When listing and selling a home in a short sale, homeowners should consider including language to limit recovery of any unpaid amounts by the mortgage company (known as the deficiency balance). In Florida, we recommend this limitation be placed in the Purchase and Sale Contract. This way when the lender/bank…
The special foreclosure courts in HIllsborough county are shutting down the end of this week. Does this mean the foreclosure crisis is finally at an end? Not exactly. In 2010, the Florida legislature approved legislative funding to the Florida court system to help eliminate the backlog in foreclosure cases. Filing…
It has been my practice to advise clients to remain current on their Homeowners Association dues (HOA) even though they are behind or in foreclosure on their first mortgage. Today, an article appeared in the St. Pete Times describing a local company Prop. Inc. and its purchase of 71 properties…
I have discussed the many second mortgages that can be removed or stripped off clients’ property in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy due to the low home values in Florida. Today, I’d like to discuss other possibilities to remove a second mortgage that we are seeing. Today for instance, I received…
Have you been considering walking away from your house payments and mortgage? According to a recent CNN article, many homeowners are getting ruthless and voluntarily choosing to walk away. We are seeing this more and more among our foreclosure defense and short sale clients. Sometimes it is better to take…
Elusive principal reductions are hard to come by, but we recently scored a very big win on behalf of one of our prior foreclosure clients turned Chapter 13 client. This week Ocwen agreed to a reduction in principal from $130,000 to $49,000 at 2.625% interest. This family’s principal and interest…
A lot of our clients in the Tampa Bay area have questions regarding how exactly their credit score will be impacted by a short sale, foreclosure, or a bankruptcy. A recent article by FICO, Banking Analytics Blog, researched these very questions. The FICO study focused on three sample consumers with…
Sheila Blair, FDIC chairman, announced Friday a new proposal to resolve the foreclosure fraud issues that have arisen, particularly in Florida, a judicial foreclosure state. It is being presented as a settlement of the fraudulent issues by the five major mortgage servicers. The nation-wide “cash for keys” program would provide…
Currently, the Bankruptcy Code does not allow a bankruptcy court to modify a bankruptcy debtor’s first mortgage on his or her primary home. It does not prevent a mortgage company from modifying a loan if it voluntary agrees, but nothing allows the bankruptcy judge the power to force a principal…
On March 9, 2011, Bank of America Corp. (BAC) announced it is segregating its good and bad mortgages into two separate entities. After swallowing Countrywide, Bank of America is America’s biggest lender with 13.9 million mortgages. Often referred to as being too big to fail, frankly it is also too…