Free Republic

The hollowing out of Detroit is nearly complete. All that's left is a bankrupt shell of a city with no services and scattered citizens that do not pay taxes. The Detroit News reports Half of Detroit Property Owners Don't Pay Taxes Nearly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit News analysis of government records. The News reviewed more than 200,000 pages of tax documents and found that 47 percent of...

A project to encase one of Detroit's thousands of abandoned homes in ice this winter to draw attention to foreclosures that have battered the region is moving forward and expanding. Photographer Gregory Holm said this week that the state's land bank agreed to donate a home on the city's east side for the Ice House Detroit project. The scope of the project by Holm and freelance architect Matthew Radune is growing. They plan to use some money they've raised to help a Detroit family get a home by paying back taxes on a foreclosure. Holm also said early-release prisoners will...

An estimated 47 percent of Detroit’s property owners pay no taxes, according to recent report from The Detroit News. n fact, according to The News, delinquency in the shattered city is so bad that that 77 blocks had only one owner who paid taxes in 2012. Yes, one person paid taxes in an area covering 77 blocks. Many of the people interviewed by The News said that they don’t understand why they should pay into a system that has failed to provide them with basic public services. “Why pay taxes?” asked Fred Phillips, who owes more than $2,600 on his...

As always happens when central planning is involved, when one tries to stop a leak here, two new leaks appear elsewhere. Because while the Homeowners Bill of Rights managed to grind foreclosure activity to a halt in California, what is happening elsewhere is the dreaded Boomerang Foreclosure phenomenon, or, said simply, redefaults. In other words, those homeowners who tried to take advantage of the most recent housing bubble mania created over the past year by the unholy trinity of the Fed (open-ended liquidity, REO-to-Rent programs, and $40 billion in monthly purchases of MBS), foreign buyers (who launder illicit money courtesy...

This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains. The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector. Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters. Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior...

Here's an odd side effect of South Florida's foreclosure crisis: Some immense homes with pools and three-car garages in gated communities are being rented out to unlikely tenants — poor people paying with Section 8 aid. Among the properties are homes with up to 4,500 square feet of space in private communities with guardhouses and regal names such as "Monarch Lakes" and "Bellagio at Vizcaya." Some of the owners are teetering on foreclosure and gambling they can earn enough money from the federal housing vouchers to stave off the banks. Others bought the properties cheap in foreclosure auctions and want...

In the age of Facebook and Twitter, a new crime has hit America: "Sharpie parties," gatherings of revelers armed with "Sharpie" magic markers and lured by social media invitations to wreak havoc on foreclosed homes. Five years into the U.S. foreclosure crisis, Sharpie parties are a new form of blight on the landscape of boarded-up homes, brown lawns and abandoned streets. They are also the latest iteration of collective home-trashing spurred by social media. At least six Sharpie parties were reported in one California county in recent months, where invitations posted online drew scores to foreclosed homes. The partygoers are...

The epidemic of home foreclosures has been made far worse than necessary due to the banks' unwillingness to work with homeowners. Although Congress has passed numerous laws to force the banks to assist homeowners, the banks have found ways not to comply. The banks also brazenly break other laws to further their profits at the expense of homeowners, most recently by falsifying interest rates in the LIBOR scandal.Regular middle class Americans everywhere have unjustly lost their homes to foreclosure. They ended up in homes they could not sell due to the Federal Reserve Board, not their own actions. The Fed manipulates...

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area saw foreclosure activity skyrocket 47 percent in the first six months of this year. The increase was by far more than the other large metros. About half of the nation's 20 largest metro areas had increases in foreclosure filings, according to California-based RealtyTrac, which tracks foreclosures across the nation. Foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — increased 30 percent in Philadelphia, 28 percent in Chicago, 26 percent in New York and 21 percent in Baltimore. In all, 59 percent of U.S. metros posted higher foreclosure activity in the first half of...

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled that lenders must have proper paperwork to conduct foreclosures but said its decision applies only to future property seizures, averting a potential flood of problems for banks trying to take possession of homes. Friday's unanimous decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a case that had drawn national attention, avoids the prospect that title could be clouded on thousands of recently foreclosed properties in the state. It said a lender must in the future have a borrower's underlying note, or act on behalf of someone who does, in order to foreclose. The court...

WASHINGTON -- More green shoots are appearing in the nation's long-dormant housing market. Sales of new homes rose 3.3% in April from March to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 343,000, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. That was slightly stronger than what most analysts had forecast, and the latest in a string of recent reports suggesting that a housing recovery is taking hold. That said, the recent pickup is modest and coming from a very low base. The April pace of new-home sales was still just a fraction of last decade's peak of more than 2 million homes sold in...

May 10 (Reuters) - The Florida Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday in a landmark lawsuit that could undo hundreds of thousands of foreclosures and open up banks to severe financial penalties in the state where they face the bulk of their foreclosure-fraud litigation.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The golden age for foreclosure squatters may soon be coming to an end now that the $26 billion mortgage settlement has been approved. The settlement, agreed to by the nation's five largest mortgage lenders, is expected to speed up the foreclosure process by providing stricter guidelines for the banks to follow when repossessing homes. The banks involved include Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citibank (C, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial. Many foreclosures have been in limbo since fall 2010 following the so-called robo-signing scandal, when...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The golden age for foreclosure squatters may soon be coming to an end now that the $26 billion mortgage settlement has been approved. The settlement, agreed to by the nation's five largest mortgage lenders, is expected to speed up the foreclosure process by providing stricter guidelines for the banks to follow when repossessing homes. The banks involved include Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial.Many foreclosures have been in limbo since fall 2010 following the so-called robo-signing scandal, when banks allowed employees to sign off on thousands of foreclosure documents a month...

Half a decade into the deepest U.S. housing crisis since the 1930s, many Americans are hoping the crisis is finally nearing its end. But a painful part two of the slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures. "We are right back where we were two years ago. I would put money on 2012 being a bigger year for foreclosures than 2010," said Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering & Strengthening Ohio's People (ESOP), a counseling group with 10 offices in Ohio....

Homeowners hoping the $26 billion foreclosure abuse settlement would mean big savings on their mortgages were mostly disappointed. Even though a million borrowers will have their principals slashed by as much as $100,000 or more, most are not eligible for a workout simply because the bank that issued their mortgages, didn't hold their mortgages. During the housing boom years of the early 2000s through 2007, about 20% of loans went into the bank's own portfolios. The rest were sold off, either to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or to investors. Only loans held by the banks and some of their...

Wonder how Americans can afford to buy millions of iGadgets, a second LCD TV for the shoe closet, and eat at restaurants more than almost any time in the past despite sliding personal income? Simple - increasingly fewer pay the biggest staple bill in a US household: their mortgage. The following story of Keith And Janet Ritter, who have lived in their Fort Washington, MD $1.29MM, 4,900 square foot McMansion for 5 years (which they purchase with no money down) without ever making a single mortgage payment, and who are not even close to being evicted, may explain much...

Why has it taken the Obama Administration over three years to address the foreclosure scandal and have they actually addressed it? The scandal, which has been referred to in some quarters as “Foreclosure-gate” involves mortgage companies using a phony practice called “robo-signing” in order to fraudulently foreclose on homeowners. The company behind most of these robo-signings is Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, known as MERS. This national company has served as a clearinghouse and as a rapid computer generated paperwork processor for the big banks and secondary mortgage investors seeking to process and re-process mortgages. MERS tracks an average of 65...

Five major U.S. banks accused of foreclosure abuses have agreed to a $26 billion settlement with the government, the largest payout from banks arising from the financial crisis. The amount, which will include aid from banks in the form of loan forgiveness and refinancing, is intended to help homeowners avoid mortgage default and foreclosure. Most economists believe this is a step in the right direction, albeit only a small one.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today invited investors interested in purchasing pools of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA foreclosures in the nations hardest-hit metropolitan areas with the requirement they rent them for a period of year to pre-qualify. The purpose of the pilot phase will be to examine investor interest in various types of assets,including the location, size, and composition of pools of assets; the ways in which investors maximize the participation of experienced local firms and organizations that can provide the types of services and support needed to ensure community stabilization; the types of structures and/or financing...