Posted on 02/14/2013 10:20:35 AM PST by ExxonPatrolUs
Foreclosure activity continued to drop in January, led by dramatic changes in the state that once led the nation in foreclosures. A new law in California, the "Homeowner Bill of Rights," makes it much harder and potentially more costly for banks to foreclose; hence they are suddenly finding alternatives.
"The new law imposes fines of up to $7,500 per loan for filing of multiple unverified foreclosure documents. As a result, the downward foreclosure trend in California accelerated into hyper speed in January, decisively shifting the balance of power when it comes to the nation's foreclosure activity," said RealtyTrac's Daren Blomquist.
(Read More: Fewer Borrowers Are Behind on Mortgages, but for How Long?)
Foreclosure activity fell 28 percent from a year ago nationally, according to a new report from RealtyTrac, but in California, they were down nearly 40 percent. More telling is foreclosure starts, the first notice of a foreclosure filling. In California they fell 62 percent from December and 75 percent from a year ago. The new law went into effect January 1st, 2013.
"I do think some of these delinquent properties will still end up as foreclosures down the road," notes Blomquist. "But this type of legislation is also forcing lenders to consider other creative ways of disposing of the delinquencies that may not be as difficult as foreclosure has become."
That includes short sales, deeds in lieu of foreclosure and a growing trend of selling off bad loans to investors. The investors, since they are buying at a deep discount, are able to offer more drastic modifications to keep borrowers in their homes.
(Read More: Americans Are UsingTheir Houses as ATMs Again)
Short sales, when the property is sold for less than the mortgage, are becoming ever more frequent. Nearly 26 percent of Southern California home sales in January were short sales, according to DataQuick, while just 15 percent were foreclosure sales. Investor and cash buying was at or near record levels.
"A lot of today's housing demand is fueled not by spectacular job growth and soaring consumer confidence, but by super-low mortgage rates and unusually high levels of investor and cash purchases. Take away any one of those elements and it will matter," said John Walsh, DataQuick president.
With legal changes in California, Florida now has the dubious distinction of having the most properties with foreclosure filings in the nation. One in every 300 homes had a filing in January, according to RealtyTrac. That is twice the national average.
(Read More: Big Banks Told to Review Their Own Foreclosures)
States that require a judge in the foreclosure process, like Illinois and New Jersey, saw big January jumps in foreclosure auctions (sales back to the bank or to an investor), but non-judicial states saw the biggest increases in newly started foreclosures. In Nevada, where new legislation slowed the process dramatically last year, foreclosure starts were up 87 percent from a year ago.
While the numbers can be parsed in many ways, the bottom line is that while fewer borrowers are getting into trouble, an enormous backlog of distress is still moving through the foreclosure system, in some places quite quickly, and in others ever more slowly. Until the overall numbers come down to a more normal level, any speculation on overall price stability is risky at best.
(Read More: Mortgage Mess StillMires US Housing Recovery)
We need similar laws passed in every state.
Even on short sales banks make money. Between fees and interest banks make a fortune. If they do a mortgage for $250,000 and over the life of the loan expect back $600,000, when they sell for $220,000 they count that as a $350,000 loss.
Whereas they may have already been paid $100,000 in interest and fees and now that are getting that plus $220,000. In reality they made $70,000 not lost $350,000.
An effort to prop property taxes wrongfully high. There are probably also many illegal efforts around the country to fake sales, etc., for the purpose of keeping property taxes high. If too few are investigating, they’re probably getting away with most of it.
“We need similar laws passed in every state.”
Only in a Marxist dreamland. The foreclosure process is needed so a lender can attempt to recoup a bad loan.
Otherwise the lender has an unsecured loan. Lenders don’t want to make $300,000 unsecured loans. The real estate as collateral allows those loans to made in the first place.
Take the loan collateral away by making foreclosure impossible; and lenders won’t lend.
How about this concept? People pay their loans.
Isn’t it sad that they can sue for $ that they “expected to get”? Why then, when I go to the casino, and I “expect” to hit the jackpot and don’t, I can’t sue the casino?
“Boomerang Foreclosures” Are Back As Bernanke’s Second Housing Bubble Begins To Pop
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2988544/posts
Only in a Marxist dreamland. The foreclosure process is needed so a lender can attempt to recoup a bad loan.
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We’ve been over this before , the FALSE , FAKE , FRAUDULENT documents are because it ISN’T the actual lender that is foreclosing. If they were an actual party to the transaction they wouldn’t be BREAKING THE LAW with their WHITE COLLAR CRIMES. If they weren’t breaking the law the changes to the law wouldn’t have affected their foreclosure processing AT ALL.
How about this concept? People pay their loans.
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How about this concept? Banks follow the law.
How about this concept? Bank lawyers that file fraudulent documents to steal a house they have no interest in GO TO JAIL.
“Take the loan collateral away by making foreclosure impossible; and lenders won’t lend.”
It is amazing how people can’t grasp this simple principle.
If you think the real estate market is bad now? Force lenders to require 50% or more downpayment - which is what would happen (if you could get a loan at all) by making it difficult for them to foreclose.
You’ll turn a good chunk of Southern California into Detroit in less than a decade. Property tax receipts would plummet, public services would evaporate, and that would be the end of it. Sure, you stopped foreclosures, but you killed everything that depends on property rights being honored, which is pretty much everything!
Does that mean we can now live in free housing?
I wonder if we can also force the bamks to pay our utility’s,
that would be great, and really i think they could at least help with my grocery bill.
After all i am poor because of them, the thieves, i had $10.00 in the bank one time and needed $15.00 to take my girl friend out so i wrote a check and the s.o.b.s give me a bunch crap just over a measly five dollars, they owe me.
“How about this concept? Banks follow the law.
How about this concept? Bank lawyers that file fraudulent documents to steal a house they have no interest in GO TO JAIL.”
Did I stumble on the pro Occupy Wall Street thread on DU?
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws" — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild 1790 though original sourcing is questionable
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." Woodrow Wilson The New Freedom 1913
So we speak above a whisper about laws to stifle this conspiracy that a president warned about over a hundred years ago, and you want to call it Marxist to resist. OMG!
Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs
Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, Monticello, 24 June 1813. Ford 11:303
a vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who, having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76, now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and monied incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.
Jefferson to William Branch Giles, December 26, 1825, in Ford, 10:356. Polygraph copy available online from the Library of Congress
Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!
From the original minutes of the Philadelphia committee of citizens sent to meet with President Jackson (February 1834), according to Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels
BTW - they attempted to assassinate him in a theater, like they did Linocln later.
Yeah, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson those horrible Marxists opposing illegal bank actions. SERIOUS sarcasm. OMG!
“1. Charging interest on money is usury and is considered theft, biblically. “
It sounds like you are in favor of Sharia financing then?
I would suggest you read a little more on the money issue. Why do so many freepers and othes oppose the Federal Reserve. Why did Andrew Jackson run for president primarily just to eliminate the national bank? CONGRESS shall have the right to coin money and regulate the value thereof. Abraham Lincoln put green backs into circulation which was debt free money. Loans, and abundant wealth are MORE possible without usury that they are with usury. This is not the place for me to type in volumes of what has been written so well in many books. But maybe you should examine your views as to why it seems your view is so sharply in contrast to what Jefferson, Jackson and others have said.
I didn't mention anything about stock ownership. And forbidding usury does not preclude stock ownership. It would preclude corporate bonds, though. But since you brought it up, let me ask you. Do you believe it is right for someone to be free of the consequences of their actions? That is the primary reason for corporations. It is an entity created to protect executives, managers, etc. with a legal barrier to be free from the responsibility of their actions. There are many types of free enterprise businesses. A corporation is only one. Even if we did away with corporations, which I am not proposing, the world could still have as many businesses as it desired.
puh-lease. Don't even try to link me up with Islam, because I support biblical economics. That is kinda like if you told me you opposed theft, and I suggested you must be in favor of cutting off peoples hands for theft. That's what Muslims do.
Rule by sharia law, is a kingdom that started with the smoke from the pit in Revelation 9, and ended when the caliphate was abolished in Turkey immediately following WWI as was expected from Daniel 11 and Revelation 16. Their kingdom is in opposition to God's kingdom. If they oppose murder good for them. If they oppose usury, good for them. That doesn't mean I want anything to do with resurrecting their destroyed Ottoman Empire.
Ask any landlord who has been sued by a deadbeat tenant why they have set up a LLC for their duplex rental for example.
Anyone that owns something of value; will have someone try to take it from them via the legal system.
Get rid of many of the lawyers in society; then maybe things could change.
This isn't the 1700’s.
There is a difference between legislation and ideas. The only law that was proposed, which I agreed with, and started you alleging Marxism, was a law to make it more difficult for banks to violate the laws that they have already been found guilty of violating.
The other stuff I have discussed is about ideas. What is right. What is wrong. I agree with you completely that we are in an overly litigous society, driven largely by greed. But surely you don't believe the best way to fix a overly litigous society is by making every free from responsibility of their actions.
The subject of how we can fix the many ills of America today begins with understanding the roots causes, and what is right, and what is wrong. Actually making changes in government to make that happen is a whole other ballgame. How can we even get the first player to first base in that ball game if we don't understand the underlying issues?
“was a law to make it more difficult for banks to violate the laws that they have already been found guilty of violating.”
Foreclosure should be more streamlined; not less. Every new law you pass only passes on costs to everyone else.
The Dodd Frank stuff is only just now starting to hit. Fees are going up, more paperwork, etc. It may very well not allow many first time homebuyers to buy a home.
The reality is that most mortgage lending excesses were corrected a year or so into the financial crisis. The market spoke then and took out lenders such as Countrywide and WAMU.
More laws only benefit attorneys, politicians and those who want something for nothing. As is the normally the case; the rest of us are sent the bill.
I’m tired of paying.
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