How do I make my mortgage payments for the next three months? When people asked and learned that I am able to work from home, they are a little envious. What they don’t understand is that one cannot “work from home” indefinitely. At some point, there will be no work…
If you happen to have Ocwen as a mortgage servicer (or former servicer), you may have an excellent reason to challenge their books. Check out this quote from an Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals case out this week in University of Puerto Rico Retirement System et al v. Ocwen et…
Reverse mortgages are a great way to provide retirement funding but they do come with traps for the unwary. In a recent Forbes article, “Additional Risks of Reverse Mortgages,” complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau remain high. Areas of concern include servicers that: make it difficult to coordinate payment;…
In a recent case, Harbin v. Roundpoint Mortgage Co., No. 18-11713 (11th Cir. Dec. 17, 2018), the Eleventh Circuit confronted a situation where a borrower applied for a loan modification and was told that the foreclosure sale was “temporarily postponed.” This borrower decided not to file bankruptcy to stop the…
Most of us still use the New Year as an opportunity to review the past year and set goals for the New Year. My own practice has grown tremendously from this goal setting. We target the best strategies to grow our practice and help our clients to get back on…
I’ve written before about the requirement in FHA mortgages that the lender send certified letters and conduct a face-to-face meeting with a borrower before initiating a foreclosure. When a lender fails to do that, the may be liable for the damages sustained in a wrongful foreclosure. There are other advantages…
If you have a FHA mortgage and have not had a face-to-face meeting with your lender, this may be the ticket to stop the foreclosure! Foreclosures are on the rise in Florida: Tampa/St. Pete is up 75%; Orlando is up 198% and Jacksonville is up an astonishing 332%. While Tampa…
It’s well known that Florida foreclosure attorneys vary in experience and results. Some do loan mods, some don’t. Some do short sales, some don’t. Some file bankruptcies, some don’t. Some do appeals, some don’t. We’ve always taken what I call a holistic approach. While we can try for a dismissal…
During the financial crisis, many banks, especially Bank of America, N.A., received credit under the National Mortgage Settlement Act when they wrote off an underwater second mortgage. This was very common in Florida because many 80/20 mortgages were written around 2004-2007 and values crashed in 2008. However, now years later,…
During the mortgage meltdown, many homeowners received financial assistance from a fund set up by Florida called Florida’s Hardest Hit Program. This was primarily for folks whose income dropped during the recession. Due to lack of funds, the program has now ceased taking applications. However, there is one assistance program…