Category Archives: Real estate

Some Lenders Sell Foreclosed Homes Without Obtaining Title

When you thought you’d seen every possible stuff-up in mortgage land, a new one comes to light.

When the housing market correction started, most savvy observers pointed out that prices needed to revert to long-term relationships with rentals and income levels. And many have also pointed out that it is reasonable to expect prices to overshoot on the downside.

Evidence of the latest self-inflicted wound comes via e-mail from Lisa Epstein of ForeclosureHamlet.org…

Lender Processing Services Produced More Bogus Foreclosure Documents Than It ‘Fessed To

Readers may recall that this site broke the story of litigation against Lender Processing Services, the biggest player in foreclosure management on behalf of mortgage servicers. These cases, launched earlier in the fall, accused the company of taking impermissible legal fees. These class action lawsuits were joined by the US bankruptcy trustee for the Northern District of Mississippi, both for herself and on behalf of all US bankruptcy fees, which meant she felt the issues set forth in the case had merit and were serious. In November, an additional class action case was filed against LPS, this time securities litigation, charging the company with making false and misleading statements to investors from July 29, 2009 to October 4, 2010, including “deceptive and improper document execution and preparation related to foreclosure proceedings.”

Subsequently, as our Richard Smith detailed earlier today, Housing Wire’s Paul Jackson attacked critics of LPS, including this blogger, of going off half baked in accusing the company of engaging in document fabrication. A Reuters investigation published today supports the critics’s case, revealing that document creation was far more extensive that the company has suggested.

Collateral damage – more than Paul Jackson’s reputation at risk

Events during this financial crisis have repeatedly displayed a degree of disrespect for various pundits’ authority; every so often another pulpit is toppled. So spare a thought for the pundits, the most unmourned of crisis casualties. One skips through the roll of slight miscues (“Lehman repo looks solid”, April ’08), shame (“believe Fuld, Lehman bears […]

Catch Us on the Radio Today

We are on Harry Shearer’s Le Show, a full hour interview on the mortgage mess. Harry really did his homework, so I think readers will enjoy the conversation. It’s “live” at 1 PM EST, then runs throughout the day at various times on public radio stations around the country, including 7 PM on WNYC-AM in […]

Adam Levitin Shreds American Securitization Forum Defenses

It isn’t clear why the American Securitization Forum decided to walk into a buzzsaw, but the carnage is proving to be an amusing spectacle. For readers who have not followed this wee saga, mortgage securitization abuses are increasingly looking to be a mess of Titanic proportions. The securitization industry created complex and specific procedures for […]

Will Thousands of Foreclosures Be Voided Because Non-Lawyers Prosecuted Them?

If you thought robo signing was bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The website 4ClosureFraud presents the gory details of a potential major new front in the foreclosure mess. A Pennsylvania foreclosure mill, Goldbeck McCafferty & McKeever, is accused by Patrick Loughren of allowing non-attorneys to file and prosecute foreclosures. A DailyFinance story gives the […]

New York Judge’s Testimony Contradicts American Securitization Forum Assertions on Mortgage Mess

Maybe the American Securitization Forum ought to do its homework before making emphatic and not very well founded claims. Right before Thanksgiving, the ASF released its long-awaited white paper, which argued, basically, that industry standard practices for conveying notes (the borrower IOUs) to securitization trusts were sound. Curious readers new to this can read the […]

American Securitization Forum Tells Monstrous Whoppers in Senate Testimony on Mortgage Mess

Well, I suppose one can defend the lies testimony offered by American Securitization Forum executive director Tom Deutsch before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday if one subscribes to the Through the Looking Glass theory of usage: ` When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I […]

More on BofA Employee Damaging Admissions re Failure to Convey Mortgage Notes

We’ve had a series of posts (see here, here, and here) on the judge’s decision in a case called Kemp c. Countrywide, which provided what appeared to be the first official confirmation of what we’ve long suspected and described on this blog: that as of a certain point in time post 2002, mortgage originators and […]

Servicer-Driven Foreclosures: The Perfect Crime?

As much as I’ve seen a lot of financial services industry misconduct at close range, sometimes even a cynic like me is not prepared for how bad things can be. And mortgage abuse is turning out to be one of those areas. I’ve been in contact for over the last six months with attorneys involved […]

50 State Attorney General Mortgage Probe Rejects Idea of Global Settlement

Bloomberg provided a useful update on the 50 state attorney generals’ investigation into mortgage abuses. One key development is that the AGs are treating investors as parties whose interests need to be considered. This appears to be at odds with the approach taken by Federal regulators, who are devising and implementing exams of various sorts […]

Foreclosure Task Force: Worse Than Stress Tests?

Felix Salmon reports on a conversation with departing assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr on newly-commenced reviews of the practices of bank servicers. Barr’s patter might sound convincing to the uninformed. An “11-agency, 8-week review of servicer practices, with hundreds of investigators crawling all over the banks”! Promises to hold miscreants accountable! Banks required to fix […]

Countrywide Offers Not-Very-Convincing Explanation of Testimony on Its “Oops, We Still Have the Note” Snafu

It was predictable, as soon as the press took notice of a potentially very damaging bit of testimony by a Countrywide manager, that its parent, Bank of America, would do everything in its power to deny its validity. By way of brief background (see here, here, and here for more detail), a recent court decision […]

Guest Post: Two Cords of Wood – An Intimate Look at Unnecessary Foreclosure

By Thomas Cox, a retired bank lawyer in Portland, Maine who serves as the Volunteer Program Coordinator for the Maine Attorney’s Saving Homes (MASH) program, cross posted from New Deal 2.0 Back in September, I was asked to give some unusual advice to a client. This woman, a resident of rural Northwestern Maine, wanted to […]

Levitin on the Dire Implications of “Securitization Fail”

There is a great post by Adam Levitin at Credit Slips which discusses the implications of the fact that a recent court decision in Kemp v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. stated that Countrywide had not transferred the note (the borrower IOU) to the Bank of New York, trustee for the securitization trust. Perhaps more important, […]