When someone meets with me because their home may end up being foreclosed on, one of the things that I tell them is that they should meet with an accountant – a good one – sooner than later. Last year, people were concerned about whether the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act would be renewed. The...
Will the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act be renewed? I wish I knew the answer to that question. Right now, there is a lot of uncertainty about the renewal of the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act. According to the IRS website, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act “applies to qualified principal residence indebtedness forgiven in calendar years...
This article in the Detroit Free Press, part 1 of a 3-part series, discusses how Fannie Mae claims that it tries to keep families in their homes, while at the same time pressuring banks to foreclose. Alan White, a law professor at Valparaiso University and a leading national expert on the foreclosure crisis, is quoted...
“Buy and Bail” is the term used for homeowners who, while owning one house with an underwater mortgage, obtain a mortgage for a new house. Then, after they have purchased the new house, they “bail” on the underwater house by letting it go into foreclosure. This article discusses how homeowners have accomplished this. Depending on...
The article, Florida’s High-Speed Answer to a Foreclosure Mess, discusses Florida’s new foreclosures-only courts that have been set up to reduce the state’s backlog of foreclosures. It is arguable whether these courts are constitutional and whether they violate homeowners’ rights to due process. The article also discusses how some of Florida’s foreclosure law firms operate.
Fannie Mae recently announced that it plans to punish people who strategically default on their mortgages. This announcement was met with skepticism by some housing and lending experts. It’s difficult to blame Fannie Mae for being nervous about people walking away from their mortgages when strategic default is being regularly reported on in the news:...
The Minnesota Home Ownership Center recently blogged about how the “next wave of foreclosures is rapidly approaching Minnesota.” It predicted that this wave of foreclosures will have a large impact on the outer-ring suburbs of the Twin Cities. Mortgage delinquencies are currently at historic highs. According to a recent report from Lender Processing Services more...
The Dakota County Community Development Agency runs the Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Program for Dakota County residents. If you are a homeowner in Dakota County who may be facing foreclosure, or if you are already in foreclosure, click here for more information about the Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Program. Minnesota homeowners living outside of Dakota County can...
On the Credit Slips blog, Katie Porter recently posted a follow-up blog entry to an article that she wrote in 2007 about the failure of lenders to produce proper paperwork in bankruptcy mortgage claims. The blog entry and the cases that she links to are worth reading.
When a homeowner is worried that they might lose their house to foreclosure, they are usually also worried about whether their state is a “recourse” or “non-recourse” state. In a non-recourse state, if the funds from the sale of the mortgaged property (the house) are not enough to cover the outstanding debt (the amount the...