Posted on 10/11/2010 9:13:41 AM PDT by ex-Texan
If you work in the mortgage industry or for a title insurer, you might not want to make any plans for the next six months. Foreclosuregate is about to explode. It is being alleged that many prominent mortgage lenders have been using materially flawed paperwork to evict homeowners. Apparently officials at quite a few of these firms have been signing thousands upon thousands of foreclosure documents without even looking at them. In addition, it is being alleged that much of the documentation for these mortgages that are being foreclosed upon is either "improper" or is actually "missing". As lawyers start to smell blood in the water, lawsuits challenging these foreclosures have already started springing up from coast to coast. In fact, some are already calling Foreclosuregate the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets. JPMorgan Chase, Ally Bank's GMAC Mortgage and PNC Financial have all suspended foreclosures in the 23 U.S. states where foreclosures must be approved by a judge. Bank of America has actually suspended foreclosures in all 50 states. Now, law enforcement authorities from coast to coast are calling for investigations into this controversy and it could be years before this thing gets unraveled.
This thing just seems to escalate with each passing day. It is being reported that the attorneys general of up to 40 U.S. states will be working together on a joint investigation into this foreclosure crisis. Lawmakers in both houses of the U.S. Congress, including Nancy Pelosi and Christopher Dodd, have called for an investigation to begin on the national level. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that he is looking into the issue. Things are certainly getting very serious out there. Never before has there ever been such a national focus on foreclosure paperwork.
But apparently there are good reasons for such scrutiny....
*One GMAC Mortgage official admitted during a December 2009 deposition that his team of 13 people signed approximately 10,000 foreclosure documents a month without reading them.
*One Bank of America employee confessed during a Massachusetts bankruptcy case that she signed up to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month and typically did not look them over "because of the volume".
But the "robo-signing" aspect of Foreclosuregate is just the tip of the iceberg. Apparently there is a whole lot more going on than just a bunch of bad signatures.
Peter J. Henning, a professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, was recently quoted by MSNBC as saying the following about Foreclosuregate....
"You've got so many potential avenues of liability. You don't even know the parameters of this yet."
The sad truth is that potentially millions of foreclosures across the United States could potentially be invalid because the securitization process has muddied the chain of ownership. In fact, an increasing number of judges from coast to coast have been ruling that the "owners" of the mortgage have no right to foreclose on a property because they lack clear title.
At the core of this title controversy is MERS - Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems. MERS is based in Reston, Virginia and it was created by the mortgage industry to enable that big financial firms to securitize and swap mortgages at high speed. MERS allowed these big financial firms to largely avoid the hassle of filling out more forms and submitting new filing fees every time that a mortgage was traded.
But now MERS is facing some very serious legal challenges. A recent article in Businessweek described the situation this way....
A lawsuit filed on September 28th in federal court in Louisville on behalf of all Kentucky homeowners claims that MERS was part of a conspiracy to create false promissory notes, affidavits, and mortgage assignments to be used in mortgage foreclosures. Similar class actions have been filed on behalf of homeowners in Florida and New York. Karmela Lejarde, a MERS spokeswoman, declined to comment on any pending litigation.
The reality is that as millions of U.S. mortgages have been bunched together and traded around the globe at lightning speed, it has become increasingly unclear who actually has title to them and who actually has the right to foreclose on these properties.
Title insurers have backed the titles of millions of these foreclosed properties and now potentially find themselves in a heap of trouble. Some of the biggest title insurers have already begun circling the wagons in an attempt at damage control. For example, one of the biggest title insurance companies in the United States, Old Republic National Title Insurance, has already declared that it will no longer write new policies for homes that have been foreclosed on by JPMorgan Chase and GMAC Mortgage.
So what happens if nearly all title insurers start avoiding foreclosed properties?
Won't that make it much more difficult for the banks to sell the massive backlog of foreclosed properties that they have accumulated?
In addition, Americans that have purchased foreclosed homes may now be facing some serious problems themselves. Millions of Americans may now "own" homes that they do not have clear title for. When it comes times to sell those homes, many Americans may find themselves unable to do so.
Needless to say, this is a complete and total mess.
Already, U.S. banks have a record number of foreclosed properties that they need to clear out, and now all of this scrutiny on foreclosure paperwork and all of these lawsuits are going to grind the process of getting these homes sold off to a standstill.
In fact, the true legacy of Foreclosuregate may be the massive amount of bank failures that it causes.
It would be difficult to understate how much of a nightmare Foreclosuregate is going to be for U.S. mortgage lenders. Having to go back through the paperwork of millions of old mortgages is going to be a complete and total disaster. If banks end up being unable to foreclose on a large number of bad mortgages, it could potentially be enough to put many banks out of commission for good. Not only that, but the legal fees that many of these banks will accumulate defending lawsuits related to Foreclosuregate will be astronomical.
The U.S. mortgage industry was already on the verge of death, and Foreclosuregate may just be the straw that broke the camel's back.
The reality is that U.S. banks are drowning in foreclosures and this current crisis is just going to make things a lot worse. Back in 2005, there were approximately 100,000 home repossessions in the United States. In 2009, there were approximately 1 million home repossessions in the U.S. and RealtyTrac is now projecting that there will be an all-time record of 1.2 million home repossessions in the United States this year.
For the U.S. mortgage industry, Foreclosuregate must feel like someone has dropped a bomb on them after they have already been beaten up and doused with gasoline.
Attorney Richard Kessler, who recently conducted a study that found serious errors in approximately three-fourths of court filings related to home repossessions, says that foreclosuregate could haunt the U.S. mortgage industry for the next ten years....
"Defective documentation has created millions of blighted titles that will plague the nation for the next decade."
While it may be easy to beat up U.S. mortgage lenders and say that they deserve all this, let us not forget that this is going to impact a whole lot of other people too.
It is going to become much harder to get a mortgage. It is going to become much harder to buy a home. It is going to become much harder to sell a home. The U.S. housing industry is likely to suffer a significant downturn due to all of this. There is even a good chance that the entire U.S. economy could be dragged down for an extended period of time.
So no, Foreclosuregate is not good news for anyone.
Well, except maybe for lawyers.
But for virtually everyone else this is really bad news. Any hope that the U.S. housing industry would experience a quick recovery is completely and totally gone.
this from about 2 years ago:
“Why did the Democrats block S-190?” you ask? Because Fannie and Freddie have friends in the Senate. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) is the current Senate Banking Committee Chairman. He received a sweetheart loan. In 2003 he received a cut rate $800,000.00 loan from Countrywide Financial. “Conflict of interest” you say? “Impropriety” you say? Why is Sen. Dodd still serving in the public interest? It seems that he is plainly serving the interest of Chris Dodd.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) also received a sweetheart loan of $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois at a very good rate. TOO good for the vast majority of most citizens. Earlier in his presidential campaign, Barack Obama chose a man named Jim Johnson to head up his VP (Vice Presidential) search committee.
From 1985 until 1990, Jim Johnson was the Managing Director of Lehman Brothers, which is now recently bankrupt because of the subprime mortgage collapse. From 1991 until 1998 – Jim Johnson was the CEO of Fannie Mae, when the CRA was expanded under the Clinton administration. Mr. Johnson improperly deferred $200 million in expenses as the CEO of Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae underreported Johnson’s compensation, which was originally reported as $6 to $7 million. Documents show that Johnson actually received $21 million. He was a contributor to Barack Obama’s campaign and gave the personal maximum allowable donation of $4,600.00.
Currently, Jim Johnson is a wealthy private banker and is on the board of Goldman Sachs, which has donated another $700,000.00 (seven hundred thousand) to Barack Obama’s campaign, and raised another $500,000.00 (five hundred thousand) through bundling. In June of 2008 it was announced that Jim Johnson quit as an Obama advisor because of pressure on account of his involvement in the current financial crisis. Jim also received a sweetheart loan from Countrywide Mortgage. Franklin Raines is Barack Obama’s housing issues advisor. Mr. Raines currently lives in a house valued at approximately $7.6 million dollars.
Raines served as an advisor in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1979 when the CRA was first enacted. From 1980 to 1991 he was an investment banker with Lazard Ltd. From 1991 to 1996 he was the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae, when the CRA was expanded to include subprime loans. From 1996 to 1998 he was the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) director for the Clinton administration. From 1999 to 2004 he was the CEO of Fannie Mae. He received a $25 million dollar “golden parachute” upon his departure. He also received a sweetheart loan from Countrywide Mortgage sometime between 1996 and 2004. Under Franklin Raines’ leadership as chairman and CEO, Fannie changed its charter to a more high-risk enterprise of buying mortgages and holding onto them. Fannie also overstated earnings by a mind-boggling $10.6 Billion and paid Raines and his management team massive bonuses tied to Earnings Per Share (EPS). Any company can hit its EPS targets if they don’t worry about minor details such as accounting rules, debt levels and risk factors.
Franklin Raines pulled in a total of $90 million between 1999 and 2003, the majority from bonuses. In 2004 the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) and OFHEO (Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight) sued Raines to recover some $50 million of his bonuses based on Enron-like accounting practices. Civil charges were also filed against Raines. As a result, Raines agreed to an “early retirement”, paid hefty fines and gave up lucrative retirement benefits (stock options valued at $15.6 million) for his role in accounting “errors”. Franklin Raines resigned from Fannie Mae due to “accounting irregularities”. From 1989 to 2008, Barack Obama received $126,349 in campaign support from Fannie Mae. This is four times more money from Fannie Mae per year than any other senator. It’s 49 times more than John McCain. The lawfirm, “Miner, Barnhill, and Galland” sued banks for not issuing enough subprime loans. They sued Citibank. Obama was a junior lawyer on the team that sued Citibank. What we’re seeing is bad government regulation that made banks become predatory lenders to fulfill a government mandate; to offer souped up, shell game, “Affordable mortgages.”
>>Needless to say, this is a complete and total mess.<<
What happens if the people tasked to actually unwind each one of these millions of loans just throw up their hands and give up?
I can actually see this rolling into a complete collapse of everything with a single pressing of the reboot button.
Sometimes the most practical solution is to wipe the hard drive and re-install the operating system. As bad as that sounds, it may be better than the alternatives. It won’t be voluntary. We’ll see how it plays out.
1) Did the "borrower" actually owe the money?
2) Assuming that he/she did,did the borrower fail to repay the loan in the way set out in the legal contract that he/she signed at the time of the loan's origination?
3) Assuming that he/she didn't,did the loan agreement stipulate that foreclosure was a possible consequence of having failed to do so?
If the answer to all three questions is "yes" then I have no problem with the foreclosure going forth...even if every "i" hasn't been dotted or every "t" hasn't been crossed.
If the answer to any of the three questions is "no" *then* I have a problem.A *big* problem.
If I wanted to type for an hour, I could give FReepers a real inside lesson on what transpired here, but suffice it to say that the major mortgage lenders like WAMU, and Countrywide figured out how to make a fortune on sub-prime mortgages, and Wall Street figured out how to make additional billions securitizing, selling and reselling near worthless mortgages. You and I were there to watch it all unfold, and we tried to warn many FReepers of the bubble which was about to burst.
Angelo Mozillo, whom I knew from my business back then, saw the writing on the wall, and dumped 100 million of his stock in the beginning of 2006. His company was writing mortgages for many illegal immigrants, and they were pocketing 15,000 on a 500,000 loan. I don’t mean to single out Countrywide, as this practice was rather commonplace with major lenders by 2005.
I will ad to my post that I believe Obama will try to do this by executive order, and try to bypass congress. He may even try to pull this over the lame duck session.
I hope by Jan the new conservatives we’ve elected are ready to go to DC with boxing gloves on!
>>I believe what will happen is that the government will step in and take over. If that happens, get ready to make your mortgage payments to uncle sam. Scary huh?<<
I think it is too big for uncle sam.
added keyword MERS
I have a niece doing the same. They have two cars, TiVo, cable, two Blackberries with unlimited plans and she just had her nose pierced.
We have no cable, Pay as you go phones, two used cars and we homeschool. We bought our house for 161,000 and couldn’t sell it for over 100,000 right now.
Yet we make our payments. Fools that we are, we make our payments.
George Soros & gang have targeted the US dollar and the destruction of the US. Their tentacles run deep and clear to the top of this Administration (as well as others, of course).
What they want and what they’ll get are not necessarily the same things.
Assuming that he/she didn't = Assuming that he/she did
“I think this may be prove to be the biggest fraud in human history.”
Doesn’t even come close to Social Security.
Granted, but they need to abide by regulations just as those losing their home are expected to. They chose to give these loans (even deadbeats can’t hold a gun to a lender’s head and force them to give them a home loan). Cutting corners and shady practices got us into this mess and considering they “were to big to fail” and got a bailout courtesy of the US taxpayer, at the very least they should be dotting all the i’s and crossing the t’s. If they have too much work they should hire more people. Lord knows there’s plenty of people that could use the job.
Cindie
Banks will get the laws they need sometime after election day, and foreclosures will resumeGreedy lawmakers hungry for campaign contributions -- "Money makes the world go around -- world go around -- world go around . . ."
But watch this:
WARNING!: The following video contains strong language, but not as strong as what is being heard inside the Foreclosure Factories and Foreclosure-Mills.
Video: Hitler Parody of HR 3808 News
There are also very good links to other entertaining videos
LOL, LOL !
If there was fraud here, a big portion of it was committed by people who bought houses they couldn't afford.
The Real Estate, Housing and Mortgage industry IS the economy. If they falter we’ll be Zimbabwe or at least Argentina in four to six months. BLOAT and buy canned goods/rice & beans/survival rations. Start stocking up on potable water, arms, first aid & medicine.
Right in the middle of this were dozens of the elitists in Washington, DC
One addition to your questions is it is necessary to identify to whom the borrower owes the money. I think that was one of the problems a couple years ago. The borrowers had mortgages, but the organization foreclosing could not prove they were the one to whom the money was owed.
There are actually a couple of squatters in some high quality homes in Seattle that are taking advantage of this. The borrower has walked away and these folks have moved in, requiring that anyone trying to evict them prove they have the authority to do so.
From what I understand, they all still live in the homes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.