Next month will mark two years since federal regulators seized Washington Mutual and sold it to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion. Now a document that appears to be from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporationsuggests the deal still hasn’t closed.
“Everyone is saying the sale is finalized,” said the shareholder, Farokh Lam, of Woburn, Mass. “It is not.”
Lam noticed that on pages 7 and 9, the original WaMu purchase and sale agreement allows the FDIC to extend the settlement date. He says he asked about it, and the FDIC confirmed in phone calls and emails that the settlement date was set for Aug. 30, 2010, and could be extended further.
“Settlement Date” means the first Business Day immediately prior to the day which is one hundred eighty (180) days after Ban Closing, or such other date prior thereto as may be agreed upon by the Receiver and the Assuming Bank. The Receiver, in its discretion, may extend the Settlement Date.
It says: “The purpose of this amendment is to extend the time period for Final Settlement to August. 30, 2010.”
WaMu’s final days were chronicled in depth by Puget Sound Business Journal Staff Writer Kirsten Grind in an award-winning series.
Does this mean that all the WAMU foreclosures being pushed through the courts by JPMorgan Chase using the FDIC Purchase and Sale Agreement are invalid?
Does it mean if they haven’t closed the deal THEY DO NOT OWN THE LOANS OR THEIR SERVICING RIGHTS?
Where are the windfall profits going after the foreclosure sale?
What if the agreement changes before it is finalized?
So many questions…
Pipe up in the comments and let me know what you think.
The way I see it is, if they haven’t finalized the deal, how can they foreclose on the homes?
WHOA! …before any of this BS happens. Who is going to address the Perpetual Fraud that exist? Is anyone from the government even doing any due diligence on any of the TOP FORECLOSURE HELP sites? WE HAVE DONE MOST OF YOUR WORK FOR YOU. Who is going to rescue the homeowners buying these fraudulent issues encumbered in these homes? In our illegal foreclosures today and yesterday? May I please have 1 day in the White House to fix all this because apparently they are digging all this up, even further. In order to fix this crap this needs to be fixed first. I think the government has learned a thing or 2 from these bankers (a bird in a hand is worth two in a bush). They are running with their heads in the dark! GoHERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HEREand HERE…you see I did it for you! For a start…YOU MUST FIX THESE ISSUES BEFORE ANYTHING!
In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave.
This latest program, which will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way, is one of the administration’s most aggressive attempts to grapple with a problem that has defied solutions.
More than five million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure. The government’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan has helped only a small slice of them. Consumer advocates, economists and even some banking industry representatives say much more needs to be done.
For the administration, there is also the concern that millions of foreclosures could delay or even reverse the economy’s tentative recovery — the last thing it wants in an election year.
Taking effect on April 5, the program could encourage hundreds of thousands of delinquent borrowers who have not been rescued by the loan modification program to shed their houses through a process known as a short sale, in which property is sold for less than the balance of the mortgage. Lenders will be compelled to accept that arrangement, forgiving the difference between the market price of the property and what they are owed.
“We want to streamline and standardize the short sale process to make it much easier on the borrower and much easier on the lender,” said Seth Wheeler, a Treasury senior adviser.
The problem is highlighted by a routine case in Phoenix. Chris Paul, a real estate agent, has a house he is trying to sell on behalf of its owner, who owes $150,000. Mr. Paul has an offer for $48,000, but the bank holding the mortgage says it wants at least $90,000. The frustrated owner is now contemplating foreclosure.
To bring the various parties to the table — the homeowner, the lender that services the loan, the investor that owns the loan, the bank that owns the second mortgage on the property — the government intends to spread its cash around.
Under the new program, the servicing bank, as with all modifications, will get $1,000. Another $1,000 can go toward a second loan, if there is one. And for the first time the government would give money to the distressed homeowners themselves. They will get $1,500 in “relocation assistance.”
Should the incentives prove successful, the short sales program could have multiple benefits. For the investment pools that own many home loans, there is the prospect of getting more money with a sale than with a foreclosure.
For the borrowers, there is the likelihood of suffering less damage to credit ratings. And as part of the transaction, they will get the lender’s assurance that they will not later be sued for an unpaid mortgage balance.
For communities, the plan will mean fewer empty foreclosed houses waiting to be sold by banks. By some estimates, as many as half of all foreclosed properties are ransacked by either the former owners or vandals, which depresses the value of the property further and pulls down the value of neighboring homes.
If short sales are about to have their moment, it has been a long time coming. At the beginning of the foreclosure crisis, lenders shunned short sales. They were not equipped to deal with the labor-intensive process and were suspicious of it.
The lenders’ thinking, said the economist Thomas Lawler, went like this: “I lend someone $200,000 to buy a house. Then he says, ‘Look, I have someone willing to pay $150,000 for it; otherwise I think I’m going to default.’ Do I really believe the borrower can’t pay it back? And is $150,000 a reasonable offer for the property?”
Short sales are “tailor-made for fraud,” said Mr. Lawler, a former executive at the mortgage finance company Fannie Mae.
Last year, short sales started to increase, although they remain relatively uncommon. Fannie Mae said preforeclosure deals on loans in its portfolio more than tripled in 2009, to 36,968. But real estate agents say many lenders still seem to disapprove of short sales.
Under the new federal program, a lender will use real estate agents to determine the value of a home and thus the minimum to accept. This figure will not be shared with the owner, but if an offer comes in that is equal to or higher than this amount, the lender must take it.
Mr. Paul, the Phoenix agent, was skeptical. “In a perfect world, this would work,” he said. “But because estimates of value are inherently subjective, it won’t. The banks don’t want to sell at a discount.”
There are myriad other potential conflicts over short sales that may not be solved by the program, which was announced on Nov. 30 but whose details are still being fine-tuned. Many would-be short sellers have second and even third mortgages on their houses. Banks that own these loans are in a position to block any sale unless they get a piece of the deal.
“You have one loan, it’s no sweat to get a short sale,” said Howard Chase, a Miami Beach agent who says he does around 20 short sales a month. “But the second mortgage often is the obstacle.”
Major lenders seem to be taking a cautious approach to the new initiative. In many cases, big banks do not actually own the mortgages; they simply administer them and collect payments. J. K. Huey, a Wells Fargo vice president, said a short sale, like a loan modification, would have to meet the requirements of the investor who owns the loan.
“This is not an opportunity for the customer to just walk away,” Ms. Huey said. “If someone doesn’t come to us saying, ‘I’ve done everything I can, I used all my savings, I borrowed money and, by the way, I’m losing my job and moving to another city, and have all the documentation,’ we’re not going to do a short sale.”
But even if lenders want to treat short sales as a last resort for desperate borrowers, in reality the standards seem to be looser.
Sree Reddy, a lawyer and commercial real estate investor who lives in Miami Beach, bought a one-bedroom condominium in 2005, spent about $30,000 on improvements and ended up owing $540,000. Three years later, the value had fallen by 40 percent.
Mr. Reddy wanted to get out from under his crushing monthly payments. He lost a lot of money in the crash but was not in default. Nevertheless, his bank let him sell the place for $360,000 last summer.
“A short sale provides peace of mind,” said Mr. Reddy, 32. “If you’re in foreclosure, you don’t know when they’re ultimately going to take the place away from you.”
Mr. Reddy still lives in the apartment complex where he bought that condo, but is now a renter paying about half of his old mortgage payment. Another benefit, he said: “The place I’m in now is nicer and a little bigger.”
These “Black Deeds”, collectively, are proof that the notaries, witnesses, and signatories on each and every like assignment of mortgage is suspect at best; created as purely fabricated malarkey at worst. Professionals are starting to surmise that all of these mortgage assignments magically produced, presto-chango, to ram another foreclosure through “the system” are not credible evidence upon which the transfer of property, dispensation of justice, and the roof over a family’s head should rest.
And, then, here ya’ go: another colleague found a mortgage assignment back-dated four years in order to assign property two years hence. Being no math whiz, would someone please clarify if that is a net back-dating of two years? Perhaps it’s a cumulative formula, adding the 4 years to 2 years, makes the “off dating” 6 years? I dunno! How’s that really work? Sounds like an episode of Beat The Clock!
This is no mere document failure! Please. Call it what it is: foreclosures upon millions of families, evicted from their homes by financial entities with no more rights to take those homes than have you or I. When faced with this fact, the financial entities are creating, fabricating (aka MAKING UP) the “evidence” to prove that they have the
right to take a family’s home and throw them with all their worldly
possessions into the street! Where are the investors who really put up the money for these home loans? They must be singing the blues to see some interloper foreclose a million times over and keep the proceeds from the post-foreclosure sale. Welcome to America! Waive to the Statue of Liberty on your way in. Breathe in that democratic process air we’ve prided ourselves on for lo these 233 years.
There are millions upon millions of families being evicted onto the streets, many with no alternative housing options. It’s not so easy to find a job in the best of circumstances today. Ever tried to find and/or hold down a job without a fixed address? How ’bout the children, in the middle of their school year? What about the beloved pets of foreclosure, fully members of the newly homeless family? Ever tried to find emergency shelter or housing with a deeply loved animal or two? What of the elderly who do not have the remaining lifespan to recover from the terrible financial and personal blow and may face their remaining “golden years” begging for scarce, dwindling social-net resources. What of the disabled, those of us living in America who, without dramatic rescue, are too ill and infirm to ever hope to again live independently under cover.
I may or may not return here to add more…………I’m too distraught to continue writing of my country’s egregious willful complicity in these relentless evictions and property confiscation. My heart and soul start to rupture past the point of repair when I think of how America is treating it’s citizenry, including the weakest of us all; based on a million-fold fraudulent transactions from mortgage origination well past post-foreclosure sale.
Let’s move on in a more wickedly delicious track, shall we?
Two unrelated, remorseful individuals have come forward, whispering to us colleagues with tales of the inner workings and “business practices” of document creation “mills” which may or may not be operating under the direction of foreclosure mill law firm. Permission from the parties has been extracted to publish this post.
Apparently, that same fear, hopelessness, and rage which descend upon one who is evicted from the only home they know to face a bleak and uncertain future……….. Yes, THAT fear, hopelessness and rage! Well, that same emotional response seems to have hit hard on a few past and/or current employees of certain companies which may have been involved in dubious, questionable “business practices”.
A crisis of conscience? Fear of criminal charges? Facing foreclosure themselves? Relative evicted? Family member tenet unexpectedly “trashed out”? Seeing the futility of working out a loan mod? One of the signatories (or employers thereof) who frantically googles the same names over and over and over in a mad search for what is known, what is published?
Could it be one or more of these signatories, while working for a “document solutions” company, have been “transferring property and assets” valued in the multi-billions and ostensibly owned by the top financial institutions in the world? Ron Mehig? Bethany Hood? Linda Green? From New House Title? Cheryl Hodge? Korrell Harp? From Law Offices of David Stern? Scott Anderson? Lori Brown? Barbara Hindman? Lori Brown? Whitney K. Cook? Melissa Flanagan? Lillana Morcan? Liquenda Allotey? Christina Trowbridge? Raquel Smith? Branden Kiel? Beth Cottrell? Twanna Thomas? From DocX? Winona Church? Nancy Reyes? William W. Huffman? Jill Arnold? Shameca Harrison? Kari Marx? Renee Hertzler? Mark Biscof? From LPS? Lorraine Brown?
Who knows? I’m not one to force another to reveal their personal motivations. I enjoy the privacy afforded me by the hard bones of my skull. I often keep my thoughts to myself and extend to others the same respect.
When speaking in generalities, it’s difficult for folks to understand what lawyer, judges and informed consumers are ranting about when we scream, “THE BANKS, LENDERS AND FORECLOSURE MILLS ARE COMMITTING FRAUD!”
I attach here a deposition transcript of Angela Melissa Nolan, a robo signer at Chase Home Finance. In the deposition, she describes in detail some of the corporate processes in place that purport to give pretender lenders the evidentiary basis to pursue foreclosure cases….I’ve called these people “Robo Signers” because prior depositions indicated they don’t read anything…they just sign. This deposition reveals another form of “Robo Signer”, a computer generated document, complete with a “real” signature scanned in…..and the rabbit hole just gets deeper and deeper.
C’mon take a few minutes to watch the video…I tell you it’s exactly what’s happening here!
BY ERIC ENRIQUE •
As an attorney who defends homeowners in foreclosure, I nearly fell out of my chair when I read Sunday’s guest column, “Time for noncourt foreclosures” by Alex Sanchez, chief executive officer of the Florida Bankers Association.
After selling risky loans for quick profits, and then taking billions in taxpayer money, the attempt by bankers to steal Floridians’ due process rights is shameful. Mr. Sanchez claims banks want to keep people in their homes and they work with them for months to modify their loan. The truth is the banks are not making reasonable efforts to work with homeowners to modify their loan because it is not profitable for them to do so. To find out just how unwilling the banks are, ask anyone who has tried to obtain a loan modification. They will tell you they have spent countless hours on the phone, only to have their call mysteriously disconnected, and have had to repeatedly submit the same financial documentation.
After months of frustration, most applicants are either denied, or given a paltry temporary payment reduction with a loan term extended up to 40 years, making homeownership even more expensive. When home values have fallen to less than half of what a homeowner may still owe on their home, is it any wonder homeowners are rejecting these offers?
If the banks really want to solve the housing crisis, they should offer permanent interest-rate and principal reductions to reflect the home’s current value. Instead, the banks would rather litigate, foreclose and sell the home at the current value. The reason is because many of the foreclosing banks do not own the loan and are loan servicers that collect loan payments on behalf of investors. As loan servicers, the banks can charge their investors higher fees when a loan is in default.
The numbers support the banks’ unwillingness to offer reasonable loan modifications. According to Hope Now, an alliance of leaders in the housing industry, in Florida’s third quarter of 2009, there were 278,189 delinquent loans, 80,327 new foreclosure actions, but only 13,205 loan modifications.
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