I have had a number of clients who have asked me whether they should continue to seek mortgage modification, or go ahead and file a Chapter 13 to stop a foreclosure.  With the slow pace of lenders’ response to modification applications, and the pressure of possible foreclosure, it can be a difficult decision.  Here [...]

Short home loan refinancing is not a new concept.  Unfortunately, due to tightened credit for sub-prime borrowers, it has not been much of a factor in dealing with the current home foreclosure crisis. However, short refinancing may soon become a realistic option for even those homeowners with challenged credit.  Despite possible tax consequences from debt [...]

The client’s “plan” for the underwater house with a 10 year interest only loan is to file bankruptcy now, and plan on selling the house in a couple of years.  Sound familiar?  The homeowner has bought the same pitch that was made to folks with adjusting rate mortgages:  “sure, you won’t be able to pay [...]

Short sales in Southwest Florida, especially Lehigh Acres, Cape Coral and Fort Myers are nothing new.  We have been living with this problem for a while.  The new trend is for buyers to put in multiple offers on different properties creating a kind of buying frenzy.  This behavior may have been brought on by the [...]

Our second key player in the short sale process is the homeowner.  Obviously, the homeowner is the one player with the most at risk.  By the time they are entering the short sale process, not only are they significantly underwater on their homes, now they are also at least three months behind on their mortgage [...]

The official FBI.gov website contains a 2007 study on mortgage fraud schemes.  The FBI explains how a perpetrator conspires with a property buyer to commit short sale fraud. The perpetrator of this scheme finds a buyer for a piece of property.  The buyer obtains a 100 per cent loan, and if possible attempts to borrow [...]

In HUD’s Interim Report to Congress on the root causes of the foreclosure crisis, the conclusions reached by the panel are a searing indictment of the mortgage and investment banking industries: … [I]t seems clear … that the sharp rise in mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures is fundamentally the result of rapid growth in loans with [...]

In the last few months, I’ve witnessed a very disturbing trend in Florida.  When a mortgage company starts a foreclosure, one would think that they have the intention of taking back the home, putting it on the market and selling the real estate.  In other words, protecting their investment by dealing with the distressed real [...]

What do you do when you get a mortgage foreclosure notice?  More and more people every day are experiencing one of the most unsettling things that can happen in your financial life.  People who never expected to have to deal with such a thing are faced with a new reality.  So, what do you do? [...]