Foreclosure Strategists: Phx. Meeting Forcible Entry & Detainers

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Neil Garfield

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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

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

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Neil Garfield

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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.


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Now They See the Light — 40% of Homes Underwater

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Neil Garfield

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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.

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FIRST MERS THEN MARS and PHOENIX: Systematic Destruction of Original Notes

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Neil Garfield

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Discovery should include inquiries about MARS and Phoenix. See below. Inch by inch we get closer and closer.

From a reader in litigation:
I worked for Wells Fargo as an contractor. I was a computer programmer in the Frederick, md office. I also worked in the Columbia, md office where Wells operated as the Master Servicer for most of these securitized pools.
I helped program the software that selected loans to pool. The system was tied into their origination system (A mainframe system called MARS). The investment side would feed it the criteria of the types of loans it needed to fill the pools. Terms, int rate, etc. This would in turn feed into the origination system and “magically” tell all of wells fargo what type of loans to originate. This was about 5 yrs ago. I remember asking questions as to where the originals where and know one could answer. They scanned the note and mortgage. Some went to a storage facility allegedly in the mountains. As that cost increased, they just simply started scanning and then destroying.

When I worked for the master servicer headquarters in Columbia, MD. That place was like Fort Knox. It rivaled any DOD top secret facility here in the DC area. I worked on a system called Phoenix that housed all the information of who where the investors. I almost got fired for accidentally bringing in a usb drive one time.

The Wells Fargo Columbia, MD office is where all the magic happened behind closed doors. The master servicer as you know controls the flow of money, advance payments, etc. One side of the building was completely off limits. The investment brokers and execs sat on this side with guards.

If you find some addl people from that office we can depose individuals from that office and piece together more facts.

Ironically, I have a federal case in MD court against Wells Fargo, HSBC and Mers. I know they don’t have my note, but my case has just sat for months. These latest news revelations will give me more ammunition to move forward.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , | 17 Comments »

Death by Foreclosure: BofA Seeks Eviction of Dead man Killed by Swat Team

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Neil Garfield

Charles Koppa (Poppa Kappa) has done some investigative reporting on this case and we find numerous discrepancies between the police and media version of the event from actual facts. The case was typical until it ended in the homeowner’s untimely death in what police reported was a gun battle. Current reports indicate that the property is “investor hold.”

Kurt Aho was a 64 year old man with cancer. His illness made him walk awkwardly but he was completely lucid according to his daughter. Police swat team members shot him dead outside his home apparently under the mistaken belief that he was drunk (by observing his uneven gait when he walked) and that this was a case of Suicide by Cop.

Aho was in modification negotiations with Bank of America, who took over Countrywide loan servicing in the merger of those companies. His daughter reports that he thought the modification was done and that the matter was settled. But that didn’t stop a paneled truck from driving up with two occupants claiming they owned the house as a result of a foreclosure sale that day which Aho had been told was canceled due to the modification. Koppa reports that when he recently called the servicing agent they reported that the property was “on beneficiary hold.”

The title record is unclear, but it seems that the men who said they own the property were told they were “given” the property in exchange for fees worth $105,000. The fair market value of the home was $220,000 even at distressed prices.

According to Aho’s daughter he challenged the men on their right to be on his property, asking them for proof of the sale. They admitted they had no such proof since the “paperwork” had not been completed. He ordered them off the property and they refused to leave. He called his daughter to report what was going on and then grabbed his weapon and told the men if they didn’t get off his property he would shoot the tires on their van. They apparently remained, and he fulfilled his promise — he shot the tires on the van.

At this time, without a police report, we are unsure who called the police. Six squad cars including a SWAT team showed up and Aho and his house were under siege. He was calm, sitting on his air conditioning compressor when a rubber bullet hit him, obviously fired by police. He fired back with neighbors saying he obviously was aiming at the top of the police van. Police returned fire and he was dead.

Now Tiffany and Bosco, the law firm that handles the largest number of foreclosures in the area, is attempting to evict Kurt Aho, even though he is dead. His daughter has moved into the house and is attempting to fend off the attempt but needs help. From what we have seen the loan was securitized and the entire foreclosure procedure was improper even if there had been no negotiations on modification.

So to Recap, we have an improper foreclosure based upon the usual array of fabricated assignments in a securitized loan where the real creditors (investors) were neither identified nor even notified. Aho’s daughter wishes to pursue a wrongful death claim against BofA, Tiffany and Bosco, and law enforcement.

Man killed after shooting at police, neighbors ask why

Reported by: Mitch Truswell
Email: mtruswell@abc15.com
Reported by: Katie Fisher
Last Update: 10/01/2009 5:46 am

PHOENIX – The day after the shooting of a 64-year-old man, neighbors are asking if it had to happen.

Kurt Aho was shot and killed Tuesday night near 31st Avenue and Bell Road.

He had been living in his home for nearly 30 years, but the home had recently fallen into foreclosure and was sold at a public auction on Tuesday.

When the new owners arrived at the property, they told 64-year-old Aho they were the new owners, and asked if he needed help moving out.

Police say Aho became distraught about losing his home and began to open fire, firing four rounds at the two men’s cars. The two men, a 49-year-old and a 42-year-old, then called police.

Officers arrived at the scene, near Bell Road and 35th Avenue, around 4:30 p.m. and said they saw Aho standing in the cul de sac with a gun in his hand.

Police tried talking to Aho for over an hour and reportedly asked him to put the weapon down as he walked in and out of the house before approaching the police department’s “Bearcat”, a specialty vehicle for officer protection, in a threatening manner.

Police said Aho began shooting at officers’ vehicles, so police shot at the man using rubber bullets.

According to officials, the rubber bullets were ineffective, and Aho raised his handgun and began firing at the vehicle and officers. That is when police reportedly shot and killed him.

Aho was pronounced dead at the scene.

Neighbors told ABC 15 that Aho had been trying to work with the mortgage company to keep his house.

Denise Montesquiou says, “He knew he was in trouble and he was trying to work it out. I don’t have a bad word to say about Kurt, right or wrong.”

Another neighbor, Yair Lavi, heard that Aho was dealing with cancer, for the second time.

Lavi says there was no reason to kill Aho.

“They had a sharpshooter on top of this house, on top of that house, and three of them behind a tree. Just shoot him in the hand and he’s no longer a threat.”

Police say the investigation is continuing.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, Eviction, foreclosure, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

“uncertain line between hope and despair”

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Neil Garfield

The entities foreclosing don’t have ANYTHING at stake. They have no stake and yet they are still getting homes for nothing

Editor’s Note: The federal plan is good as to its intent but unnecessary if the law was applied. Sure the bailout SHOULD apply to anyone who got stuck with one of these securitized mortgages. it clouded their title and stuck them with loan products that were unworkable while they were told by the experts at the table that everything was fine.
People have the question wrong: If the reality of the situation is not addressed SOMEBODY is going to get a free house — either the homeowner or some corporation set up by Wall Street that never lent a dime. It isn’t about why should a reckless homeowner get a free house, it is about why should a player who gambled with other people’s money get a free house. At least the homeowner has something at stake even if they had no down payment.
The entities foreclosing don’t have ANYTHING at stake. They have no stake and yet they are still getting homes for nothing. People are mad about he federal bailout. Now the same players are getting a foreclosure bailout, or better stated, a gift courtesy of the taxpayer and a reluctant judicial system.
March 22, 2010

Microcosm of Housing Crisis on an Arizona Street

By LOUISE STORY

CAVE CREEK, Ariz. — The uncertain line between hope and despair divides this exurb of Phoenix, where the trim stucco houses used to sell so briskly.

It winds around the swimming pools and the pebbled yards of East Montgomery Road like a slow-burning fuse.

On one side are people like the Setbackens, Gary and Cissie, who moved here from Washington State and, with prudence, have managed to pay their mortgage bill month after month. On the other side are those like Kelley Carter, who never dreamed that home prices would fall so hard, and got in over their heads.

Two in five homeowners in this sprawling development 30 miles northeast of Phoenix are underwater on their mortgages. And that reality is wearing away household budgets and people’s patience.

Arizona is one of five states that, with money from Washington, hopes to help at least some of these people hold on to their homes. Under a new, federally financed pilot program for the hardest-hit housing markets, state officials will decide who will get a homeowner bailout, and who will not.

The idea is as controversial in Washington as it is here. Do the neighbors next door who lived beyond their means — the ones who, say, bought that house they could not afford, or who binged on home equity loans to buy new cars and flat-panel TVs — really deserve to be bailed out with taxpayer dollars? Do they deserve to have some of their debts forgiven? And is that fair to the cautious ones who paid their mortgages?

For the people of Cave Creek, the answers will fall to state officials like Michael Trailor, the director of the Arizona housing department.

A former real estate developer, Mr. Trailor knows firsthand about the perils of the property market.

“I feel for all of them,” Mr. Trailor said of the struggling homeowners. “But we do not have the funds to help all of them. If we can help 6,000 people, which ones should we help?”

The federal government will pay for pilot programs in Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada with $1.5 billion from the federal banking rescue. That figure is a small fraction of the funds that would be needed to help all of the people at risk. Arizona, for instance, received $125 million. If it allocates $30,000 of aid for each residence, 4,166 homeowners would benefit. But the Phoenix area is bracing for as many as 50,000 foreclosures this year alone.

Mr. Trailor said he was reluctant to help homeowners with “self-inflicted wounds,” like those who overspent or cashed out the equity in their homes during the bubble years. He wants the banks to match the public money being used for debt forgiveness, and he is focusing on people whose incomes have fallen but who still hold jobs.

He is considering an approach known as “earned forgiveness,” where the state and the banks promise to forgive mortgage debt later on, but only if the homeowners stay in their homes and keep making their payments.

The question of who deserves help rouses neighbors here. Not long ago, home values seemed to reach relentlessly toward the bright blue sky.

Then the boom went bust. Home prices in the Phoenix area have collapsed by 50 percent since mid-2006, leaving many owners with mortgages that are higher than their property values. One in 10 homes in this development in Cave Creek have moved through foreclosure since 2008, according to Netvaluecentral, a real estate tracking company in Glendale, Ariz. Half of the homes here are owned by banks or are being sold for less than the value of their mortgages.

“Underwater homes make it highly likely people will walk away, and if they do, these foreclosures are going to push everyone’s prices down,” said Brett Barry, a real estate agent here. “People need to realize that we’re in this together.”

The new reality is evident on East Montgomery Road, where the bust is playing out in a variety of ways.

There are the Setbackens, at 4355, who arrived in 1993 and paid down their mortgage even as home prices skyrocketed.

Across the street are the Chatburns, Tim and Leslie. They also arrived in the 1990s, before prices exploded, but struggled recently to keep up with the bills after an injury kept Mr. Chatburn out of work.

Mr. Chatburn, an air-conditioning repairman, used to say that bailing out his neighbors would be unfair, but he changed his mind after watching news programs about the rescues of big financial companies like the American International Group.

“I started thinking about all this money we paid as taxpayers to the banks,” he said, “and I thought, ‘Why don’t we take care of our own a little bit?’ ”

Ms. Carter, at 4344, arrived in 2005, as the bubble was inflating. She took out tens of thousands of dollars in home equity for repairs and other items, and by this year, she was underwater on her mortgage by $86,000. A single mother, she moved out this month, days before her home was sold in a short sale, which meant her mortgage lender allowed her to sell for less than the value of her mortgage and the lender took the loss.

And then there is the young couple with a toddler, at 4343. They moved out on the same day as Ms. Carter, before a scheduled foreclosure of their home that was $115,000 underwater. The couple, who asked not to be named, also bought near the peak and took out a home equity loan to pay off their student loans and other debts. Then, a year ago, they stopped paying their mortgage, after both of them lost their jobs for a time. They now have office jobs again.

Mr. Setbacken, a salesman, said he had warned his neighbors not to get in over their heads but they did not listen. He and his wife might have stepped up to a bigger house if they, like so many of their neighbors, had gambled recklessly on the housing market, he said.

“Everybody that I know that got themselves in trouble was because of one word: greed,” said Mr. Setbacken, 63, a former Marine who remains in tip-top physical condition. “I have no sympathy for any of them, on the financial end. When I hear about dropping the amount you actually owe, I could stick my finger down my throat.”

Then the doorbell rang. It was a young girl bearing Girl Scout cookies. “My adopted granddaughter,” Mr. Setbacken announced.

The 8-year-old is Ms. Carter’s daughter, Ava. Across the street, Ms. Carter was packing up the house.

Ms. Carter said she felt guilty about leaving. With her short sale, the price of the home went down to the benefit of the new homeowner. But it dragged down prices in the neighborhood, she said.

Ms. Carter, a mother of two and a real estate agent who poses as an angel with wings on her Web site, has been through hard times before. Years ago, she considered filing for bankruptcy but then changed her mind. She said she was accountable for her actions and was making what amounted to a business decision to leave her home.

“I had to take emotion out of it,” said Ms. Carter, 36. “If I had a business, and every single month I was losing money, would I keep on paying? No, I wouldn’t.”

Sitting at her dining room table, before a large tank of fish, she recalled how she had made this a perfect home. It is one of the few on East Montgomery Road with grass in the yard, an expensive proposition in the desert. A Mercedes sits in the driveway.

She said she did not feel she deserved to have her debts forgiven, but added that if her mortgage had been lowered, she would have tried harder to stay. The worst part, she said, is that her decision will hurt Mr. Setbacken, who has watched out for her over the years. “For Gary, he’s going to have to deal with the ramifications of what I’m doing because I’m bringing his property value down,” she said. “I pray at church. I feel horrible for what I’m doing to my neighbors.”

Later, after Mr. Setbacken talked to Ms. Carter — she “cried and cried and cried,” he said — he had a change of heart. In an e-mail message, he said that perhaps wealthy Americans could donate money to aid homeowners. If he had more money himself, he might help some neighbors pay their mortgage bills.

“I have focused on the financial issues during these times and overlooked what was more important, the emotional stress that my neighbors are feeling,” Mr. Setbacken wrote. He walked down East Montgomery Road and gave a bottle of wine to the young couple facing foreclosure. It was, he said, “to help them pack.”

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Option ARMs Come Back into Center Stage: 350,000 Active Option ARMs with over 200,000 in California. 78 Percent of Option ARMs have yet to hit Recast Dates.

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Neil Garfield

Option ARMs Come Back into Center Stage: 350,000 Active Option ARMs with over 200,000 in California. 78 Percent of Option ARMs have yet to hit Recast Dates.

Option ARMs are the gift that keeps on giving this holiday season.  As it turns out, these pesky toxic mortgages are still sitting waiting to hit recast periods.  Like a street vendor taco these things went down nicely and appeared cheap but came with a hefty aftermath.  The last option ARMs were made in 2007 yet they are still causing much pain in the housing market.  Attorney General Jerry Brown has requested data from the top 10 issuers of option ARMs with a deadline date of November 23.  It’ll be interesting to see what is released from the AG’s office.  However, Standard & Poors issued a report on option ARMs last week and found that much of the problems with these loans are still to come.

One of the stunning points found was that 93 percent of option ARM borrowers decided to go with the negative amortization option otherwise known as the “minimum payment” option.  This is something we have established from many fronts and data sets.  The bottom line is the vast majority went with negative amortization and this grew the actual balance owed.  Yet one of the new findings in the report was that 78 percent of all outstanding option ARMs have yet to hit major recast points.  Given that 58 percent of option ARMs are here in California, this is a one state wrecking ball:

In total, some 350,000 option ARMs are still active nationwide.  Over 200,000 of these loans are here in California.  The most risky option as we have established with option ARMs is the negative amortization payment:

Now why was this payment such a poor choice?  Well as the California housing market fell by 50 percent from its peak, the actual balance on many option ARMs was going up.  So not only is the home underwater from the initial starting point, the loan taken out on the home has increased on 90+ percent of these borrowers.  This is like negative equity squared.  So deep are these loans in negative equity territory that not even HAMP can save them.  Oh, and speaking of HAMP, it is turning out to be a colossal failure as expected:

“(NY Times) Capitol Hill aides in regular contact with senior Treasury officials say a consensus has emerged inside the department that the program has proved inadequate, necessitating a new approach. But discussions have yet to reach the point of mapping out new options, the aides say.

“People who work on this on a day-to-day basis are vested enough in it that they think there’s a need to do a course correction rather than a wholesale rethink,” said a Senate Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition he not be named for fear of angering the administration. “But at senior levels, where people are looking at this and thinking ‘Good God,’ there’s a sense that we need to think about doing something more.”

I know many delusional folks in California were thinking that somehow the quiet on the option ARM front had to do with the masterful success of HAMP.  Of course, these loans never qualified for HAMP but that is beside the point.  HAMP is failing because of a simple reason.  Negative equity.  Here in California, we have millions underwater.  Those with option ARMs are not only underwater, they are going to have massive spikes in their monthly payments at a time when the California unemployment rate is the highest in record keeping history.  The problem is Wall Street has sucked up all the taxpayer bailouts and for what?  To keep the crony welfare investment banks ticking?  Trillions of dollars out the door and the real economy is still troubled.  HAMP had the naïve premise that the only problem was high interest rates and the problem with the housing market was toxic mortgages.  Well, the actual problem is thousands of homes are still valued at bubble prices and with stagnant wages for a decade, people can’t afford homes without going massively into debt.  Prime, near prime, and subprime means little when you have no income and that is why even prime defaults are spiking.  The option ARM had such an allure for the gold rush California home speculator because it sidestepped that tiny little caveat of income.  It allowed maximum leverage without the valid income support.  80 percent of option ARMs went stated income.  In other words, people made crap up like saying they made $200,000 when they were pulling $75,000 to qualify for that $600,000 home:

“(CNN) There is another little problem that many option-ARM borrowers seeking refinancing would face: “Upwards of 80% of were stated-income loans,” said Westerback.

These are the so-called “liar loans” in which lenders did not verify that borrowers earned as much money as they said they did. Lenders may not be able to modify mortgages because many of the borrowers’ income could not stand up to the scrutiny. Borrowers may also not want to go through underwriting again because they could be held legally liable for deliberate inaccuracies on their original applications.

Add to those conditions the still fragile economy and high unemployment rates, and you have a recipe for disaster.”

As people chime in about stabilization, California is still hovering near the bottom in terms of prices.  The only reason we have seen prices move slightly up is because the massive jump into foreclosed homes, the home buyer tax credit, Fed buying securities to lower mortgage rates, and all these phony moratoriums that we are now seeing are basically delaying reality for many.  Inventory is artificially low because of the shadow inventory.

People ask for a solution.  Here it is:  We should have (and still should) break up the banks into pieces that are small enough to fail.  Bring back Glass-Steagall with some teeth.  Commercial and investment banking should be put into silos that don’t even come close to one another.  Banks that need to fail should.  After all, the government now backs 90+ percent of all mortgages so why do we even need them?  A quick assessment should have been made from day one on housing.  Those that couldn’t afford their homes should have gotten assistance into rentals.  Here’s a thought.  Why didn’t we create a program where those who had no way of paying on an overpriced home were given a tax break to rent a place in an empty commercial real estate development?  Right there you kill two birds with one stone.  Of course, those on Wall Street and those in our government are two sides of the same coin.  For the past three decades they have systematically neutered our government to the point of it being a bread and circus spectacle.

You think the 200,000 option ARM borrowers in California are sitting in a good spot?  Let us look at negative equity rates for a few metro areas since this is the largest predictor of future foreclosures:

If you look at the Inland Empire and the Phoenix metro area, they virtually reflect one another.  In fact, both areas have negative equity rates of 54% of all mortgage holders.  This is incredible.  Half of all borrowers are underwater in these big regions.  But look at the largest block of mortgages in California clustered in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area.  1.5 million mortgages and 400,000+ are underwater.  You think this is going to bode well for home prices as option ARMs hit their recast dates in stride from 2010 to 2012?  I put in a more normal area of Dallas above and you can see what a normal market looks like.  Even there, you can see that negative equity is still an issue.  But compare that to California and it is another story completely.  What does this mean?  The middle market is certainly going to take major hits once these loans hit their recast dates.  If they don’t qualify for HAMP, then what?  S&P in their report gives an example of a hypothetical $400,000 mortgage:

The payment flat out doubles at the recast date.  Do you think people are going to be able to come up with an extra $1,200 per month with no problems?  You know what the typical mortgage payment for a home bought last month in California totaled?  $1,097.  That is the price of the hypothetical increase in the priciest state in the U.S.  So yes sales are happening but at a much lower end.  How is this going to help those in negative equity on more expensive homes?  Take a look at the raw numbers for the state:

34 percent of all California mortgages are underwater.  You can rest assured that 80+ percent of those option ARMs are underwater.  As the above highlights, those mortgages are still here and they are still toxic.

Option ARMs fall under a bigger umbrella of Alt-A loans.  California has over 700,000 active Alt-A loans.  The bulk of the 200,000+ California option ARMs fall under this category.  But the bulk of these loans are also toxic mortgage waste.  These will go off as well.  These are actually part of the shadow inventory including those who simply stop paying but banks sit back and do absolutely nothing.  Is that really a solution?  Take a look at where the Alt-A loans are in California:

Los Angeles and Orange counties hold the biggest number of Alt-A and option ARM loans.  Do you really think this is a bottom?  It might be for a home in the Inland Empire selling for $100,000 or $150,000 depending on local area dynamics.  But many cities in Los Angeles and Orange County are vastly overpriced.  The above dynamics look similar to how subprime was building up in 2006 and 2007 before the market imploded.  Yet somehow things are now different.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments »

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