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REMOVAL TO FEDERAL COURT AND REMAND BACK AGAIN TO STATE COURT

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Editor’s Comment:

Too often lawyers and pro se litigants fail to realize that while a motion for removal is ordinarily granted without hearing, they retain the right to move the Federal Court for remand back to the State Court and the Federal Judge often agrees when it receives the Motion for Remand.  The point is that the laws and procedures governing the case are all state laws, of which there can be no dispute, and the remedy is a state remedy leaving no room for Federal interpretation. In this case MERS was cut off at the pass by a narrower reading of the Class Action Fairness Act. MERS had sent a notice of removal to Federal Court but he parties suing MERS responded that this was a counterclaim by MERS and could not be subject to removal to Federal Court under conventional grounds. They remanded it back to state court where it belongs.

Class Action Act Didn’t Alter Removal Rule

by Ed Wesoloski

A familiar story in troubled economic times has produced a new ruling concerning federal civil procedure from the Sixth Circuit.

A Kentucky couple bought a house with a loan issued by America’s Wholesale Lender, secured by a mortgage with Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). Later, the couple defaulted on the mortgage. Countrywide Home Loans foreclosed in state court, claiming MERS assigned the mortgage.

The couple filed a counterclaim against Countrywide, arguing that MERS never had a valid mortgage. Countrywide said the counterclaim was deficient because MERS wasn’t joined as a necessary party.

The couple then filed a third-party class action complaint against MERS. MERS, said the couple, was nothing more than an electronic data base for keeping track of mortgages and did not hold a valid mortgage, having failed to follow Kentucky’s registration procedures.

Here’s where the fresh twist to things begins.

MERS, as a third-party defendant, removed the case to federal district court. Normally, third-party defendants can’t do that. First Nat’l Bank of Pulaski v. Curry, 301 F.3d 456, 461 (6th Cir. 2002).

The Kentucky couple, citing Pulaski and 28 U.S.C. § 1441(a), moved to remand their case to state court.

This time it’s different, MERS argued.

[MERS] sought removal of the action based on 28 U.S.C. § 1453(b). The [Class Action Fairness Act of 2005] provides that a district court has jurisdiction in a civil action where there is diversity of citizenship; the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million; and the proposed class includes at least one hundred members. …

[MERS argued] that under section 1453(b), a qualifying class action “may be removed by any defendant without the consent of all defendants.”

You’re reading the statute way too broadly, the Sixth Circuit ruled.

[MERS] attempts to distinguish Pulaski by arguing that section 1453(b), which includes the term “any defendant,” has expanded the right of removal in Class Action Fairness Act cases.

But that language is used in a specific context — it is part of a larger clause providing that an appropriate action “may be removed by any defendant without the consent of all defendants.” Contrary to [MERS’] position, the provision simply modifies the rule that all defendants must consent to the removal.

What the Class Action Fairness Act doesn’t do is extend removal opportunities to third-party defendants, the Sixth Circuit concluded.

The case is In re Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems

Bribery or Business as Usual?

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Editor’s Comment and Analysis:

There is only one way this isn’t an outright bribe that should land the senator in jail — and that is proving that he received nothing of value. Stories abound in the media about haircut rates given to members of government particularly by Countrywide, now owned by Bank of America. Now we see it on the way down where others go through hoops and ladders to get a modification of short-sale but members of Congress get special treatment.

The only way this could be considered nothing of value is if the banks that gave this favor knew that they didn’t lend the money, didn’t purchase the loan and didn’t have a dime in the deal. They can prove it but they won’t because the fallout would be that there are no loans in print and that there are no perfected mortgage loans. The consequence is that there can be no foreclosures. And it would mean that the values carried on the books of these banks are eihter overstated or entirely fictiouos. The general consensus is that capital requirments for the banks should be higher. But what if the capital they are reporting doesn’t exist?

We are seeing practically everyday how Congress is bought off by the Banks and yet we do nothing. How can you expect to be taken seriously by the executive branch and the judicial branch of goveornment charged with enforcing the laws? If you are doing nothing and complaining, it’s time to get off the couch and do something with the Occupy Movement or your own private war with the banks. If you are not complaining, you should be — because this tsunami is about to hit the front door of your house too whether you are making the payments or not.

The power of the new aristocracy in American and European politics is felt around the globe. People are suffering in the U.S., Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and other places because the smaller banks in all those countries got taken to the cleaners by huge conglomerate Wall Street Banks. Ireland is reporting foreclosures and defaults at record rates. It was fraud with an effect far greater than any other act of domestic or international terrorism. And it isn’t just about money either. Suicides, domestic violence ending in death and mental illness are pandemic. And nobody cares about the little guy because the little guy is just fuel for the endless appetite of Wall Street. 

If Obama rreally wants to galvanize the electorate, he must be proactive on the fierce urgency of NOW! Those were his words when he was a candidate and he owes us action because that urgency was felt in 2008 and is a vice around everyone’s neck now.

JPMorgan Chase & the Senator’s Short Sale:

It’s Hypocritical -But Is It Corrupt?

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

There’s a lot we have yet to learn about the story of Sen. Mike Lee, Tea Party Republican of Utah, and America’s largest bank. But we already know something’s very, very wrong:

Why is it that most Americans can’t get a principal reduction from Chase or any other bank, but JPMorgan Chase was so very flexible with a sitting member of the United States Senate?

The hypocrisy from Sen. Lee and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon overfloweth. But does the Case of the Senator’s Short Sale rise to the level of full-blown corruption? We won’t know until we get some answers.

People should be demanding those answers now.

When Jamie Met Mike

It’s not a pretty picture: In one corner is the Senator who wants to strike down Federal child labor laws and offer American residency to any non-citizen who buys a home with cash. In the other is the bank whose CEO said that the best way to relieve the crushing burden of debt on homeowners is by seizing their homes.

“Giving debt relief to people that really need it,” said Dimon, “that’s what foreclosure is.” That comment is Dickensian in its insensitivity – and Dimon’s bank offered real relief to the Senator from Utah.

The story of the short sale on Sen. Mike Lee’s home broke broke shortly not long after the world learned that JPM lost billions of dollars through trading that might have been illegal, and about which it certainly misled investors.

A Senator who doesn’t believe in child labor laws, and a crime-plagued bank that was just plunged into a trading scandal after losing billions in the London markets.

Why, they were practically made for one another.

Here in the Real World

This was also the week we learned from Zillow, one of the nation’s leading real estate data companies, that there are far more underwater homeowners than previously thought. Zillow collated all the information on home loans, including second mortgages, in order to develop this larger and more accurate number.

The new estimated amount of negative equity – money owed to the banks for non-existent home value – is $1.2 trillion.

Zillow found that nearly 16 million homeowners, representing roughly a third of all homes with a mortgage, were “underwater” (meaning they owe more than the home is now worth). That’s about 50 percent more than had been previously believed. Many of these homeowners are desperate for principal reduction, which would allow them to get back on their feet.

Banks can reduce the amount owed to reflect the current value of the house, which would lower monthly payments for many struggling homeowners. Another option is the “short sale,” in which the bank lets them sell the house for its current value and walk away. That would allow many of them to relocate in search of work.

But the banks, along with their allies in Washington DC, have been fighting principal reduction and resisting any attempts to increase the number of short sales. They remain out of reach for most struggling homeowners.

Mike’s Deal

But Mike Lee didn’t have that problem. Lee was elected to the Senate after buying his luxury home in Alpine, Utah at the height of the real estate boom. JPMorgan Chase agreed to a short sale, and it sold for nearly $400,000 less than the price Lee paid for it four years ago.

Sen. Lee says that he made a down payment on the home, although he hasn’t said how much was involved. But if he paid 15 percent down and put it $150,000, for example, then the Senator from Utah was just allowed to walk away from a quarter of a million dollars in debt obligations to JPMorgan Chase.

Let’s see: A troubled bank gives a sitting member of the United States Senate an advantageous deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? You’d think a story like that would get a little more attention than it has so far.

The Right’s Outrageous Hypocrisy

We haven’t seen this much hypocrisy in the real estate world since the Mortgage Bankers Association walked away from loans on its own headquarters even as its CEO, John Courson, was lecturing Americans their “legal obligation” and the terrible “message they would send” by walking away from their mortgages.

Then he did a short sale on the MBA’s headquarters. It sold for a reported $41 million, just three years after the MBA – those captains of real estate – paid $74 million for it.

The MBA calls itself “the voice of the mortgage banking industry.”

The hypocrisy may be even greater in this case. Sen. Mike Lee is a member in good standing of the Tea Party, a movement which began on the floor of Chicago Mercantile Exchange as a protest against the idea that the government might help underwater homeowners, even though many of the angry traders had enriched themselves thanks to government bailouts.

When their ringleader mentioned households struggling with negative equity, these first members of the Tea Party broke into a chant: “Losers! Losers! Losers!”

Mike Lee’s Outrageous Hypocrisy

Which gets us to Mike Lee. Lee accepted a handout of JPMorgan Chase after voting to end unemployment for jobless Americans. Lee also argued against Federal child labor laws, although he did acknowledge that child labor is “reprehensible.”

How big a hypocrite is Mike Lee? His website (which, curiously enough, went down as we wrote these words) says he believes “the federal government’s out-of-control spending has evolved into a major threat to our economic prosperity and job creation” and that he came to Washington to, among other things, “properly manage our finances”. Lee’s website also scolds Congress because, he says, it “cannot live within its means.”

As Ed McMahon used to say, “Write your own joke.”

Needless to say, Lee also advocates drastic cuts to Social Security and Medicare while pushing lower taxes for the wealthy – and plumping for exactly the same kind of deregulation which let bankers to run amok and wreck the economy in 2008 by doing things like … well, like what JPMorgan Chase just did in London.

“Give Me Your Wired, Your Wealthy, Your Upper Classes Yearning to Buy Cheap”

Lee has also co-sponsored a bill with Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senator from Wall Street New York, that would grant US residency to foreigners who purchase a home worth at least $500,000 – as long as they paid cash.

The Lee/Schumer bill would be a big boon to US banks – banks, in fact, like JPMorgan Chase. If it passes, the Statue of Liberty may need to be reshaped so that Lady Liberty is holding a book of real estate listings in her right hand while wearing a hat that reads “Million Dollar Sellers’ Club.”

Mike Lee’s bill would also have propped up the luxury home market, offering a big financial boost to people who are struggling to hold to the equity they’ve put into high-end homes, people like … well, like Mike Lee.

Jamie Dimon’s Outrageous Hypocrisy

Then there’s Jamie Dimon, who spoke for his fellow bankers during negotiations that led up to the very cushy $25 billion settlement that let banks like his off the hook for widespread lawbreaking in their foreclosure fraud crime wave.

“Yeah,” Dimon said of principal reductions for homeowners like Sen. Lee, “that’s off the table.”

Dimon’s been resisting global solutions to the negative equity problems for years. He said in 2010 that he preferred to make decisions about homeowners on a “loan by loan” basis.

The Rich Are Different – They Have More Mortgage Relief

“The rich are different,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, and (in a quote often misattributed to Ernest Hemingway) literary critic Mary Colum observed that ” the only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money.”

And they apparently find it a lot easier to walk away from their underwater homes.There’s been a dramatic increase in short sales lately, and the evidence suggests that most of the deals have been going to luxury homeowners. Among other things, this trend toward high-end short sales the lie to the popular idea that bankers and their allies don’t want to “reward the underserving,” since hedge fund traders who overestimated next year’s bonus are clearly less deserving than working families who purchased a modest home for themselves.

Nevertheless, that’s where most of the debt relief seems to be going: to the wealthy, and not to the middle class.

Guess that’s what happens when loan officers working for Dimon and other Wall Street CEOs handle these matters on a “loan by loan” basis.

Immoral Logic

While this “loan by loan” approach lacks morality, there’s some financial logic to it. Banks typically have a lot more money at risk in an underwater luxury home than they do in more modest houses. A short sale provides them with a way to clear things up, recoup what they can, and get their books in a little more order than before. That’s why JPMorgan Chase has been offering selected borrowers up to $35,000 to accept short sales. You can bet they’re not offering that deal to middle class families.

There are other reasons to offer short sales to the wealthy: JPM, like all big banks, is pursuing very-high-end banking clients more aggressively than ever. That’s where the profits are. So why alienate a high-value client when they may offer you the opportunity to recoup losses elsewhere?

(“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Dimon, but it’s London calling.”)

Corruption Or Not: The Questions

Both the bank and the Senator need to answer some questions about this deal. Here’s what the public deserves to know:

Could the writedown on the home’s value be considered an in-kind gift to a sitting Senator?

If so, then we have a very real scandal on our hands. But we don’t know enough to answer that question yet.

What are JPMorgan Chase’s procedures for deciding who receives mortgage relief and who doesn’t?

Dimon may prefer to handle these matters on a “loan by loan” basis, but there must be guidelines that bank officers can follow. And presumably they’ve been written down somewhere. Were they followed in Mike Lee’s case?

Who was involved in the decision to offer this deal to Mike Lee?

Offering mortgage relief to a sitting Senator is, to borrow a phrase, “a big elfin’ deal.” A mid-level bank officer isn’t likely to handle a case like this without taking it up the chain of command. So who made the final decision on Mike Lee’s mortgage?

It wouldn’t be unheard of if a a sensitive matter like this one was escalated to all the way to the company’s most senior executive – especially if that executive has eliminated any checks on his power, much less any independent input from shareholders, by serving as both the Chair(man) of the Board and the CEO.

In this, as in so many of JPM’s scandals, the question must be asked: What did Jamie know, and when did he know it?

Is Mike Lee a “Friend of Jamie”?

Which raises a related question: Is there is a formal or informal list of people for whom JPM employees are directed to give preferential treatment?

Everybody remembers the scandal that surrounded Sen. Chris Dodd when it was learned that his mortgage was given favorable treatment by Countrywide – even though the Senator apparently knew nothing about it at the time. The world soon learned then that Countrywide had a VIP program called “Friends of Angelo,” named for CEO Angelo Mozilo, and those who were on the list got special treatment.

Is there a “Friends of Jamie” list at JPMorgan Chase – and is Mike Lee’s name on it?

Were there any discussions between the bank’s executives and the Senator regarding the foreign home buyer’s bill or any other legislation that affected Wall Street?

Until this question is answered the issue of a possible quid pro quo will hang over both the Senator and JPMorgan Chase.

Seriously, guys – this doesn’t look good.

Was MERS used to evade state taxes and recording requirements on Sen. Lee’s home? 

JPMorgan Chase funded, and was an active participant, in the “MERS” program which was used, among other things, to bypass local taxes and legal requirements for recording titles.

As we wrote when we reviewed hundreds of internal MERS documents, MERS was instrumental in allowing banks to bundle and sell mortgage-backed securities in a way that led directly to the financial crisis of 2008. It also helped bankers artificially inflate real estate prices, encourage homeowners to take out loans at bubble prices, and then leave them holding the note (as underwater homeowners) after the collapse of national real estate values that they had artificially pumped up.

“Today’s Wall Street Corruption Fun Fact”: MERS was operated by the Mortgage Bankers Association – the same group of real estate geniuses who lost $30 million on a single building in three years, then gave a little lecture on morality to the homeowners they’d been so instrumental in shafting.

Q&A

I was also asked some very reasonable questions by a policy advocacy group. Here they are, with my answers:

If this happened to the average American, would they be able to walk away from the mortgage as well?

If by “average American” you mean “most homeowners,” then the answer is: No. Although short sales are on the rise, most underwater homeowners have not been given the option of going through a short sale. Mike Lee was. The question is, why?

Will Mike Lee’s credit rating be adversely affected?

This is a very important question. The credit rating industry serves banks, not consumers, and it operates at their beck and call.

The answer to this question depends on how JPM handled the paperwork. Many (and probably most) homeowners involved in a short sale take a hit to their credit rating. If Lee did not, it smacks of special treatment.

Given the fact that it was JPMorgan who financed the loss, does that mean, indirectly through the bailout, that the taxpayers paid for Lee’s mortgage write-off?

That gets tricky – but in a moral sense, you could certainly say that.

Short Selling Democracy

There’s no question that this deal is hypocritical and ugly, and that it reflects much of what’s still broken about both our politics and Wall Street. Is it a scandal? Without these answers we can’t know. This was either a case of the special treatment that is so often reserved for the wealthy, or it’s something even worse: influence peddling and political corruption.

it’s time for JPMorgan Chase and Sen. Mike Lee to come clean about this deal. If they did nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide. Either way the public’s entitled to some answers.

Still Pretending the Servicers Are Legitimate

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Editor’s Comment:

I keep waiting for someone to notice. We all know that the foreclosures were defective. We all know that in many cases independent auditors found that strangers to the transaction submitted credit bids that were accepted by the auctioneer, and that in the non-judicial states where substitutions of trustees are always used to replace an independent trustee with one owned or controlled by the “new creditor” the “credit bid” is accepted by the creditor’s agent even if the trustee has notice from the borrower that neither the substitution of trustee nor the foreclosure are valid, that the borrower denies the debt, denies the default and denies the right of the “new creditor” to do anything.

In the old days when we followed the law, the trustee would have only one option: file an interpleader lawsuit in court claiming two stakeholders and that the trustee is not a stakeholder and should be reimbursed for fees and costs. Today instead of an interpleader, it is a foreclosure because the “creditor” is holding all the cards.

So why is anyone surprised that modifications are rejected when in the past the debtor and borrower always worked things out because foreclosure was not as good as a work-out?

Why do the deeds found to be lacking in consideration with false credit bids still remain on the books? Why hasn’t the homeowner been notified that he still owns the property and has the right to possession?

And why are we so sure that the original mortgage has any more validity than the false documents to support fraudulent foreclosures? Is it because the borrower’s signature is on it? OK. If we are going to look at the borrower’s signature then why do we not look at the rest of the document and the facts alleged to have occurred in those documents. The note says that the payee is the lender. We all know that isn’t true. The mortgage says the property is collateral for payment to the payee on the note. What first year law student would fail to spot that if the note recited a loan transaction that never occurred, then the mortgage securing the payments on the false transaction is no better than the note?

So if the original transaction was defective and the servicer derives its status or power from the origination documents, then who is the servicer and why is he standing in your living room demanding payment and declaring you in default?

If any reader of this blog somehow convinced another reader of the blog to sign a note and mortgage, would the note and mortgage be valid without any actual financial transaction. No. In fact, the attempt to collect on the note where I didn’t make the loan might be considered fraud or even grand theft. And rightfully so. I am told that in some states the Judges say it is the absence of anyone else making an effort to collect on the note that proves the standing of the party seeking to enforce it. Really?

This sounds like a business plan. A lends B money. B signs papers indicating the loan came from C and C gets the mortgage. B is delinquent by a month and having lost his job he abandons the property. D comes in and seeks to enforce the mortgage and note and nobody else is around. The title record is still clear of any foreclosure activity. D says he has an assignment and produces a false forged assignment. Nobody else shows up. THAT is because the parties in the securitization chain are using MERS instead of the public record title registry so they didn’t get any notice. D gets the foreclosure after substituting trustees in a non-judicial state or doing absolutely nothing in a judicial state. The property is auctioned and D submits a credit bid which is accepted by the auctioneer. The clerk or trustee issues D a deed upon foreclosure and D immediately transfers the property to XYZ corporation that he formed the day before. XYZ sells the property to E for $300,000. E pays D $60,000 down payment and gets a mortgage from ABC Lending Corp. for the other $240,000. ABC Lending Corp. sells the note and mortgage into the secondary market where it is sliced and diced into parcels that are allocated into one or more REMIC special purpose vehicles.

Now B comes back and finds out that he was never foreclosed on by his lender. C wakes up and says they never released the mortgage. D took the money and ran, never to be heard from again. The investors in the REMIC trusts are told they bought an invalid mortgage or one in which the mortgage has second priority instead of first priority. E, who bought the property with $60,000 of his own money is now at risk, and when he looks at his title policy and makes a claim he is directed to the schedules of exclusions and exceptions that specifically cover this event. So no title carrier is going to pay. In fact, the title company might concede that B still owns the property and that C has the first mortgage on it, but that leaves E with two mortgages instead of one. The two mortgages together total around $500,000, a price that E’s property will never reach in 20 years. Sound familiar?

Welcome to USA property law as it was summarily ignored, changed and enforced for the past 10 years? Why? Especially when it turns out that the investment broker that sold the mortgage bonds of the REMIC knew about the whole story all along. Why are we letting this happen?

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Pensioners Will Feel the Pinch from Illegal Mortgages and Foreclosures

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Editor’s Comment:

There are many people whose opinion produces the resistance of government to rip up the banks that got us into this economic mess. They all say government is too big, that we already have too much regulation and that Obama is the cause of the recession. Their opinions are based largely on the fact that they perceive the borrowers as deadbeats and government assistance as another “handout.” 

But when it comes down to it, it’s easy to make a decision based upn ideology if the consequences are not falling on you. Read any news source and you will see that the pension funds are taking a huge hit as a rsult of illegal bank activities and fraudulent practices leaving the victims and our economy in a lurch.

The article below is about public pensions where the pension funds and the governmental units took a monumental hit when the banks sucked the life out of our economy. TRANSLATION: IF YOU DEPEND UPON PENSION INCOME YOU ARE LIKELY TO FIND OUT YOU ARE SCREWED. And even if you don’t depend upon pension income, you are likely to be taxed for the shortfall that is now sitting in the pockets of Wall Street Bankers.

Think about it. If the Banks were hit hard like they were in Iceland andother places (and where by the way they still exist and make money) then your pension fund would not have the loss that requires either more taxes or less benefits. And going after the banks doesn’t take a dime out of pulic funds which should (but doesn’t) make responsible people advocating austerity measures rejoice. They still say they don’t like the obvious plan of getting restitution from thieves because the theives are paying them and feeding them talking points. And some of us are listening. Are you?

Public Pensions Faulted for Bets on Rosy Returns

By: Mary Williams Walsh and Danny Hakim

Few investors are more bullish these days than public pension funds. While Americans are typically earning less than 1 percent interest on their savings accounts and watching their 401(k) balances yo-yo along with the stock market, most public pension funds are still betting they will earn annual returns of 7 to 8 percent over the long haul, a practice that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently called “indefensible.”

Now public pension funds across the country are facing a painful reckoning. Their projections look increasingly out of touch in today’s low-interest environment, and pressure is mounting to be more realistic. But lowering their investment assumptions, even slightly, means turning for more cash to local taxpayers — who pay part of the cost of public pensions through property and other taxes.

In New York, the city’s chief actuary, Robert North, has proposed lowering the assumed rate of return for the city’s five pension funds to 7 percent from 8 percent, which would be one of the sharpest reductions by a public pension fund in the United States. But that change would mean finding an additional $1.9 billion for the pension system every year, a huge amount for a city already depositing more than a tenth of its budget — $7.3 billion a year — into the funds.

But to many observers, even 7 percent is too high in today’s market conditions.

“The actuary is supposedly going to lower the assumed reinvestment rate from an absolutely hysterical, laughable 8 percent to a totally indefensible 7 or 7.5 percent,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a trip to Albany in late February. “If I can give you one piece of financial advice: If somebody offers you a guaranteed 7 percent on your money for the rest of your life, you take it and just make sure the guy’s name is not Madoff.” Public retirement systems from Alaska to Maine are running into the same dilemma as they struggle to lower their assumed rates of return in light of very low interest rates and unpredictable stock prices.

They are facing opposition from public-sector unions, which fear that increased pension costs to taxpayers will further feed the push to cut retirement benefits for public workers. In New York, the Legislature this year cut pensions for public workers who are hired in the future, and around the country governors and mayors are citing high pension costs as a reason for requiring workers to contribute more, or work longer, to earn retirement benefits.

In addition to lowering the projected rate of return, Mr. North has also recommended that the New York City trustees acknowledge that city workers are living longer and reporting more disabilities — changes that would cost the city an additional $2.8 billion in pension contributions this year. Mr. North has called for the city to soften the blow to the budget by pushing much of the increased pension cost into the future, by spreading the increased liability out over 22 years. Ailing pension systems have been among the factors that have recently driven struggling cities into Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Such bankruptcies are rare, but economists warn that more are likely in the coming years. Faulty assumptions can mask problems, and municipal pension funds are often so big that if they run into a crisis their home cities cannot afford to bail them out. The typical public pension plan assumes its investments will earn average annual returns of 8 percent over the long term, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Actual experience since 2000 has been much less, 5.7 percent over the last 10 years, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. (New York State announced last week that it had earned 5.96 percent last year, compared with the 7.5 percent it had projected.)

Worse, many economists say, is that states and cities have special accounting rules that have been criticized for greatly understating pension costs. Governments do not just use their investment assumptions to project future asset growth. They also use them to measure what they will owe retirees in the future in today’s dollars, something companies have not been permitted to do since 1993.

As a result, companies now use an average interest rate of 4.8 percent to calculate their pension costs in today’s dollars, according to Milliman, an actuarial firm.

In New York City, the proposed 7 percent rate faces resistance from union trustees who sit on the funds’ boards. The trustees have the power to make the change; their decision must also be approved by the State Legislature.

“The continued risk here is that even 7 is too high,” said Edmund J. McMahon, a senior fellow at the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a research group for fiscal issues.

And Jeremy Gold, an actuary and economist who has been an outspoken critic of public pension disclosures, said, “If you’re using 7 percent in a 3 percent world, then you’re still continuing to borrow from the pension fund.” The city’s union leaders disagree. Harry Nespoli, the chairman of the Municipal Labor Committee, the umbrella group for the city’s public employee unions, said that lowering the rate to 7 percent was unnecessary.

“They don’t have to turn around and lower it a whole point,” he said.

When asked if his union was more bullish on the markets than the city’s actuary, Mr. Nespoli said, “All we can do is what the actuary is doing. He’s guessing. We’re guessing.”

Vermont has lowered its rate by 2 percentage points, but for only one year. The state recently adopted an unusual new approach calling for a sharp initial reduction in its investment assumptions, followed by gradual yearly increases. Vermont has also required public workers to pay more into the pension system.

Union leaders see hidden agendas behind the rising calls for lower pension assumptions. When Rhode Island’s state treasurer, Gina M. Raimondo, persuaded her state’s pension board to lower its rate to 7.5 percent last year, from 8.25 percent, the president of a firemen’s union accused her of “cooking the books.”

Lowering the rate to 7.5 percent meant Rhode Island’s taxpayers would have to contribute an additional $300 million to the fund in the first year, and more after that. Lawmakers were convinced that the state could not afford that, and instead reduced public pension benefits, including the yearly cost-of-living adjustments that retirees now receive. State officials expect the unions to sue over the benefits cuts.

When the mayor of San Jose, Calif., Chuck Reed, warned that the city’s reliance on 7.5 percent returns was too risky, three public employees’ unions filed a complaint against him and the city with the Securities and Exchange Commission. They told the regulators that San Jose had not included such warnings in its bond prospectus, and asked the regulators to look into whether the omission amounted to securities fraud. A spokesman for the mayor said the complaint was without merit. In Sacramento this year, Alan Milligan, the actuary for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers, recommended that the trustees lower their assumption to 7.25 percent from 7.75 percent. Last year, the trustees rejected Mr. Milligan’s previous proposal, to lower the rate to 7.5 percent.

This time, one trustee, Dan Dunmoyer, asked the actuary if he had calculated the probability that the pension fund could even hit those targets.

Yes, Mr. Milligan said: There was a 50-50 chance of getting 7.5 percent returns, on average, over the next two decades. The odds of hitting a 7.25 percent target were a little better, he added, 54 to 46.

Mr. Dunmoyer, who represents the insurance industry on the board, sounded shocked. “To me, as a fiduciary, you want to have more than a 50 percent chance of success.”

If Calpers kept setting high targets and missing them, “the impact on the counties won’t be bigger numbers,” he said. “It will be bankruptcy.”

In the end, a majority decided it was worth the risk, and voted against Mr. Dunmoyer, lowering the rate to 7.5 percent.

LivingLies Offers Scholarships To New Seminar

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What we NOW know about

Loan Securitization And Foreclosure Defense

Presented By

NEIL F GARFIELD, MBA, JD

During my national tour 2008-2009 and my local intensive workshops I learned a lot about what people need, about what people want and about what people can do.  In the two years since my last workshop (an intensive 2-day workshop on procedure and evidence) I found many competent professionals and laymen who could benefit from the workshops but could not afford to pay for them.

In a radical departure from prior pricing models, we have slashed the prices of the workshops to a fraction of what was previously charged.  this is despite the fact that we have sharpened our resources, presentations, tactics and strategies.

This of course will result in fewer amenities being offered as part of the workshop since the hotels tend to charge fees that result in tuition costs that are out of reach for many people whom we wish to invite.

As a pilot measure, we have accepted the suggestion that we make an official policy of what was previously an unofficial policy.  We are offering up to 7 scholarships to those who are qualified and unable to afford the cost of tuition.  The decision on these scholarships is within our sole discretion.

We have done our part in reducing the cost of the vital information presented in these workshops.  I have done my part in providing free information on the LivingLies blog for nearly 5 years.  Anyone who applies for a scholarship should do so with the utmost good faith and an offer to pay what they can.  If you are interested and you think you qualify for a scholarship please write to us at: Seminars@GarfieldFirm.com and put into the subject line: Scholarship

Management reserves the right to increase the number of scholarships depending upon the number of registered and pre-paid participants.

Regards,

Neil

 

 

 

Discussion Started Between Livinglies and AZ Attorney General Tom Horne

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Editor’s Comment:

Dear Kathleen,

Thank you very much for taking my call this morning.

The question that Neil F. Garfield, Esq. had asked AZ Attorney General Tom Horne at Darrell Blomberg’s meeting was:

Why is the Arizona Attorney General not prosecuting the banks and servicers for corruption and racketeering by submitting false credit bids from non-creditors at foreclosure auctions?

Please feel free to browse Mr. Garfield’s web blog, www.LivingLies.wordpress.com as you may find much of the research and many of the articles to be relevant and of interest.

Mr. Garfield wishes the following comments and observations to be added, in order to clarify the question being asked.

It should probably be noted that in my own research and from the research from at least two dozen other lawyers whose practice concentrates in real property and foreclosures have all reached the same conclusion.  The submission of a credit bid by a stranger to the transaction is a fraudulent act.  A credit bid is only permissible in the event that the party seeking to offer the bid meets the following criteria:

1.  The homeowner borrower owes money to the alleged creditor

2.  The money that is owed to the alleged creditor arises out of a transaction in which the homeowner borrower agreed to the power of sale regarding that debt

3.  Any other creditor would be as much a stranger to the transaction as a non-creditor

Our group is also in agreement that:

4.  Acceptance of the credit bid is an ultra vires act.

5.  The deed issued in foreclosure under such circumstances is a wild deed requiring the title registrar to attach a statement from the office of the title registrar (for example Helen Purcell) stating that the deed does not meet the requirements of statute and therefore does not meet the requirements for recording.

6.  In the event that nobody else is permitted to bid, the auction violates Arizona statutes.

And we arrived at the following conclusions:

7.  In the event that there is no cash bid and the only “bid” was accepted as a cash bid from either a non-creditor or a creditor whose debt is not secured by the power of sale, no sale has legally occurred.

8.  The applicable statutes preventing the corruption of the title chain by such illegal means include the filing of false documents, grand theft, and evasion of the payment of required fees.

9.  This phenomenon is extremely wide spread and based upon surveys conducted by our office and dozens of other offices (including an independent audit of the title registry of San Francisco county) strongly suggest that the vast majority of foreclosures in Arizona resulted in illegal auctions, illegal acceptance of a bid, and illegal issuance of a deed on foreclosure-which resulted in many cases in illegal evictions.

10.  Federal and State-equivalent RICO may also apply, as well as Federal mail fraud which should be referred to the US Attorney.

CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE TO THE NON-JUDICIAL SALE STATUTE AS APPLIED.

It should also be noted that all the same attorneys agreed that the use of an instrument called “Substitution of Trustee” was improper in most cases in that it removed a trustee owing a duty to both the debtor and the creditor and replaced the old trustee with an entity owned or controlled by the creditor.

This is the equivalent of allowing the creditor to appoint itself as Trustee.

In virtually all cases in which a securitization claim was involved in the attempted foreclosure the Substitution of Trustee was used exactly in the manner described in this paragraph.  This method of applying the powers set forth in the Deed of Trust is obviously unconstitutional as applied.

Constitutional scholars agree that the legislature has wide discretion in substituting one form of due process for another.  In this case, non-judicial sale was permitted on the premise that an independent trustee would exercise the ministerial duties of what had previously been a burden on the judiciary.

However, the ability of any creditor or non-creditor to claim the status of being the successor payee on a promissory note, being the secured party on the Deed of Trust, and having the right to substitute trustees does not confer on such a party the right to appoint itself as the trustee, auctioneer, and signatory on the Deed upon foreclosure nor to have submitted a credit bid.

We are very interested in your reply.  If your office has any cogent reasons for disagreement with the above analysis, we would like to “hear back from you” as you promised at Mr. Blomberg’s meeting 22 days ago.  We would encourage you to stay in touch with Mr. Blomberg or myself with regard to your progress in this matter in as much as we are considering a constitutional challenge not to the statute, but to the application of the statute on the above stated grounds.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Sincerely

Neil F Garfield esq

licensed in Florida #229318

www.LivingLies.wordpress.com

1/2 Day CLE Workshop with Neil Garfield: Getting Started on Foreclosure Defense

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What we NOW know about

Loan Securitization And Foreclosure Defense

Presented By

NEIL F GARFIELD, MBA, JD 

The Windmill Suites-Chandler Fashion Square
3535 W Chandler Blvd
Chandler AZ 85226

Hotel Phone:  480-812-9600

Livinglies Customer Service: 520-405-1688

When: Thursday July 26^th

Registration: 8:30 am

             Seminar: 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

COST:  

Pre-registration – until July 6^th: $179 – Save $30!!

Registration – from July 7^th –July 20^th: $199

Late-Registration July 20^th – July 26^th: $249

Audience: Lawyers, legislators, title agents, realtors, homeowners or anyone thinking of buying short sales or re-sales

Arizona CLE’s available: 2.5 including .5 Ethics

Presented by Neil F Garfield, MBA JD, Beth Findsen JD, and Darrell Blomberg

Neil Garfield is Licensed in Florida and Beth Findsen is Licensed in Texas and Arizona. Both are members of the Federal Trial Bar.

Workshop Content to include:

• Preliminary letters and correspondence
• Putting your best foot forward; evidence
• Administrative agencies
• Foreclosure rescue scams
• Auction issues at foreclosure
• Civil Procedure
• Appellate Procedures
• Title & Title Insurance

Handouts will be distributed electronically when you register and should be brought to the workshop either in printed or electronic format according to your preference.

Participants will receive special workshop discounts on products and services purchased at the workshop.

For more information contact: Seminars@GarfieldFirm.com

Tickets are limited so reserve your spot online now!

To Register:

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER NOW

 Note:

• These topics are introductory in nature and are for general information. Information obtained in this workshop should not be used as a substitute for the advice of a competent licensed attorney in the jurisdiction in which you are located.
• Attorneys in other states will probably be permitted to claim CLE credits from Arizona, check with your state’s bar for more information.

Even the Chinese Know It

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Editor’s Comment:

AUSTERITY MEANS “PROTECT THE BANKS AND SCREW THE PEOPLE”

The Financial Times ran an article 2 days ago about the Chinese being encouraged to spend more aand save less. I’m no fan of China’s political system, or even its economic policies (which come to think of it are the same thing, as Von Mises points out). As we look around the world and see Iceland prospering, China’s growth slowing to a mere 8% while our REAL GDP is still negative or by the reckoning of most economists, headed into downward territory. These propering countries who have concentrated on stmulating the rate of commerce (i.e. the economy) are the countries that are reducing debt (Iceland is now at the point where more than 25% of household debt has been eliminated not with spending fiscal stimullus money but with pressure on the idiots that got us into this messs- the banks.

Then look at the countries who are effectively governed by the banks, directly or indirectly— like US and Europe. They stand in stark contrast to Iceland and China. We are headed into what is called a “double dip” recession as though we would have hands up with ice cream cones in them, but the truth is that these recessions is literally taking food, medicine, and clothes off the table while they send their children into schools that are no longer able to teach and are located in neighborhoods that are less safe from criminal activity and the occoasional warehouse fire all because of “austerity.” Such neighborhoods are also less familiar and less appealing than the ones they got thrown out of after being tricked into using a home in which generations of their family grew up as the source of cheap capial encouraging, cajoling and pushing them with literally midnight visits to get them to sign on the dotted line to purchase a defective, fraudulent loan products whose purpose was to fail.

As we look at those countries who have adpted the politics and economics of austerity (“less spending” or “spending cuts” as it is known in the U.S.) the consequences could not be more clear — austerity, spending cuts, less spending, get the government out of the way are all slogans  that are leading us into disaster. And they are all spoken by people who are owned and controlled by the banks. And at the risk of offending my readers with political statements, Obama was exactly right when he said that the purpose of government was not to turn a business profit like Romney said he did (my sources tell me that Mitt was a figurehead running for president and they were making him look good, not that he was actually of any value). Obama correctly points out that government’s purpose is to maintain a society in which everyone gets a fair shake and a fair shot at the brass ring. Thus government is not for the rich who already got wealthy but for those who have not yet  achieved wealth. And this is because history teaches that no society has ever endured without a strong middle class.

This country needs to revive its economy by having more people spend more money. The obstacles to that are that too many people have no money, no  credit and no jobs. This is the time to divert the corporate welfare of farm subsididies and oil subsidies and the like to those programs that will give all our citizens a fair shake and a fair shot at success.

Like Iceland, the way to increasing the value of our currency, the way to prosperity is to reduce household debt. And the biggest item here that not only decreases household debt but increases household wealth is to return the homes that were wrongfully foreclosed and not to give a pittance of money to the victims with a slap on the wrist to those who stole the home with a credit bid when they were not only not the creditor, but they had never invested a dime in purchasing the loan. That used to be illegal. Wait a minute, it still is illegal. So why are we allowing the banks to continue this charade and why does the government, including Obama’s administration, drag its feet in taking apart these monsters that destroyed our economy? Why is the administration assume that the 7,000 OTHER banks and credit union wolld not prosper and enter into tacit agreements to keep the government afloat while we wait for the stimulus to take effect?

There is no expert or pundit that says we are wrong. All the banks have been able to do is to roll out doomsday sayers who say that if we follow the law we will be headed for disaster. Well take a look.  Disaster is here. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average is not a proper indicator or substitutute for people who can’t put food on a table that is now located in a dwelling that the rest of us would not even consider — their car.

We choose instead to protect the banks at all costs and we call that austerity because where else is the money going to come from except the banks who siphoned it out illegally? That is our policy, our politics and our economics. And while our soldiers risk life and limb because their country called them to duty, their families were being foreclosed, some at the precise moment they were taking a shot in the leg or heart for us. Is this the society we sent them to fight for?

Foreclosure Strategists: Phx. Meeting Forcible Entry & Detainers

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Editor’s Comment:

Contact: Darrell Blomberg  Darrell@ForeclosureStrategists.com  602-686-7355

Meeting: Tuesday, May 29th, 2012, 7pm to 9pm

TOPIC: Forcible Entry & Detainers

Forcible Entry & Detainers (FED) supplemented by an in depth review of Trustee’s Deeds Upon Sale.  We’ll also look at how the Appellate courts are telling us to side-step the “can’t argue title” issue, removing a FED action to Federal Court, disclosures under A.R.S. §33-812 and the relationship of 1099s to Bona Fide Purchasers.

We meet every week!

Every Tuesday: 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Come early for dinner and socialization. (Food service is also available during meeting.)
Macayo’s Restaurant, 602-264-6141, 4001 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85012. (east side of Central Ave just south of Indian School Rd.)
COST: $10… and whatever you want to spend on yourself for dinner, helpings are generous so bring an appetite.
 Please Bring a Guest! 
(NOTE: There is a $2.49 charge for the Happy Hour Buffet unless you at least order a soft drink.)

FACEBOOK PAGE FOR “FORECLOSURE STRATEGIST”

I have set up a Facebook page. (I can’t believe it but it is necessary.) The page can be viewed at www.Facebook.com, look for and “friend” “Foreclosure Strategist.”

I’ll do my best to keep it updated with all of our events.

Please get the word out and send your friends and other homeowners the link.

MEETUP PAGE FOR FORECLOSURE STRATEGISTS:

I have set up a MeetUp page. The page can be viewed at www.MeetUp.com/ForeclosureStrategists. Please get the word out and send your friends and other homeowners the link.

May your opportunities be bountiful and your possibilities unlimited.

“Emissary of Observation”

Darrell Blomberg

602-686-7355

Darrell@ForeclosureStrategists.com

Please Keep April Charney in Your Prayers

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Editor’s Comment:

Hopefully April will make a full recovery. I had similar problems in 2003 and the pain, I can tell you, was “exquisite.” I hope the doctors have that under control for her. The whole kidney thing is always painful and discouraging. Send April some messages of good will and keep praying for her. We need her. I must say I’m a little weirded out by my open-heart surgery In March, followed by Max Gardner’s fight with cancer and now April ‘s challenge with her kidney.

As it turns out it appears as though my own recovery is going quite smoothly and that I have a new lease on life — so if the banksters think the seminars are over, think again. Max has made it clear that he will keep teaching and I am about to re-start the seminar tour I had to cut short 2 years ago. The real battle is just beginning.

April Charney’s Latest Battle

Most of you are familiar with Boot Camper April Charney and her tireless work on behalf of homeowners in Florida. Now, April is fighting another unexpected battle: she is hospitalized after complications during treatment for a kidney stone. She has been in critical condition for several days, on a respirator and undergoing dialysis. As of this writing, Max has just learned from April’s family that her condition has seemingly improved though still quite serious.  Please send your prayers, good thoughts, positive energy or whatever suits your beliefs to April and her family.

We Are Drowning in False Debt While Realtors Push “Recovery”

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Editor’s Comment:

The figures keep coming in while the words keep coming out the mouths of bankers and realtors. The figures don’t match the words. The net result is that the facts show that we are literally drowning in debt, and we see what happens as a result of such conditions with a mere glance at Europe. They are sinking like a stone, and while we look prettier to investors it is only when we are compared to other places — definitely not because we have a strong economy.

Iceland and other “players” crashed but stayed out of the EU and stayed away from the far flung central banking sleeping arrangements with Banks. Iceland knows that banks got us into this and that if there is any way out, it must be the banks that either lead their way out or get nationalized so their assets can take the hit of these losses. In Phoenix alone, we have $39 BILLION in negative equity. 

This negative equity was and remains illusory. Iceland cut the household debt in each home by 25% or more and is conitinuing to do so. The result? They are the only country with the only currency that is truly recovering and coming back to real values. What do we have? We have inflated property appraisals that STILL dominate the marketplace. 

The absence of any sense of reality is all around us in Arizona. I know of one case where Coldwell Banker, easily one of the most prestigious realtors, actually put lots up for sale asking $40,000 when the tax assessed value is barely one quarter of that amount and the area has now dried up — no natural water supply without drilling thousands of feet or hauling water in by truck. Residents in the area and realtors who are local say the property could fetch at most $10,000 and is unsalable until the water problem is solved. And here in Arizona we know the water problem is not only not going to get solved, it is going to get worse because of the “theory” of global climate change.

This “underwater” mess is political not financial. It wouldn’t exist but for the willingness of the government to stay in bed with banks. The appraisals they used to grant the loan were intentionally  falsified to “get rid of” as much money as possible in the shortest time possible, to complete deals and justify taking trillions of dollars from investors. The appraisals at closing were impossibly high by any normal industry accepted standard and appraisers admit it and even predicted it it in 2005. Banks coerced appraisers into inflating appraisers by giving them a choice — either come in with appraisals $20,000 over the contract price or they will never get work again.

The borrower relied upon this appaisal, believing that the property value was so hot that he or she couldn’t lose and that in fact, with values going so high, it would be foolish not to get in on the market before it went all the way out of reach. And of course there were the banks who like the cavalry came in and provided the apparently cheap money for people to buy or refinance their homes. The cavalry was in a movie somewhere, certainly not in the marketplace. It was more like the hordes of invaders in ancient Europe chopping off the heads of men, women and children and as they lie dying they were unaware of what had happened to them and that they were as good as dead.

So many people have chosen death. They see the writing on the wall that once was their own, and they cannot cope with the loss of home, lifestyle and dignity. They take their own lives and the lives of those around them. Citi contributes a few million to a suicide hotline as a PR stunt while they are causing the distress through foreclosure and collection procedures that are illegal, fraudlent, and based upon forged, robosigned documents with robo-notarized attestations  that the recording offices still won’t reject and the judges still accept.

There is no real real economic recovery without reality in housing. Values never went up — but prices did. Now the prices are returning back to the values left in the dust during the big bank push to “get rid of” money advanced by investors. It’s a game to the banks where the homeowner is the lowly deadbeat, the bottom of the ladder, a person who doesn’t deserve dignity or relief like the bank bailouts. When a person gets financial relief from the government it is a “handout.” When big banks and big business get relief and subsidies in industries that were already profitable, it is called economic policy. REALITY CHECK: They are both getting a “handout” and economic policy is driven by politics instead of common sense. French arisocrats found that out too late as their heads rolled off the guillotine platforms.  

But Iceland and other places in the world have taught us that in reality those regarded as deadbeats are atually people who were herded into middle class debt traps created by the banks and that if they follow the simple precept of restoring victims to their previous state, by giving restitution to these victims, the entire economy recovers, housing recovers and everything resumes normal activity that is dominated by normal market forces instead of the force of huge banks coercing society and government by myths like too big too fail. The Banks are doing just fine in Iceland, the financial system is intact and the government policy is based upon the good of the society as a whole rather the banks who might destroy us. Appeasement is not a policy it is a surrender to the banks.

Cities with the Most Homes Underwater

Michael B. Sauter

Mortgage debt continues to be a major issue in the United States, nearly six years after home prices peaked, according to a report released Thursday by online real estate site Zillow. Americans continue to owe more on their homes than they are worth. Nearly one in three mortgages are underwater, amounting to more than 15 million homes and a total negative equity of $1.19 trillion.

In some of America’s largest metropolitan regions, however, the housing crash dealt a far worse blow. In these areas — most of which are in California, Florida and the southwest — home values were cut in half, unemployment skyrocketed, and 50% to 70% of borrowers now find themselves with a home worth less than the value of their mortgage. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 100 largest housing markets and identified the 10 with the highest percentage of homes with underwater mortgages. Svenja Gudell, senior economist at Zillow, explained in an interview with 24/7 Wall St. that the markets with the highest rates of underwater borrowers are in trouble now because of the rampant growth seen in these cities prior to the recession. Once home prices peaked, which was primarily in late 2005 through 2006, all but one of these 10 housing markets lost at least 50% of their median home value.

Making matters worse for families with high negative equity in these markets is the increased unemployment. “If you have a whole lot of unemployment in an area, you’re more likely to see home values continue to decline in the area as well,” says Gudell. While in 2007 many of these markets had average or below average unemployment rates, the recession took a heavy toll on their economies. By 2011, eight of the 10 markets had unemployment rates above 10%, and three — all in California — had unemployment rates of above 16%, nearly double the national average.

24/7 Wall St. used Zillow’s first-quarter 2012 negative equity report to identify the 10 housing markets — out of the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country — with the highest percentage of underwater mortgages. Zillow also provided us with the decline in home values in these markets from prerecession peak values, the total negative equity value in these markets and the percentage of homes underwater that have been delinquent on payments for 90 days or more.

These are the cities with the most homes underwater.

10. Orlando, Fla.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 53.9%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 205,369
> Median home value: 113,800
> Decline from prerecession peak: -55.9%
> Unemployment rate: 10.4% (25th highest)

In 2012, Orlando moved into the top 10 underwater housing markets, bumping Fresno, Calif., to number 11. From its prerecession peak in June 2006, home prices fell 55.9% to $113,800, a loss of roughly $90,000. In 2007, the unemployment rate in the region was just 3.7%, the 17th-lowest rate among the 100 largest metros. By 2011, that rate had increased to 10.4%, the 25th highest. As of the first quarter of this year, there were more than 205,000 underwater mortgages in the region, with total negative equity of $16.7 billion.

9. Atlanta, Ga.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 55.5%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 581,831
> Median home value: $107,500
> Decline from prerecession peak: 38.8%
> Unemployment rate: 9.6% (37th highest)

Atlanta is the largest city on this list and the eighth-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. But of all the cities with the most underwater mortgages, it has the lowest median home value. In the area, 55.5% of homes have a negative equity value. With more than 500,000 homes with underwater mortgages, the city’s total negative home equity is in excess of $38 billion. Over 48,000 of these underwater homeowners, or nearly 10%, are delinquent by at least 90 days in their payments, which is also especially troubling. With home prices down 38.8% since June, 2007, the Atlanta area certainly qualifies as one of the cities hit hardest by the 2008 housing crisis.

8. Phoenix, Ariz.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 55.5%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 430,527
> Median home value: $128,000
> Decline from prerecession peak: 54.2%
> Unemployment rate: 8.6% (44th lowest)

At 55.5%, Phoenix has the same percentage of borrowers with underwater mortgages as Atlanta. Though Phoenix’s median home value is $21,500 greater than Atlanta’s, it experienced a far-greater decline in home prices from their prerecession peak in June 2007 of 54.2%. This has led to a total negative equity value of almost $39 billion. The unemployment rate also has skyrocketed in the Phoenix area from 3.2% in 2007 to 8.6% in 2011.

7. Visalia, Calif.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 57.7%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 33,220
> Median home value: $110,500
> Decline from prerecession peak: 51.7%
> Unemployment rate: 16.6% (3rd highest)

Visalia is far smaller than Atlanta or Phoenix and has less than a 10th the number of homes with underwater mortgages. Nonetheless, the city has been especially damaged by a poor housing market. Home values have fallen dramatically since before the recession, and the unemployment rate, at 16.6% in the first quarter of 2012, is third-highest among the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas, behind only Stockton and Modesto. Presently, almost 58% of homes are underwater, with these homes carrying a total negative equity of $2.6 billion dollars.

6. Vallejo, Calif.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 60.3%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 44,526
> Median home value: $186,200
> Decline from prerecession peak: 60.6%
> Unemployment rate: 11.4% (16th highest)

In the Vallejo metropolitan area, more than 60% of the region’s 73,800 homeowners are underwater. This is largely due to a 60.6% decline in home values in the region from prerecession highs. Through the first quarter of this year, homes in the region fell from a median value of more than $300,000 to just $186,200. Of those homes with underwater mortgages, more than 10% have been delinquent on mortgage payments for 90 days or more.

5. Stockton, Calif.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 60.3%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 60,349
> Median home value: $146,500
> Decline from prerecession peak: 64.3%
> Unemployment rate: 16.8% (tied for highest)

With an unemployment rate of 16.8%, Stockton is tied for the highest rate among the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Few cities have been hit harder by the sinking of the housing market than Stockton, where 60.3% of home mortgages are underwater. Though there are only 100,014 houses with mortgages in Stockton, 60,348 of these are underwater and have a total negative home equity of slightly more than $6.9 billion. Meaning, on average, homeowners in Stockton owe at least $100,000 more than their homes are worth.

4. Modesto, Calif.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 60.3%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 46,598
> Median home value: $130,600
> Decline from prerecession peak: 64.5%
> Unemployment rate: 16.8% (tied for highest)

Since peaking in December 2005, home prices in Modesto have plunged 64.5%. This is the largest collapse in prices of any large metro area examined. As a result, 46,598 of 77,222 home mortgages in Modesto are underwater. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose to 16.8% in 2011. This number was 7.9 percentage points above the national average of 8.9% and almost double Modesto’s 2007 unemployment rate of 8.7%.

3. Bakersfield, Calif.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 60.5%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 70,947
> Median home value: $116,700
> Decline from prerecession peak: 57.0%
> Unemployment rate: 14.9% (5th highest)

From its peak in May 2006, the median home value in Bakersfield has plummeted from more than $200,000 to just $116,700, or a 57% loss of value. From 2007 through 2011, the unemployment rate increased from 8.2% to 14.9% — the fifth-highest rate in the country. To date, more than 70,000 homes in the region have underwater mortgages, with total negative equity of just over $6 billion.

2. Reno, Nev.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 61.7%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 46,115
> Median home value: $150,600
> Decline from prerecession peak: 58.3%
> Unemployment rate: 13.1%

There are fewer than 75,000 households in Reno, Nevada. Yet 46,115 home mortgages in the city are underwater, accounting for 61.7% of mortgaged homes. From January 2006 through the first quarter of 2012, home prices were more than halved, and negative home equity reached $4.39 billion. Additionally, the unemployment rate almost tripled in rising from 4.5% in 2007 to 13.1% by 2011. In 2007, Reno had the 54th-worst unemployment rate among the 100 largest metros. By 2007, Reno had the eighth-worst unemployment rate.

1. Las Vegas, Nev.
> Pct. homes w/underwater mortgages: 71%
> Number of mortgages underwater: 236,817
> Median home value: $111,600
> Decline from prerecession peak: 63.2%
> Unemployment rate: 13.9%

At 71%, no city has a greater percentage of homes with underwater mortgages than Las Vegas. The area with the second-worst percentage of underwater mortgages, Reno, has less than 62% mortgages with negative. The corrosive effects the housing crisis had on Las Vegas are evident in the more than 200,000 home mortgages that are underwater, 14.3% of which are at least 90 days delinquent on payments. Additionally, home values have dropped 63.2% from their prerecession peak, the third-greatest decline among the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas. Largely because of the collapse of the area’s housing market, unemployment in the Las Vegas area has soared. In 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.7%, only marginally different from the nation’s 4.6% rate. Yet by 2011, the unemployment rate had increased to 13.9%, considerably higher than the nationwide 8.9% unemployment rat.e.

Appearance Counsel for Homeowners

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Editor’s Comment:

By Bruce M Broyles esq.

I am not suggesting that Attorneys start doing this.  Instead, I am just floating an idea for people to comment on and critique.  There are probably a number of ethical rules that would prevent someone from actually doing it.  But what would happen if attorneys who practiced foreclosure defense just showed up at the Courthouse.  These attorneys could sit in the Courtrooms from 9:00 to 11:00 and again at 1:00 to 2:00.  When a case was called the attorney would wait to make certain that the Defendant did not stand or that another attorney was not present to represent the Defendant.  When it was clear that no one was there on behalf of the Defendant, the Attorney would simply state that he was there on behalf of the Defendant; that he had not had an opportunity to speak with Defendant regarding the matter but that he would ask the Court for an additional 30 days within which to file an answer.  The Court rarely requires Civil Rule 6 “good cause” and the Court would likely grant an extension of time.

The Attorney would then have 30 days to contact the Defendant and see if the Defendant was interested in defending the foreclosure.  If the defendant was not interested, the attorney had obtained an additional 30 days for the Defendant to determine his next move.  No harm no foul.

If the Attorney was succesful in contacting the Defendant and the Defendant was interested in defending the foreclosure, then the Attorney could offer his services.  The attorney would not be causing delay merely for the sake of delay, as almost every foreclosure case that I have reviewed has some portion that has a defensible issue.  I am certain that the Supreme Court and Disciplinary Counsel would be concerned about the undue pressure that would result from this type of direct contact (soliciatation) by an attorney with a potential client. Maybe we should request an ehical opinion on the issue?

I do not see a great difference between the above and “appearance counsel” who have no authority and no contact with the client prior to walking into the Courtroom on behalf of the Plaintiff.  If the defendant does not appear, the appearance counsel is able to complete his task; hand the proposed entry to the court.  If the Defendant does appear, then appearance counsel stands there siliently while the Court resets the matter giving the Defendant time to either file an answer or retain an attorney.

If Attorneys could act as “appearance counsel”, then the biggest obstacle to defending the foreclosure complaint would be avoided; getting the Homeowner facing foreclosure to take some inital action.  Almost every Homeowner Facing Foreclosure wants to defend their home.  The Homeowners are simply too scared to take the initial step.  One or two “appearance counsel” could prevent foreclosures in an entire county.  A network of “appearance counsel” across the entire State could combine their efforts and a handful of Foreclosure Defense Attorneys could prevent foreclosures in the State of Ohio.  With foreclosures piling up in the Courts,  the Ohio Supreme Court would have to extend the time for the Courts to resolve a foreclosure case.  As prosecuting foreclosures to a conclusion became more time consuming fewer law firms would agree to handle foreclosures.  Finally, the banks would have to make legitimate business decisions on a case by case basis.  No more governmental programs.  Bankers simply deciding that some cash flow is better than no cash flow.

Again, this is only an idea that has been posted for suggestions, comments, and ethical reviews.  While we are waiting for a decision on the propriety of “appearance counsel” for Defendants facing foreclosure, maybe we can get Homeowners to start contacting an attorney for help

NO Reason to Modify: Banks Foreclosed to Collect 100 cents on the Dollar from the Government

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Editor’s Comment:

The math is simple which is why we are now offering as part of a forensic loan specific analysis, a HAMP analysis and proposal along with the worksheets that back it up. If they foreclose, then they get all the money due on the mortgage even if they would only get 30% of that (see previous article) in foreclosure. This is really simple folks. If you had two “buyers” who would you sell to — the one offering $300,000 or the one offering $100,000?

The servicers and master servicers have only one major incentive in play because our elected officials have let it stay in play — the paper representing mortgage bonds and loans which undoubtedly are riddled with misrepresentations and bad data, is worth 100% if the government gets it but only 30% if anyone else gets it. This is welfare for the largest banks that stole from the citizens and are being allowed to keep the money and gamble more with our future. This isn’t about deficits or budgets. This is about fraud and restitution.

The victims of fraud — all of them including financial institutions (if they are innocent, which is another story) should receive full restitution and if the net balance due on any one loan is proportionately reduced by receipts of payments from the servicer, the proceeds of insurance, credit default swaps and credit enhancements (and of course restructuring into even more exotic pools that are never reported, thus rendering even the “trust” to be non-existent), a fair deal can be reached because the principal will have been reduced.

Foreclosure Fraud 101 – How (not) to Fraudclose on a Default When There is No Default in Order to Steal $$$ from the Govt (FDIC)

By ZeroHedge.com

This little gem comes over from Mark Stopa…

Take a look at this Final Judgment, where a borrower prevailed over BB&T at trial. Yes, the bank was sleazier than the skuz on the bottom of my shoes, declaring this borrower in default when there was no default. But take a close look at WHY the bank did so. As the Final Judgment reflects, the bank was financially motivated to declare a default because it knew the government was going to pay the mortgage in the event of default.

As if that’s not disgusting enough, what makes it even worse was that BB&T did not even loan the money – a prior bank did. Yet as a result of a deal with the FDIC, BB&T was in the position of pocketing millions of dollars from our government merely by declaring this borrower in default. This should piss off everybody in America – a bank that didn’t loan money wrongly declares a default so it can collect millions from our government. Where is the outrage?

Don’t believe me? Don’t take my word for it – read the findings of Judge Levens in this Final Judgment.

From the judgment…

The evidence adduced at trial and considered by the court demonstrated that Plaintiff breached it duties of good faith and fair dealing in its contractual relationship with Defendants. The evidence also demonstrated that Plaintiff was motivated to behave in such as manner as a direct result of the PSA; that is, Plaintiff stood to profit by declaring a fraudulent default under the subject loan, collecting from the FDIC under the PSA for such default, and then enforcing the subject loan against Defendants, and retaining the property until such time as a real estate turnaround occurred in hopes to dispose of the property at the peak of the market. In fact, Mr. Bruni testified that Plaintiff may have already applied to the FDIC for a loss share payment on this loan. And Defendants’ expert, Jim Howard, explained that it was possible Plaintiff could have already applied for and received a payment from the FDIC on this loan, perhaps in an amount as high as $1,800,000.00. Notably, Plaintiff nowhere credited such potential payment from the FDIC against the amounts sought in the instant litigation; thereby giving the impression that Plaintiff might be “double dipping”, and possibly “triple dipping” if market conditions favorably change and the property likewise increases in value.

DISCUSSION

The evidence was clear that there was a long and unblemished record of good faith timely monthly payments by Defendants. The evidence is also clear that, both on legal and equitable grounds, a bona fide default never occurred, and the resulting loan acceleration and lawsuit were improvidently initiated by Plaintiff for purposes of trying to maximize collection simultaneously from the future sale of the property after favorable stabilization occurred. The evidence is clear that Plaintiff committed significant wrongdoing and breached the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing of a financial institution, such that the instant cause of action should be denied in its entirety.

Sounds like the plaintiff committed much more than “significant wrongdoing” but I guess when you’re the bank it isn’t a crime.

Now do you understand why there are so many “DEADBEATS” that do not pay their bills?

Now They See the Light — 40% of Homes Underwater

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Editor’s Comment:

They were using figures like 12% or 18% but I kept saying that when you take all the figures together and just add them up, the number is much higher than that. So as it turns out, it is even higher than I thought because they are still not taking into consideration ALL the factors and expenses involved in selling a home, not the least of which is the vast discount one must endure from the intentionally inflated appraisals.

With this number of people whose homes are worth far less than the loans that were underwritten and supposedly approved using industry standards by “lenders” who weren’t lenders but who the FCPB now says will be treated as lenders, the biggest problem facing the marketplace is how are we going to keep these people in their homes — not how do we do a short-sale. And the seconcd biggest problem, which dovetails with Brown’s push for legislation to break up the large banks, is how can we permit these banks to maintain figures on the balance sheet that shows assets based upon completely unrealistic figures on homes where they do not even own the loan?

Or to put it another way. How crazy is this going to get before someone hits the reset the button and says OK from now on we are going to deal with truth, justice and the American way?

With no demographic challenges driving up prices or demand for new housing, and with no demand from homeowners seeking refinancing, why were there so many loans? The answer is easy if you look at the facts. Wall Street had come up with a way to get trillions of dollars in investment capital from the biggest managed funds in the world — the mortgage bond and all the derivatives and exotic baggage that went with it. 

So they put the money in Superfund accounts and funded loans taking care of that pesky paperwork later. They funded loans and approved loans from non-existent borrowers who had not even applied yet. As soon as the application was filled out, the wire transfer to the closing agent occurred (ever wonder why they were so reluctant to change closing agents for the convenience of the parties?).

The instructions were clear — get the signature on some paperwork even if it is faked, fraudulent, forged and completely outside industry standards but make it look right. I have this information from insiders who were directly involved in the structuring and handling of the money and the false securitization chain that was used to cover up illegal lending and the huge fees that were taken out of the superfund before any lending took place. THAT explains how these banks are bigger than ever while the world’s economies are shrinking.

The money came straight down from the investor pool that included ALL the investors over a period of time that were later broker up into groups and the  issued digital or paper certificates of mortgage bonds. So the money came from a trust-type account for the investors, making the investors the actual lenders and the investors collectively part of a huge partnership dwarfing the size of any “trust” or “REMIC”. At one point there was over $2 trillion in unallocated funds looking for a loan to be attached to the money. They couldn’t do it legally or practically.

The only way this could be accomplished is if the borrowers thought the deal was so cheap that they were giving the money away and that the value of their home had so increased in value that it was safe to use some of the equity for investment purposes of other expenses. So they invented more than 400 loans products successfully misrepresenting and obscuring the fact that the resets on loans went to monthly payments that exceeded the gross income of the household based upon a loan that was funded based upon a false and inflated appraisal that could not and did not sustain itself even for a period of weeks in many cases. The banks were supposedly too big to fail. The loans were realistically too big to succeed.

Now Wall Street is threatening to foreclose on anyone who walks from this deal. I say that anyone who doesn’t walk from that deal is putting their future at risk. So the big shadow inventory that will keep prices below home values and drive them still further into the abyss is from those private owners who will either walk away, do a short-sale or fight it out with the pretender lenders. When these people realize that there are ways to reacquire their property in foreclosure with cash bids that are valid while the credit bid of the pretender lender is invlaid, they will have achieved the only logical answer to the nation’s problems — principal correction and the benefit of the bargain they were promised, with the banks — not the taxpayers — taking the loss.

The easiest way to move these tremendous sums of money was to make it look like it was cheap and at the same time make certain that they had an arguable claim to enforce the debt when the fake payments turned into real payments. SO they created false and frauduelnt paperwork at closing stating that the payee on teh note was the lender and that the secured party was somehow invovled in the transaction when there was no transaction with the payee at all and the security instrumente was securing the faithful performance of a false document — the note. Meanwhile the investor lenders were left without any documentation with the borrowers leaving them with only common law claims that were unsecured. That is when the robosigning and forgery and fraudulent declarations with false attestations from notaries came into play. They had to make it look like there was a real deal, knowing that if everything “looked” in order most judges would let it pass and it worked.

Now we have (courtesy of the cloak of MERS and robosigning, forgery etc.) a completely corrupted and suspect chain of title on over 20 million homes half of which are underwater — meaning that unless the owner expects the market to rise substantially within a reasonable period of time, they will walk. And we all know how much effort the banks and realtors are putting into telling us that the market has bottomed out and is now headed up. It’s a lie. It’s a damned living lie.

One in Three Mortgage Holders Still Underwater

By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

Got that sinking feeling? Amid signs that the U.S. housing market is finally rising from a long slumber, real estate Web site Zillow reports that homeowners are still under water.

Nearly 16 million homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their home was worth in the first quarter, or nearly one-third of U.S. homeowners with mortgages. That’s a $1.2 trillion hole in the collective home equity of American households.

Despite the temptation to just walk away and mail back the keys, nine of 10 underwater borrowers are making their mortgage and home loan payments on time. Only 10 percent are more than 90 days delinquent.

Still, “negative equity” will continue to weigh on the housing market – and the broader economy – because it sidelines so many potential home buyers. It also puts millions of owners at greater risk of losing their home if the economic recovery stalls, according to Zillow’s chief economist, Stan Humphries.

“If economic growth slows and unemployment rises, more homeowners will be unable to make timely mortgage payments, increasing delinquency rates and eventually foreclosures,” he said.

For now, the recent bottoming out in home prices seems to be stabilizing the impact of negative equity; the number of underwater homeowners held steady from the fourth quarter of last year and fell slightly from a year ago.

Real estate market conditions vary widely across the country, as does the depth of trouble homeowners find themselves in. Nearly 40 percent of homeowners with a mortgage owe between 1 and 20 percent more than their home is worth. But 15 percent – approximately 2.4 million – owe more than double their home’s market value.

Nevada homeowners have been hardest hit, where two-thirds of all homeowners with a mortgage are underwater. Arizona, with 52 percent, Georgia (46.8 percent), Florida (46.3 percent) and Michigan (41.7 percent) also have high percentages of homeowners with negative equity.

Turnabout is Fair Play:

The Depressing Rise of People Robbing Banks to Pay the Bills

Despite inflation decreasing their value, bank robberies are on the rise in the United States. According to the FBI, in the third quarter of 2010, banks reported 1,325 bank robberies, burglaries, or other larcenies, an increase of more than 200 crimes from the same quarter in 2009. America isn’t the easiest place to succeed financially these days, a predicament that’s finding more and more people doing desperate things to obtain money. Robbing banks is nothing new, of course; it’s been a popular crime for anyone looking to get quick cash practically since America began. But the face and nature of robbers is changing. These days, the once glamorous sheen of bank robberies is wearing away, exposing a far sadder and ugly reality: Today’s bank robbers are just trying to keep their heads above water.

Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson—time was that bank robbers had cool names and widespread celebrity. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jesse James, and John Dillinger were even the subjects of big, fawning Hollywood films glorifying their thievery. But times have changed.

In Mississippi this week, a man walked into a bank and handed a teller a note demanding money, according to broadcast news reporter Brittany Weiss. The man got away with a paltry $1,600 before proceeding to run errands around town to pay his bills and write checks to people to whom he owed money. He was hanging out with his mom when police finally found him. Three weeks before the Mississippi fiasco, a woman named Gwendolyn Cunningham robbed a bank in Fresno and fled in her car. Minutes later, police spotted Cunningham’s car in front of downtown Fresno’s Pacific Gas and Electric Building. Inside, she was trying to pay her gas bill.

The list goes on: In October 2011, a Phoenix-area man stole $2,300 to pay bills and make his alimony payments. In early 2010, an elderly man on Social Security started robbing banks in an effort to avoid foreclosure on the house he and his wife had lived in for two decades. In January 2011, a 46-year-old Ohio woman robbed a bank to pay past-due bills. And in February of this year, a  Pennsylvania woman with no teeth confessed to robbing a bank to pay for dentures. “I’m very sorry for what I did and I know God is going to punish me for it,” she said at her arraignment. Yet perhaps none of this compares to the man who, in June 2011, robbed a bank of $1 just so he could be taken to prison and get medical care he couldn’t afford.

None of this is to say that a life of crime is admirable or courageous, and though there is no way to accurately quantify it, there are probably still many bank robbers who steal just because they like the thrill of money for nothing. But there’s quite a dichotomy between the bank robbers of early America, with their romantic escapades and exciting lifestyles, and the people following in their footsteps today: broke citizens with no jobs, no savings, no teeth, and few options.

The stealing rebel types we all came to love after reading the Robin Hood story are gone. Today the robbers are just trying to pay their gas bills. There will be no movies for them.

Housing Recovery Barred by Foreclosure Inventory PLUS New Sellers

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Editor’s Comment:

Crowd mentality is a double edged sword. On the way up in the boom, the myth was that the inflated prices were somehow explainable or justified and that the “real estate market never goes down.” history shows that housing prices always even off at housing VALUE and that deviation from value is what we call “prices.”

On the way down, the fall of housing prices could be and was easily predicted by reference tothe Case Schiller Index tying median income (the ability to pay for housing) with housing prices. The value of homes had remained the same while prices skyrocketed because Wall street had flooded the market with money and hired anyone willing to lie in order to close another loan deal.

Remember that 50% of the loan deals were refinancing. That had nothing to do with new purchases bigger than the pocket books of the buyers. These were people solicited by the banks with tag lines “I can reduce your payments” and I can get you money you can use for investing.

Many deals were new financing on older homes that were fully paid for on the promise of securities scames (see Merendon Mining) where the lenders posing as banks (but at the bank’s behest, holding trillions that investment banks collected from pension funds and other “qualified” investors) not only validated the illegal investment Ponzi scheme, but actually used PROJECTED INCOME from the Ponzi scheme to justify the loan making it appear that the inčome from the PROJECTED INVESTMENT PROCEEDS OF THE UNNEEDED LOANS was in fact to be counted as current income and therefore demonstrating the ability of a borrower to pay when the actual current income was a small fraction of the total income of the borrower reported by lying loan originators and mortgage brokers on the loan “applications” where the loan was both pre-approved and pre-funded.

There was no rush of buyers to flatten out the curve of declining prices because everyone knew the market was črashing. The masses were headed for the doors. Under the spectre of inventories of foreclosure properties (illegally obtained through false “credit bids” and robo-signed deeds on forclosure) and shadow foreclosure inventories (not yet put up for sale) only those with inescapable “reasons” were buying homes. The demographic explanations of demand for new housing demand that fueled the construction of new homes was all based upon lies. Migrations of large numbers of people into an area simply never happened and could therefore neither explain the housing boom nor stop the crash because it was all a myth.

In the article below, the further point is made that when the market actually shows signs of recovery — a long way off — many private sellers will be eyeing numbers they think are closer to their perception of value of their homes. Thus any upward movement is going to be met with a torrent of new inventory from both the banks and private ownership. For every blip that makes it appear that the market is improving, there will be a correction.

Housing Recovery a Long Way Off

By Michael Yoshikami

Housing starts were surprisingly strong this week, while there was improving sentiment from home builders. So should we start to breathe a sigh of relief that the housing market is returning to health? The short answer is no. The headlines say that housing is stabilizing and there are signs of life in the real estate sector. This is true but is only part of the story. Signs of life is far different than a return to healthier times.

While KB Homes and Toll Brothers are reporting sales increases, this does not erase the fundamental problem with the real estate market today; there are too many people wanting to sell and not enough buyers. In some neighborhoods in the United States, every other house is for sale and sitting stagnant with no takers. But this is the obvious sign that the real estate market is troubled; there are deeper problems below the surface.

What is more troubling is in every block in neighborhoods across the United States, there are huge numbers of potential sellers that would sell their house if they could get the price they believe their house is worth. This huge reserve of sellers creates a supply waiting to flood the market when any sign of recovery in real estate capital values returns.

Additionally, banks continue to hold huge inventories of foreclosed properties waiting for a rebound in the market before placing these properties into the real estate market. …

In addition to supply issues, the U.S. economy is far from healthy. While we are in the midst of an uneven recovery, unemployment remains stubbornly high and the prospects of a more normalized employment rate are far off in the distance.

Recording and Auctions: AZ Maricopa County Recorder Meets with Homeowners

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Phoenix, May 23, 2012: Last night we had the pleasure of meeting with Helen Purcell, Maricopa County Recorder, after having met with Tom Horne, AZ Attorney General and Ken Bennett, the AZ Secretary of State on issues relating to mortgages, robo-signing, notary fraud, etc.  Many thanks again to Darrell Blomberg whose persistence and gentle demeanor produced these people at a meeting downtown. See upcoming events for Darrell on the Events tab above.

The meeting was video recorded and plenty of people were taking notes. Purcell described the administrative process of challenging documents. By submitting a complaint apparently in any form, if you identify the offending document with particularity and state your grounds, again with particularity, the Recorder’s office is duty bound to review it and make a determination as to whether the document should be “corrected” by an instrument prepared by her office that is attached to the document.

If your complaint refers to deficiencies on the face of the document, the recorder’s office ought to take action. One of the problems here is that the office handles electronic recording via contracts who sign a Memorandum of Understanding with her office and become “trusted submitters.” Title companies, law offices, and banks are among the trusted sources. It appears to me that the mere submission of these documents in electronic form gives rise to the presumption that they are valid even if the notarization is plainly wrong and defective.

If the recording office refuses to review the document, a lawsuit in mandamus would apply to force the recorder to do their job. If they refer matters to the County Attorney’s office, the County Attorney should NOT be permitted to claim attorney client privilege to block the right of the person submitting the document or objection from know the basis of the denial. You have 10 years to challenge a document in terms of notary acknowledgement which means that you can go back to May 24, 2002, as of today.

One thing that readers should keep in mind is that invalidating the notarization does not, in itself, invalidate the documents. Arizona is a race-notice state though which means the first one to the courthouse wins the race. So if you successfully invalidate the notarization then that effectively removes the offending document as a recorded document to be considered in the chain of title. Any OTHER document recorded that was based upon the recording of the offending document would therefore NOT be appropriately received and recorded by the recording office.

So a Substitution of Trustee that was both robo-signed and improperly notarized could theoretically be corrected and then recorded. But between the time that the recorder’s correction is filed (indicating that the document did not meet the standards for recording) and the time of the new amended or corrected document, properly signed and notarized is recorded, there could be OTHER instruments recorded that would make things difficult for a would-be foreclosure by a pretender lender.

The interesting “ringer” here is that the person who signed the original document may no longer be able to sign it because they are unavailable, unemployed, or unwilling to again participate in robosigning. And the notary is going to be very careful about the attestation, making sure they are only attesting to the validity of the signature and not to the power of the person signing it.

It seems that there is an unwritten policy (we are trying to get the Manual through Darrell’s efforts) whereby filings from homeowners who can never file electronically, are reviewed for content. If they in any way interfere with the ability of the pretender lender to foreclose they are sent up to the the County Attorney’s office who invariably states that this is a non-consensual lien even if the word lien doesn’t appear on the document. I asked Ms. Purcell how many documents were rejected if they were filed by trusted submitters. I stated that I doubted if even one in the last month could be cited and that the same answer would apply going back years.

So the county recorder’s office is rejecting submissions by homeowners but not rejecting submissions from banks and certain large law firms and title companies (which she said reduced in number from hundreds to a handful).

What the pretenders are worried about of course, is that anything in the title chain that impairs the quality of title conveyed or to be covered by title insurance would be severely compromised by anything that appears in the title record BEFORE they took any action.

If a document upon which they were relying, through lying, is then discounted by the recording office to be NOT regarded as recorded then any correction after the document filed by the homeowner or anyone else might force them into court to get rid of the impediment. That would essentially convert the non-judicial foreclosure to a judicial foreclosure in which the pretenders would need to plead and prove facts that they neither know or have any evidence to support, most witnesses now being long since fired in downsizing.

The other major thing that Ms Purcell stated was that as to MERS, she was against it from the beginning, she thought there was no need for it, and that it would lead to breaks in the chain of title which in her opinion did happen. When asked she said she had no idea how these breaks could be corrected. She did state that she thought that many “mistakes” occurred in the MERS system, implying that such mistakes would not have occurred if the parties had used the normal public recording system for assignments etc.

And of course you know that this piece of video, while it supports the position taken on this blog for the last 5 years, avoids the subject of why the MERS system was created in the first place. We don’t need to speculate on that anymore.

We know that the MERS system was used as a cloak for multiple sales and assignments of the same loan. The party picked as a “designated hitter” was inserted by persons with access to the system through a virtually non-existence security system in which an individual appointed themselves as the authorized signor for MERS or some member of MERS. We know that these people had no authorized written  instructions from any person in MERS nor in the members organization to execute documents and that if they wanted to, they could just as easily designated any member or any person or any business entity to be the “holder” or “investor.”

The purpose of MERS was to put a grand glaze over the fact that the monetary transactions were actually off the grid of the claimed securitization. The single transaction was between the investor lenders whose money was kept in a trust-like account and then sued to fund mortgages with the homeowner borrower. At not time was that money ever in the chain of securitization.

The monetary transaction is both undocumented and unsecured. At no time was any transaction, including the original note and mortgage (or deed of trust) reciting true facts relating to the loan by the payee of the note or the secured party under the mortgage or deed of trust. And at no time was the payee or secured holder under the mortgage or deed of trust ever expecting to receive any money (other than fees for pretending to be the “bank”) nor did they ever receive any money. At no time did MERS or any of its members handle, disburse or otherwise act even as a conduit for the funding of the loan.

Hence the mortgage or deed of trust secured an obligation to the payee on the note who was not expecting to receive any money nor did they receive any money. The immediate substitution of servicer for the originator to receive money shows that in nearly every securitization case. Any checks or money accidentally sent to the originator under the borrower’s mistaken impression that the originator was the lender (because of fraudulent misrepresentations) were immediately turned over to another party.

The actual party who made the loan was a large group of institutional investors (pension funds etc.) whose money had been illegally pooled into a PONZI scheme and covered over by an entirely fake and fraudulent securitization chain. In my opinion putting the burden of proof on the borrower to defend against a case that has not been alleged, but which should be (or dismissed) is unfair and a denial of due process.

In my opinion you stand a much greater chance of attacking the mortgage rather than the obligation, whether or not it is stated on the note. Admitting the liability is not the same as admitting the note represents the deal that the borrower agreed to. Counsel should object immediately, when the pretender lender through counsel states that the note is or contains a representation of the deal reached by the borrower and the lender. Counsel should state that borrower denies the recitations in the note but admits the existence of an obligation to a lender whose identity was and remains concealed by the pretender in the foreclosure action. The matter is and should be put at issue. If the Judge rules against you, after you deny the validity of the note and the enforceability and validity of the note and mortgage, then he or she is committing reversible error even if the borrower would or probably would lose in the end as the Judge would seem to predict.

Trial is the only way to find out. If the pretenders really can prove the money is owed to them, let them prove it. If that money is theirs, let them prove it. If there is nobody else who would receive that money as the real creditor, let the pretender be subject to discovery. And they MUST prove it because the statute ONLY allows the actual creditor to submit a “credit bid” at auction in lieu of cash. Any auction in which both the identity of the creditor and the amount due was not established was and remains in my opinion subject to attack with a motion to strike the deed on foreclosure (probably on many grounds) based upon failure of consideration, and anyone who bids on the property with actual cash, should be considered the winner of the auction.

Message on the Forensic TILA Analysis — It’s a Lot More Than it Appears

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No doubt some of you know that we have had some challenges regarding the Forensic TILA analysis. It’s my fault. I decided that the plain TILA analysis was insufficient for courtroom use based upon the feedback that I was getting from lawyers across the country. Yet I believed then as I believe now that the only law that will actually give real help to the homeowners — past, present and future — is TILA, REG Z and RESPA. Once it dawns on more people that there were two closings, one that was hidden from the borrower which included the real money funding his loan and the other being a fake closing purporting to loan money to the homeowner in a transaction that never happened, the gates will start to open. But I am ahead of the curve on that.

For those patiently waiting for the revisions, I appreciate your words of kindness. And your words of wisdom regarding the content of the report which I have been wrestling with. I especially appreciate your willingness to continue doing business with us despite the lack of organizational skills and foresight that might have prevented this situation. I guess the problem boils down to the fact that when I started the blog in 2007 I never intended it to be a business. But as it evolved and demands grew we were unable to handle it without help from the outside. If I had known I was starting a business at the beginning I would have done things much differently.

At the moment I am wrestling with exactly how I want to portray the impact of the appraisal fraud on the APR and the impact on “reset” payments have on the life of the loan, which in turn obviously effects the APR. I underestimated the computations required to do both the standard TILA Audit and the extended version which I think is the only thing of value. The standard TILA audit simply doesn’t tell the story although there is some meat in there by which a borrower could recover some money. There is also the standard issue of steering the borrower into a more expensive loan than that which he qualified for.

The other thing I am wrestling with is the computational structure of the HAMP presentation so that we can show that we are using reasonable figures and producing a reasonable offer. This needs to be credible so that when the rejection comes, the borrower is able to say that the offer was NOT considered by the banks and servicers because of the obvious asymmetry of results — the “investor” getting a lot less money from the proceeds of foreclosure.

And THAT in turn results in the ability of the homeowner to demand proof (a) that they considered it (b) that it was communicated to the investor (with copies) and (c) that there was a reasonable basis for rejection — meaning that the servicer must SHOW the analysis that was used to determine whether to accept or reject the HAMP proposal. Limited anecdotal evidence shows that like that point in discovery when the other side has “lost” in procedural attempts to block the borrower, the settlement is achieved within hours of the entry of the order.

So I have approached the analysis from the standpoint of another way to force disclosure and discovery as to exactly what money the investor actually lost, whether the investor still exists and whether there were payments received by agents of the creditor (participants in the securitization chain) that were perhaps never credited to the account of the bond holder and therefore which never reduced the amount due to the creditor from the homeowner. My goal here is to get to the point where we can say, based upon admissions of the banks and servicers that there is either nobody who qualifies as a creditor to submit a “credit bid” at auction or that such a party might exist but is different than the party who was permitted to initiate the foreclosure proceedings.

The complexity of all this was vastly underestimated and I overestimated the ability of outside analysts to absorb what I was talking about, take the ball and run with it. Frankly I am wondering if the analysis should be worked up by the people who do our securitization work, whose ability to pierce through the numerous veils has established a proven track record. In the meantime, I will plug along until I am satisfied that I have it right, since I am actually signing off on the analysis, and thus be able to confidently defend the positions taken on the analytical report (Excel Spreadsheet) etc.

DON’T Leave Your Money on the Table

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Editor’s Comment:

The number of people passing up the administrative review process is appallingly low, considering the fact that many if not most homeowners are leaving money on the table — money that should rightfully be paid to them from wrongful foreclosure activity (from robo-signing to outright fraud by having non-creditors take title and possession).

The reason is simple: nobody understands the process including lawyers who have been notoriously deficient in their knowledge of administrative procedures, preferring to stick with the more common judicial context of the courtroom in which many lawyers have demonstrated an appalling lack of skill and preparation, resulting in huge losses to their clients.

The fact is, administrative procedures are easier than court procedures especially where you have mandates like this one. The forms of complaints and evidence are much more informal. It is much harder for the offending party to escape on a procedural technicality without the cause having been heard on the merits. 

The banks were betting on two thngs when they agreed to this review process — that people wouldn’t use it and that even if they used it they would fail to state the obvious: that the money wasn’t due or in default, that it was paid and that only a complete accounting from all parties in the securitization chain could determine whether the original debt was (a) ever secured and (b) still existence. They knew and understood that most people would assume the claim was valid because they knew that the loan was funded and that they had executed papers that called for payments that were not made by the borrower.

But what if the claim isn’t valid? What if the loan was funded entirely outside the papers they signed at closing? What if the payments were not due? What if the payments were not due to this creditor? And what if the payments actually were made on the account and the supposed creditor doesn’t exist any more? Why are you assuming that the paperwork at closing was any more real than the fraudulent paperwork they submitted during foreclosure?

People tend to think that if money exchanged hands that the new creditor would simply slip on the shoes of a secured creditor. Not so. If the secured debt is paid and not purchased then the new debt is unsecured even if the old was secured. But I repeat here that in my opinion the original debt was probably not secured which is to say there was no valid mortgage, note and could be no valid foreclosure without a valid mortgage and default.

Wrongful foreclosure activity includes by definition wrongful auctions and results. Here are some probable pointers about that part of the foreclosure process that were wrongful:

1. Use the fraudulent, forged robosigned documents as corroboration to your case, not the point of the case itself.

2. Deny that the debt was due, that there was any default, that the party iniating the foreclosure was the creditor, that the party iniating the foreclosure had no right to represent the creditor and didn’t represnet the creditor, etc.

3. State that the subsitution of trustee was an unauthorized document if you are in a nonjudicial state.

4. State that the substituted trustee, even if the substitution of trustee was deemed properly executed, named trustees that were not qualified to serve in that they were controlled or owned entities of the new stranger showing up on the scene as a purported “creditor.”

5. State that even if the state deemed that the right to intiate a foreclosure existed with obscure rights to enforce, the pretender lender failed to establish that it was either the lender or the creditor when it submitted the credit bid.

6. State that the credit bid was unsupported by consideration.

7. State that you still own the property legally.

8. State that if the only bid was a credit bid and the credit bid was invalid, accepted perhaps because the auctioneer was a controlled or paid or owned party of the pretender lender, then there was no bid and the house is still yours with full rights of possession.

9. The deed issued from the sale is a nullity known by both the auctioneer and the party submitting the “credit bid.”

10. Demand to see all proof submitted by the other side and all demands for proof by the agency, and whether the agency independently investigated the allegations you made. 

 If you lose, appeal to the lowest possible court with jurisdiction.

Many Eligible Borrowers Passing up Foreclosure Reviews

By Julie Schmit

Months after the first invitations were mailed, only a small percentage of eligible borrowers have accepted a chance to have their foreclosure cases checked for errors and maybe win restitution.

By April 30, fewer than 165,000 people had applied to have their foreclosures checked for mistakes — about 4% of the 4.1 million who received letters about the free reviews late last year, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The reviews were agreed to by 14 major mortgage servicers and federal banking regulators in a settlement last year over alleged foreclosure abuses.

So few people have responded that another mailing to almost 4 million households will go out in early June, reminding them of the July 31 deadline to request a review, OCC spokesman Bryan Hubbard says.

If errors occurred, restitution could run from several hundred dollars to more than $100,000.

The reviews are separate from the $25 billion mortgage-servicing settlement that state and federal officials reached this year.

Anyone who requests a review will get one if they meet certain criteria. Mortgages had to be in the foreclosure process in 2009 or 2010, on a primary residence, and serviced by one of the 14 servicers or their affiliates, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Wells Fargo.

More information is at independentforeclosurereview.com.

Even though letters went to more than 4 million households, consumer advocates say follow-up advertising has been ineffective, leading to the low response rate.

Many consumers have also grown wary of foreclosure scams and government foreclosure programs, says Deborah Goldberg of the National Fair Housing Alliance.

“The effort is being made” to reach people, says Paul Leonard, the mortgage servicers’ representative at the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group. “It’s hard to say why people aren’t responding.”

With this settlement, foreclosure cases will be reviewed one by one by consultants hired by the servicers but monitored by regulators.

With the $25 billion mortgage settlement, borrowers who lost homes to foreclosure will be eligible for payouts from a $1.5 billion fund.

That could mean 750,000 borrowers getting about $2,000 each, federal officials have said.

For more information on that, go to nationalmortgagesettlement.com.

Foreclosure Strategists: Phx. Meeting Guest speaker Maricopa County Recorder, Helen Purcell

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Editor’s Comment:

Contact: Darrell Blomberg  Darrell@ForeclosureStrategists.com  602-686-7355

Meeting: Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012, 7pm to 9pm

Special Guest

Maricopa County Recorder, Helen Purcell 

I have not received many questions yet.  Please email me your questions for the Maricopa County Recorder.

(I’d appreciate it if you could cite a statutory or authoritative reference or example with your question.)

Helen Purcell will be joining us to discuss all aspects of recording documents in Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.  Helen Purcell will also give us a brief overview of her official capacity as it relates to voting as we’ve just hosted the Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett who handles the same capacity for the state.I will focus my questions around document integrity, database integrity, policies vs. statutes and accommodation differences between documents offered by individuals and corporations.  Please let me know what else you’d like to ask.

Special guest protocol

The agenda for a special guest meeting is that we will ask for a brief Bio / Official Capacity Overview followed by overview of their position as it relates to foreclosures.  Once that is complete, I will be presenting the questions that have been submitted to me via email.  This will be followed by an open question and answer period as time permits.  This is how the prior meets have been structured and it works well.

I have one request of attendees.  It has to do with the acceptance of silence.  If there is a period of silence, it is not an opportunity to blurt out a comment or question to take the guest in a different direction.  I have carefully arranged your submitted questions in a specific order to create valid learning experience and directed communication with the guest.  By diverting the guest you are diminishing the impact of both of these goals.  The use of silence is intended to allow the guest an opportunity to be accountable to the topic at hand.  Please be aware of your relationship to silence and understand that it is one of the most effective communication tools.(If you’d like to study the impact of silence, take some time and watch the master, Bill Cosby!
 Here’s a link:  https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#q=bill+cosby&hl=en&site=webhp&prmd=imvnso&source=lnms&tbm=vid&ei=vcuzT-ifOKKiiQKvksm4Ag&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=4&sqi=2&ved=0CEoQ_AUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=663e9dd7db06d2dd&ion=1&biw=1600&bih=837) 

We meet every week!

Every Tuesday: 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Come early for dinner and socialization. (Food service is also available during meeting.)
Macayo’s Restaurant, 602-264-6141, 4001 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85012. (east side of Central Ave just south of Indian School Rd.)
COST: $10… and whatever you want to spend on yourself for dinner, helpings are generous so bring an appetite.
Please Bring a Guest!
(NOTE: There is a $2.49 charge for the Happy Hour Buffet unless you at least order a soft drink.)

FACEBOOK PAGE FOR “FORECLOSURE STRATEGIST”

I have set up a Facebook page. (I can’t believe it but it is necessary.) The page can be viewed at www.Facebook.com, look for and “friend” “Foreclosure Strategist.”

I’ll do my best to keep it updated with all of our events.

Please get the word out and send your friends and other homeowners the link.

MEETUP PAGE FOR FORECLOSURE STRATEGISTS:

I have set up a MeetUp page. The page can be viewed at www.MeetUp.com/ForeclosureStrategists. Please get the word out and send your friends and other homeowners the link.

May your opportunities be bountiful and your possibilities unlimited.

“Emissary of Observation”

Darrell Blomberg

602-686-7355

Darrell@ForeclosureStrategists.com