Free Republic

It was September 1986, and Annabel Hill, 66, was facing an auction where she would lose the farm that had been in her family for five generations. Hill’s husband, Lenard, had committed suicide eight months earlier, 20 minutes before a scheduled auction, in a last-ditch attempt to save his property with life insurance money. The life insurance money wasn’t enough, covering only $175,000 of debts than ran in excess of $300,000, from two years of a drought that Hill said had ruined their livelihood. Even when several hundred acres of the 1,300-acre Waynesboro, Georgia, farm were sold, the now-widowed Annabel...

In September, Susan Rodolfi celebrated an unusual anniversary: five years of missed mortgage payments. She is like a ghost of the housing market’s painful past, one of thousands of Americans who have skipped years of mortgage payments and are still living in their homes. Now a legal quirk could bring a surreal ending to her foreclosure case and many others around the country: They may get to keep their homes without ever having to pay another dime. The reason, lawyers for homeowners argue, is that the cases have dragged on too long. There are tens of thousands of homeowners who...

In September, Susan Rodolfi celebrated an unusual anniversary: five years of missed mortgage payments. She is like a ghost of the housing market’s painful past, one of thousands of Americans who have skipped years of mortgage payments and are still living in their homes. Now a legal quirk could bring a surreal ending to her foreclosure case and many others around the country: They may get to keep their homes without ever having to pay another dime. The reason, lawyers for homeowners argue, is that the cases have dragged on too long. There are tens of thousands of homeowners who...

Many thousands of Americans who lost their homes in the housing bust, but have since begun to rebuild their finances, are suddenly facing a new foreclosure nightmare: debt collectors are chasing them down for the money they still owe by freezing their bank accounts, garnishing their wages and seizing their assets. By now, banks have usually sold the houses. But the proceeds of those sales were often not enough to cover the amount of the loan, plus penalties, legal bills and fees. The two big government-controlled housing finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as other mortgage players,...

Desperate candidates who are way behind in the polls take big swings hoping to hit political home runs. Take Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, trying to hold onto his Congressional seat in Michigan’s 11th District. Being down 22 points against David Trott, he desperately needs to rally his troops by the August 5th primary. So his campaign e-mailed a fundraising pitch pushing the myth that the U.S. Chamber supports amnesty. Rep. Bentivolio whiffed big time. The U.S. Chamber doesn’t support amnesty and never has. Here is what the U.S. Chamber’ immigration reform priorities are: Strengthening border security. Improving E-Verify system and employment...

Former presidential nominee Mitt Romney (R) is endorsing businessman Dave Trott (R) in his primary against Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), the latest big-name Republican to weigh in on Trott's behalf. "As someone who grew up in Michigan and has family currently living in the 11th District, I am confident that Dave Trott has the honesty, integrity and experience we need in Washington," Romney said in a statement released by Trott's campaign. "As a job-creator, Dave Trott knows how to balance budgets, cut spending, and fix the mess in Washington. I am proud to endorse Dave Trott for Congress."

Today, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio announced that he has received an endorsement from Right to Life of Michigan in the Republican primary for Michigan’s 11th Congressional District. “It’s an honor to have support from Right to Life of Michigan,” said Rep. KerryBentivolio. “The most vulnerable in our society, the unborn, can't speak for themselves. That is why I promise to relentlessly fight for their protection in Congress.”

America’s foreclosure crisis has been over for more than a year, if it ever really existed. But the government/activist/media blob is still trying to convince the public that there is an epidemic of bad borrowers who need public relief. At Harvard Law School, a student group called Project No One Leaves recently concluded its fourth annual conference aimed at creating what one attendee called “a multi-faceted, national housing justice alliance.” Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett recently gave $200,000 to a community organization called ACTS Housing to fight the foreclosure crisis by buying up bank-owned properties — even as the number...

Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter From Federal-Reserve-fueled bubble to debilitating return to reality – reality being a financial calamity – to Federal-Reserve-hyper-fueled bubble: that’s the US housing market over the last ten years. There are many places around the country, including some cities in Silicon Valley, where home values are now higher than they were at the peak of the last bubble. Of course, no one at the Fed or in government calls it “bubble.” They’re talking about the housing “recovery.” But the excesses and speculators are back, and private equity funds and highly leveraged REITs are all over it, buying...

Today, FHFA directed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to raise guarantee fees in three components: • The base g-fee (or ongoing g-fee) for all mortgages will increase by 10 basis points; • The up-front g-fee grid will be updated to better align pricing with the credit risk characteristics of the borrower; and • The up-front 25 basis point adverse market fee that has been assessed on all mortgages purchased by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae since 2008 is being eliminated except in the four states whose foreclosure carrying costs are more than two standard deviations greater than the national average....

The CoreLogic National Foreclosure Report is out for October 2013. The good news! Foreclosure inventory in the U.S. fell 30.6% YoY in October. sersleinf120913 Florida leads the U.S. in foreclosure inventory as a percentage of mortgaged homes at 7.1%, followed by New Jersey at 6.7% and New York at 4.9%. clforecinvstate The lowest state in terms of foreclosure inventory? Wyoming at 0.4% followed by Alaska and Nebraska at 0.6%. If we compare judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states, we see a glaring difference. The worst states for percent of homes in foreclosure at judicial states (FLA, NJ, NY). The best states...

(Poster's note: this is the story of a neighborhood association forcing the foreclosure of a woman's home, that she had fully paid for, because she didn't pay her neighborhood association dues. Apparently, this is legal here in KY. This is one of the most outrageous things I've heard of.) In a rare case, the Masterson Station Neighborhood Association won a court judgment this year to foreclose on a Lexington woman's home. The Urban County Council decided on Tuesday to review the situation in which Ingrid Boak's home was sold at a master commissioner's sale because she did not pay a...

Shocking bombshell evidence that proves OJ committed double homicide and where he may have hidden the murder weapon REVEALED! O.J. SIMPSON is shaken to the core because bombshell evi­dence that proves he murdered his ex-wife and her friend is hidden in his $500,000 Flori­da home – and it’s all about to be discovered because the house is headed for the auction block on Oct. 29. The home has been in foreclosure, and the disgraced football star, now impris­oned in Nevada, is terrified that the new owner will discover the items – the knife used in the gruesome murders and the...

The power of eminent domain has traditionally worked against homeowners, who can be forced to sell their property to make way for a new highway or shopping mall. But now the working-class city of Richmond, Calif., hopes to use the same legal tool to help people stay right where they are. Scarcely touched by the nation’s housing recovery and tired of waiting for federal help, Richmond is about to become the first city in the nation to try eminent domain as a way to stop foreclosures. The results will be closely watched by both Wall Street banks, which have vigorously...

According to CoreLogic, U.S. foreclosure inventory is down 29% from the previous year. There were 52,000 completed foreclosures in the U.S. in May 2013, down from 71,000 in May 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 27 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures increased 3.5 percent, from 50,000 in April 2013 to the May level of 52,000. Current residential shadow inventory as of April 2013 was under 2 million units, representing a supply of 5.3 months. The overall shadow inventory is down 34 percent from its peak in 2010, when it reached 3 million homes, and down 18 percent from a...

This is not in the news yet. The article is a press release from family and friends of a Homeowner jailed for "domestic terrorism" after challenging fraudulent foreclosure records -- nothing related to terrorism in any way. The government is using domestic terrorism charges (five felony counts!) to go after a citizen who challenged the banks' authority to foreclose on her home without due process. This is pure fascism.

According to RealtyTrac, Akron Ohio is the leader in housing units per foreclosure filings. And Columbus Ohio is 6th on the list. The FC in Ohio? Rounding out the top 20 foreclosure metro areas are Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Canton. You know, pretty much the entire state. Huh. I would have thought that Richard Cordray, the current Robo-cop at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and former attorney general of Ohio, would have cleaned up the foreclosure mess before heading up the CFPB. Here is a chart of underwater mortgages in Ohio. Ohio is at 32.48% underwater. The striking thing...

A woman in Tualatin, Ore., is breathing a sigh of relief after a three-year battle to prove Wells Fargo had wrongfully moved to foreclose on her home, saying she had missed mortgage payments. A judge ruled Wednesday that Wells Fargo failed to prove she was actually behind in her payments, which Delores Dingman, 80, attributes to the bank's simple "accounting errors." "I just praise God for it all because I kept praying so many times about this, because I knew I had made the payments, but their accounting errors made it hard," she said.

Yes, we have yet another government mortgage modification program. This makes the 15th government mortgage modification program to go along with HAMP, HARP, the Attorneys General Settlement and their various contortions. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will offer a new, simplified loan modification initiative to minimize losses and to help troubled borrowers avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes. Beginning July 1, servicers will be required to offer eligible borrowers who are at least 90 days delinquent on their mortgage an easy way to lower their monthly payments and modify their...

When regulators first announced a settlement deal ending a case-by-case foreclosure review program, it was suggested they had found fewer foreclosure errors than expected, a potentially embarrassing result for officials who had pursued the banks. But newly reported details of the review program's early findings suggest that might not be whole whole story. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported the topline figure given by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency -- an error rate of just 4.2 percent among the self-selected and flagged foreclosures under review -- ignored big variations between servicers. But a breakdown of the...