Big words – pure Bullshit.

Here’s what one lawyer is peddeling in Southern Califirnia.

“Here is some info that we send out to brokers. Our fundamental principal under which we work is the “educated supposition” that a preponderance of real estate loans having been originated by the banking industry in the last several years were, at least in part, predatory in nature and fraught with myriad blatant illegalities, errors and omissions in their construction and execution. We find as well that many of the documents which purport to secure these alleged loans with ownership in your real estate, have been lost or destroyed in favor of creating the more convenient and legally protective electronic mortgage recording system (MERS): thereby rending certain of the documents largely unavailable and unenforceable under the law. Our primary contention is that a copy of a negotiable instrument is not a valid instrument. Irrespective of the production of such items as “Certified Copies” or “Affidavits of Lost Document”, a certified copy of a dollar-bill will obviously not buy you a dollar’s worth of anything: as well, an affidavit saying your dog ate your dollar-bill won’t buy anything either.
During the examination (forensic auditing) phase of your transaction, we generally discover that your “lender” never made you a “loan.” We find instead that your signature and averred obligation to pay was in fact sold for a large profit well before your “loan” documents were presented to you. We find that in fact no money was ever expended by your “lender” on your behalf: thereby inferring that your negotiable and highly valued signature did in effect retire your so-called mortgage obligation well before your payment-stream was established.

Since its inception, your alleged loan has most likely been sold and re-sold several times before it was purchase by a Wall Street stock brokerage and fractionalized to securitize international stock market purchases (mostly by foreign investors, who, at the time, had an exaggerated faith in the US tock and real estate market, but who long-since have accepted their losses). For the most part, these unfortunate folks have moved on and have no expectation of recompense of any kind. Ergo, one might ask: “So where does all the money go when I am evicted for non-payment and my bank sells the property for top dollar?” The answer lies with each party in the line succession: i.e., those who purchased, re-sold and fractionated your loan by including it in a multi-million (or billion) dollar bundle of other mortgages. Each party in the queue have long since been paid far more from their acquisition of your loan than they paid for it, and in effect will have lost virtually nothing as a result of a homeowner’s inability to pay.”

Ya just gotta wonder where teh State Bar is in shutting these types down. They are as bad as the banks that started this in the first place.

April 11, 2011 … Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC), Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) all ganged up on Mortgage Electronic Registration System MERS. And I mean ganged up on it.

A consent decree was issued this Tuesday telling MERS it had 30, 60 and 90 days (respectively) to get all kinds of things done – all boiling down to:

GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!

Seems the Government doesn’t like the way the foreclosure process is working out. Oh, and it’s costing everyone a LOT of money to clean up.

It appears that the nutty court cases across the country – and maybe the recent 60 Minutes segment – all have gotten the attention of our “leaders” in Washington.

But Wait; There’s More!

April 13, 2011 … In the ever increasing number of cases impacting MERS, the Federal Bankruptcy Court (Southern District – California) came out roaring – again. The case: In re Salazar . The holding: A MERS membership agreement is not the same as an assignment of the Deed of Trust. So, bye, bye, US Bank. It didn’t get the right to foreclose on Ms. Salavar. Why? Because no assignment of the beneficial interest in the Deed of Trust was recorded to US Bank before the foreclosure.

Ah, those pesky little details. They’ll getcha every time.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the oprices of houses are Up, and Down. Depending on where.

Seems like everyone jusst wants to ad their own shpin on a story that has no right, wrong, left or middle.

“With the National Association of Realtors reporting that home prices rose in about half of U.S. metropolitan areas in the last three months of 2010, it’s easy to think that that the housing market is showing some signs of recovery. “Home sales clearly recovered in the latter part of 2010,” Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s ever-optimistic economist says in a statement.

But the proverbial grain of salt is in order, given many other sources report prices continue falling. The Journal recently reported that home values declined in all of the 28 major metropolitan areas tracked during the fourth quarter when compared to a year earlier, and repeat-sales indexes such as the S&P/Case Shiller index have shown that prices declined in October and November.

The Realtors are looking at a different measure, median prices, which show that prices for home resales rose in about half of the nation’s 152 metro areas during the October-December quarter. Prices rose in 78 cities, fell in 71 and were unchanged in three. The group says the national median price for single-family homes was $170,600 in the fourth quarter of 2010, up 0.2% from $170,300 a year earlier.
The Washington, DC, area gained 8.1%. There were decliners: Portland, Ore., came in down 3.8% and Seattle dipped 3.9%.
Data from Zillow, however, show bigger declines in those three markets. Washington fell 5.8%, Portland declined 12.1% and Seattle tumbled 11.9%.

Why the difference? When comparing the fourth quarter of 2010 to the prior-year period, the Realtors use median price, the point where half of sales fall above and half fall below. Last year’s data still include buyers tapping a tax credit of up to $8,000. Many of those sales were first-time buyers, who typically buy lower-priced houses. The expired credit isn’t in this year’s numbers, so median prices in some markets could be higher from a year ago because the more higher-priced sales were added to the “mix” of sales.

Most industry watchers agree that the housing market must endure more pain before it can fully recover. Lending standards are tight, preventing would-be buyers from inking deals. The foreclosure crisis, meanwhile, continues with no end in sight. Many economists and housing analysts expect home prices to fall an additional 5% to 10% before prices hit the long-awaited bottom later this year or early next year.

By Alan Zibel, WSJ.com; Dawn Wotapka and Nick Timiraos contributed to this article.

…and were made privy to the offerings of 2 dozen or so vendors (like HLF).

What I found encouraging is that – even in the face of one of the most difficult markets in my career life (35 years — how did that happen?) – the level of enthusiasm remained high.

Sure, we’re all working twice as hard for half the money. But that’s what separates a professional from a wanna-be.

Keeping on top of your game, keeping informed of what’s going on. That’s the key to success in this, and in every, market.

This last weekend, the New Your Times published a story that, quite frankly, shows why the financial markets are so f*$#%’d up.

You’ve got to love the FDIC “investigator” who got a bug up his butt, and sought out, and sent a secret investigator (posing as a hot chick trolling for a guy) to dupe a borrower into “confessing” he’d lied on a “liar loan” (what we in the biz refer to as a “stated income” loan).

Really?

Really!

This is absolutely ridiculous.

Why the hell aren’t these precious Federal Resoutrces spend tracking down and throwing the Financial Executives that perpetrated this fraud, in jail?

Read on, and be astounded!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/26nocera.html

Freddie Mac bulleting 2011-05 states No More MERS foreclosures.
MERS must transfer the interest it holds as indentured trustee (or whatever) to the actual loan services.

I wonder how much money MERS just lost on all those fees it was generating?

And how will the true servicers will feel about having to foreclose the old way?

The Wall Street Journal reports:

“Sales of previously occupied homes in the U.S. sank by 9.6% in February and prices fell to the lowest level in nearly nine years, indications that the market remains depressed.

Existing-home sales decreased from a month earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.88 million, the lowest level since November, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.

The results were worse than forecast. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected home sales to decline by 3.9% to an annual rate of 5.15 million.

The results called into question whether the U.S. housing market is recovering or falling further.”

Geez, we could have told them that. That’s why, in part, C.A.R. published its “open letter” to the lenders urging them to get off the dime and get short sales approved more quickly. Hmmm. I wonder if anyone out there is listening?

According to Fair Issac Company (My FICO) a company that provides analytic, decision making, and credit scoring services for financial service companies a credit score will go down by 40 to 110 points after being 30 days late. Further, the scoring drop will increase to 70 to 135 points after 90 days late on a mortgage payment.

The average scoring drop in a short sale, foreclosure or deed in lieu is 85 to 160 points. You need to keep in mind that in both short sales and foreclosure it is possible that the credit score drop could be closer to 200-300 points.

Credit scoring factors vary from individual to individual. The scoring change is heavily dependent on where the credit score was before the negative event took place. Both a short sale and foreclosure are considered a loan that was not paid as agreed.

March 10, 2011

An important message from the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®:

I write on behalf of the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®, whose 170,000 members continue to witness the devastating consequences the home foreclosure crisis is having on California’s families, neighborhoods, and communities on a daily basis.

The number of families affected by foreclosure is staggering. During the past three years, more than 640,000 Californians have lost their homes. With the number of homeowners who owe more than their home is worth hovering at 30 percent, experts predict there will be many more foreclosures in 2011 and 2012. Unless we take immediate, aggressive action to assist these homeowners, any meaningful recovery in the housing market and overall economy will continue to be delayed.

Tragically, only a fraction of those who face foreclosure will remain in their homes when all is said and done. Those whose incomes and financial circumstances meet strict guidelines may qualify for a loan modification that will reduce their monthly payment to more affordable levels. Yet the federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) is expected to prevent only 700,000 to 800,000 foreclosures nationwide before it expires at the end of 2012, and the program does little to help those homeowners who are unemployed or otherwise no longer able to meet their financial commitments. Their last hope is to sell their home, which often means convincing their lender or the investor who “owns” the loan (and, in many cases, the holder of a second mortgage lien and the mortgage insurer) to accept a “short sale.”

With a short sale, homeowners with a proven hardship negotiate an agreement to sell their home for less than the balance owed. Although not every homeowner or mortgage is eligible, those who are able to finalize a short sale avoid a foreclosure on their credit record and can move on with their lives. Last year, 20 percent of home sales in our state involved short sales.

Short sales can play an important role in our state’s economic recovery by accelerating the pace of home sales and reducing the inventory of bank-owned homes on the market. There are other benefits as well. Homebuyers who can qualify for a mortgage at today’s low interest rates also are able to purchase a home at below-market prices. Banks get a nonperforming asset off their books and avoid the headaches associated with disposing of assets they don’t want to own in the first place. Neighborhoods have fewer abandoned homes, and local businesses have more customers with money to spend.

Unfortunately, many homeowners are unable to successfully negotiate a short sale. According to a recent survey of 2,150 California REALTORS® who have assisted clients with a short sale, only three out of five transactions closed – even when there was an interested and qualified buyer.

What’s the problem? For one, no two mortgage agreements are the same, so it can be difficult to standardize short sale processes and procedures. Many homeowners have second mortgages, which further complicate matters. Then there’s the challenge of convincing multiple parties to take a financial loss or, in the case of loan servicers, to forego fees they otherwise might earn during the course of the foreclosure process. Poor and slow service by many banks and servicers has only exacerbated the problem. Horror stories abound from potential homebuyers and REALTORS® forced to wait 90 or more days for a response to a purchase offer or being required to fax short sale applications or other paperwork as many as 50 times. These delays discourage potential homebuyers from considering a short sale purchase and undermine the process for those who short sales are intended to benefit – the hundreds of thousands of families facing foreclosure.

Increasing the number of closed short sales by speeding up and streamlining the short sale process is one important way we can help California families avoid foreclosure and move our economy closer to recovery. That’s why the California Association of REALTORS® is taking steps to enable more families to arrange a short sale. Recently, we advocated for improvements to short sale guidelines established under the federal Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternative (HAFA) program. We’re meeting with major banks, U.S. Treasury officials, government-sponsored entities (including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), and others to urge them to standardize processes, comply with federal guidelines, improve communication with other stakeholders and increase staffing with the goal of eliminating service issues. We’ve also offered our members training in every aspect of the short sale process so they can assist their clients.

But we can’t do it alone. That’s why we’re focusing the spotlight on short sales and calling on regulators, elected officials, nonprofits, business organizations, companies, and individuals with a stake in California’s economic future to resolve this issue and others that get in the way of a recovery. It won’t be easy, and some compromises will be required. The important thing is that we need to act today. Our families and our communities can’t wait any longer.

Sincerely,

Beth L. Peerce
President
CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

The California court of appeal has spoken!  No more of the nonsense about MERS not having the ‘right’ to foreclose because it doesn’t hold the note.

 In Gomes v. Countrywide Home Loans (decided last week) the court ruled that California’s Civil Code relating to non-judicial foreclosures, which specifically allows ‘an agent of the beneficiary’ to act in the beneficiary’s stead – and instructing the Trustee of a Deed of Trust to foreclose – is one of those permitted ‘acts.’

 This takes away one of the MANY arguments that borrowers make in often futile attempts to prevent the inevitable.