Archive for December, 2009

And the award for most ineffective lender/bank/mortgage company goes to…..BANK OF AMERICA!

If you’re an attorney, real estate agent, borrower, short sale negotiator, investor or any other party trying to negotiate short sales or modifications in this challenging real estate environment, you undoubtedly know that Bank of America has developed a well-earned reputation or being the absolute worst company to deal with in trying to get a definitive answer or receive any consistent explaination for their policies or procedures.  Just for laughs, you should check out the Bank of America Short Sale Website to see what they claim their procedures are and how long they suggest it will take them to get you an answer.  The Bank of America Website can be found here. The fact of the matter is the website is absolutely worthless and provides no information of any value except for a phone number that promptly drops you into a black hole.

The Bank of America Black Hole

In gathering facts for this blog, I came across a huge volume of other blog postings which share consistent experiences with Bank of America.  Bottom line is you cannot get Bank of America to confirm receipt of paperwork and when you do, you cannot get BofA to make a decision.  I’ve got numerous files but I can document hours on the phone and proof of fax after fax and email after email to BofA that go unacnowledged or lost and then unacted upon.  Attached is a great article from the Washington Post from July 2009 where a BofA representative claimed they would have a system up and running that would have them making short sale decisions in seven days…..Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.  It takes seven days for BofA to pick up your phone call!

The fact that the nations largest bank and mortgage lender is in such disarray is bad, bad news for all of us.  You may not think it affects you if you’re not involved in the process, but they’re dragging us all down.  If you are involved and you need assistance in pushing your short sale through Bank of America, contact me at

www.mattweidnerlaw.com

In it’s Final Order published on December 30, 2009 the Florida Supreme Court Residential Mortgage Task Force Final Order estimated that there are currently 500,000 foreclosure cases pending in Florida. (The full text is can found here.) Many of these homeowners, and the millions of other homeowners who may be behind on their mortgage but not yet in foreclosure, are contacted by “loan modification specialists”, “loss mitigators”, “mortgage negotiators” and other individuals who claim they can assist the homeowner in obtaining a modifcation of their mortgage or help stop the foreclosure.

If It Sounds Too Good to Be True–It’s a Scam!

In response to the fact that homeowners fall victim to promises made by the individuals mentioned above–promises that most often cannot be fulfilled–the Florida Legislature passed sweeping changes to laws that aims to prevent individuals and companies from targeting homeowners in foreclosure or who are vulnerable to modification scams.  A review of the new law that appeared in the St. Petersburg Times can be found here.

A Good First Step, But Not Nearly Enough

While the new law is an excellent first step for consumers and vulnerable Floridians, the con artists and fraudsters will still prey upon consumers and the Attorney General’s Office probably lacks the resources to go after all but the most visible violators of the new laws. Another important issue to consider is that the broad nature of the law potentially makes the conduct of title agents and even Realtors subject to the law’s restrictions.  The bottom line is consumers need to rely on experienced and properly-licensed Florida attorneys to assist with any issues related to mortgages and foreclosure.

For More Information, visit my website at

www.mattweidnerlaw.com

An article in today’s St. Petersburg times provides a depressing snapshot of the Bay area’s home and economic realities…..Home prices fell 1.6 percent from September to October, erasing modest gains from June to August, according to the S&P Case-Shiller home price index.

Tampa Bay was the top price loser among 20 housing markets on the October index. “Coming after a series of solid gains, these data are likely to spark worries that home prices are about to take a second dip,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s.

The full text of the article can be found here. Several things are driving this continued drumbeat of bad news, but key among them are a continued failure to stem unemployment and job losses.  Its simple economics people….no jobs, no money, no mortgage payment.  Washington seems out of touch with this reality.

The Banks Are Exacerbating Their (Our) Own Problems.

The banks are exacerbating the problem with total inability to process mortgage modification applications or make decisions on short sale offers.  I know people argue the whole, “those dumb buyers bought to much house and we shouldn’t subsidize them thing” and while they may be true in that assessment that doesn’t answer the question…what do we do with all those homes?  Kick out the people who are in them?  Problem is there aren’t enough new buyers to get into the old homes. (High Unemployment = No Mortgages) The other reality is the vast majority of people who are in their homes could afford them when they qualified for the loan and are merely trapped in the crisis now.

The Banks are Exhibiting Gross Incompetence in This Crisis

Unless you’re involved in the system you would not believe how inefficient and non-functional the banks have been throughout this crisis.  Consider driving up to the McDonald’s drive through and giving your order.  You’re sure you gave it correctly because they repeated it back, gave your total and told you to drive forward.  When you get to the pickup window they swear they’ve never heard from you…EVER…they don’t have your order.  In fact they don’t even know how your car got in line to make it to the pick up line.  If you want to make an order, you’ll have to go place your order at the window.  Next time through the order window you get a written print out of your order.  When you get to the pick up window, same thing, “We don’t have your order!”  You show them their own order ticket (that they printed out two minutes ago) but they insist “We don’t have your order!”  Go through this routine six times. Spend hours doing it then be told, “we’re sorry sir, we don’t sell hamburgers here.” Scream.  Holler.  Speak to a “Manager” and be told “sorry noting we can do.”  Now consider that as a taxpayer, even a “deadbeat” hamburger-ordering American, you’re the one paying for that drive through line.  You the one that’s paying to put all those people walking around in the joint to work.  Except that the jerkoffs behind the counter aren’t Americans they’re call center employees in India and you’re paying good Amerian money so these people can tell you you’re not staying in your home.  It’s a disgusting example of what’s wrong with America.

So the question is what to do with the roughly 1000 homes that foreclose is filed on every month in Pinellas?

I say we kick down the doors, drag out the families living in them and throw the families on the street.  I mean these people can’t afford the home anyway so what good are they?  Now clearly this is not my position, but that seems to be the attitude of many people.  So the question remains, if we kick out the home owners (home borrowers since they don’t really own, they only “borrow” from the bank)?  What do we do with the homes?  As indicated above high unemployment prevents mortgages from being issued that new purchasers could use to buy these homes.

Modify/Short Sell and Move On

The only practical way to address the mortgage problem in the short term is to modify the existing mortgages to keep homeowners in the homes under terms that make economic sense.  The bank may be owed $2,000 per month, but if they kick the homeowner out, the home is trashed and the bank gets higher carrying costs each month.  The better strategy is to figure out what a homeowner can pay, then keep them in the home as long as they make the modified payment.  The bank gets something, excess inventory does not pile up and we can revisit the modifications if overall economic conditions improve.  This makes good economic and practical sense.  Economic sense because it gets money flowing again and the banks holding these mortgages have already taken their losses (many subsidized by you and me).  It makes practical sense because it is an effective way to deal with the excess inventory piling up across the country.

Kill the Deadbeats that Can’t Pay Their Mortgages!

Or, we could just roust the people out of their homes, line them up and shoot them.  I mean these people are the ones that caused the problems right?  Not the banks.  Not Republican and Democratic special interest groups.  Not Wall Street.  Not any of the myriad other special interest groups that fueled this insane Economics 101 anatomy of a collapse.  Let them off the hook entirely.  No wait, let’s not let them off the hook.  Let’s pay them bajillions of dollars as thanks for creating this problem. (On top of the bajillions they made during the run up to the crisis) After that, let’s pay them bajilions more to communciate with the homeowners in crisis. (the HAMP Program)  When the HAMP program doesn’t work out and homeowners are still stuck, let’s pay them all bajillions more in bonuses. (Record bonuses paid in 2009!)

A Motion to Dismiss filed by Matthew Weidner that was granted by Pinellas County  Judge Anthony Rondolino was recently published in the Florida Rules Reporter.  The published citation, which challenges the capacity of Plaintiffs to file foreclosure lawsuits against Defendants without proving their legal capacity to do so has the potential to grind foreclosure cases across the country to a halt.

For more information on the publication, click here.

An article in today’s St. Petersburg Times reports that, as discussed in my earlier posts, all residential foreclosure cases will be referred to mediation.  The full article can be found here.

Today’s headline from the Wall Street Journal…

Departing AIG Counsel Gets Millions as She Exits

the full text of the article can be found here. What’s great about this story, what’s just so fantastic is the reason she is resigning is a dispute over the huge bonuses AIG wanted to pay to their top execs.  To refresh your memory.  AIG conned millions of people and investors then lost big.  The federal government (heavily lobbied by high paid lobbyists) determined that AIG was “too big to fail” and decided to pump billions of dollars into AIG.  After the federal bailout AIG was fat and happy again (despite the fact that their poor business practices caused them to fail) and they demanded their “right” to pay the loser executives the high salaries they demanded.

Wonderful.