Posted on 04/13/2012 7:38:35 PM PDT by Signalman
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The golden age for foreclosure squatters may soon be coming to an end now that the $26 billion mortgage settlement has been approved.
The settlement, agreed to by the nation's five largest mortgage lenders, is expected to speed up the foreclosure process by providing stricter guidelines for the banks to follow when repossessing homes.
The banks involved include Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citibank (C, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial.
Many foreclosures have been in limbo since fall 2010 following the so-called robo-signing scandal, when banks allowed employees to sign off on thousands of foreclosure documents a month with little verification.
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In some states, delinquent borrowers have been squatting in their homes much longer. In Florida, the average time was 861 days, and in New York it was 1,056 days -- close to three years.
"Perhaps a million foreclosures could have been pursued last year but weren't," said Rick Sharga, executive vice president for real estate investment company, Carrington Holdings.
But that's all about to change, he said. "We're going to see an increase in the speed of foreclosures and a higher number of foreclosure starts."
In fact, there are indications that the pace of foreclosures are already starting to pick up.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
How does that settlement fix the fact the banks broke state laws? The banks (actually the mortgage holder who is paying the bank for servicing) have to prove they have legal standing to foreclose.
The settlement was between the banks and the attorneys general of 49 states (& the Distict of Columbia).
The $25B settlement was between the 49 state AG’s and the 5 largest servicers of mortgages. They may sound like banks (and some are subsidiaries of banks) but these are not the originators of the loans, the are not the holders of the notes, they are servicing companies to whom the month by month account management piece has been farmed out by the owner of the note.
There are expected to be other settlements with he smaller players in the servicing business in the next several months.
The banks are the biggest lying corrupt freeloaders.
Well, yeah ... but “banks” is only five letters for me to type whereas “servicers of mortgages” is ... a waste of time and more effort than I cared to make via the pull-out keyboard on my Android.
But you just had to make me, didn’t ya? ;p
I would expect prices to drop again because of this.
OK, so all these mortgages are suddenly cleared up with the swipe of a pen. Interesting.
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