In other words, unless you applied for a loan modification related to an apartment building or something like that, you can’t be cancelled before the end of January.... (Continue reading)
Those words hold true whether you’re living in a three bedroom, two baths in Stockton, or a 7,500 square foot palace overlooking the ocean in Newport Beach. In fact, Bloomberg reported yesterday that mortgages over $1 million are now... (Continue reading)
Yes folks, it’s true… the banking lobby strikes yet again. No limit on interest rates charged by credit cards. It’s funny too, because I could have sworn there was a cap of 390% voted in, but maybe I... (Continue reading)
Don’t you get it yet? No one is buying your “trial modification” crap anymore. Trial modifications are scary as hell. The term “trial modification” is nothing more than a euphemism for “your house sold at auction yesterday”.... (Continue reading)
Assuming you’re an attorney or a homeowner who has lost a home and didn’t receive a letter from your slender or serrvicer explaining why you were declined for a loan modification, within thirty days of being declined, I believe the... (Continue reading)
Oh, you know what… stop treating me like I’m a stupid child… the banks are NOT back on their feet in any way, shape, or form… period. In fact, the banks have the same problems they did a year... (Continue reading)
I looked up Ms. Bean… it was easy, like falling off a blog. Melissa received at least $515,438 from banks and other financial institutions, including most notably JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. That’s a half... (Continue reading)
Each year, right about this time, I write a political year-in-review, which is read to T'was the Night Before Christmas. Hope you enjoy it and that you have a fabulous season.... (Continue reading)
He also said that he and congressional Democrats took "a series of difficult steps" to try to stabilize the financial system and pull the economy out of a deep recession, and I guess that it probably was difficult to do... (Continue reading)
Click the button below NOW. There is literally NO TIME TO SPARE... You don't even need to know your representative's name. All you need to know is your own name, address, phone and zip code. The letter... (Continue reading)
PLEASE TAKE TIME NOW TO contact your friends, family and business associates... stop whatever your staff is doing to give them time to call in. Put it on your Facebook pages, on your LinkedIn pages, Twitter it... re-tweet it! ... (Continue reading)
We need judges to be able to write down mortgages on primary residences because the banks aren’t doing it voluntarily, the administration’s Making Home Affordable plan isn’t working, and the result continues to be millions of foreclosures that are destroying... (Continue reading)
Tweet Mark Zanides Attorney at Law Attorney Mark Zanides is the managing partner of a firm he started to help other lawyers process and negotiate loan modification agreements with lenders and servicers. He also takes on some number of clients... (Continue reading)
As I’ve watched the economy deteriorate over the last two years, I have been amazed and bewildered at our government’s response, or lack thereof. And the more I’ve learned, the worse I’ve felt about our ability to fix what... (Continue reading)
As a nation, we don’t want to modify mortgages for the benefit of those in foreclosure, we need to modify mortgages for the benefit of those not yet in foreclosure. Or in other words, don’t modify my neighbor’s mortgage... (Continue reading)
I don’t know about you, but 1700 out of 650,000 makes me want to believe that the 1700 were mistakes that slipped through. It makes more sense to think that the HAMP program was designed to create foreclosures… and... (Continue reading)
So, how many chances are we going to give these ineffectual fools before we storm the castle? G.W. Bush and Hank Paulson totally blew it. Now Obama and Geithner have somehow managed to under-perform their abysmal track record.... (Continue reading)
President Obama… we haven’t heard from you on the housing and foreclosure crisis since last spring when you gave a speech to adoring and cheering crowds. You set their expectations way above what your program delivers, your administration has... (Continue reading)
Barr’s predominantly an academic. He taught at the University of Michigan Law School, was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Brookings Institute, and it looks like he’s co-written a couple of books with... (Continue reading)
I thanked my new present value oriented friend and hung up. Next I would need to find a homeowner whose loan had been modified directly by the bank as a result of their request. This wasn't easy. Lots of refinancing,... (Continue reading)
IndyMac/One West Bank… Mortifying abuse… completely devoid of good faith… harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive. Bravo, Judge Spinner… Bravo! When I read it for the first time, it literally brought tears to my eyes. ... (Continue reading)
I absolutely assure you that you will not be seeing or hearing anything you've seen or heard before. It's original thinking from Mandelman Matters, and it's based on a year of in-depth research into everything related to the foreclosure... (Continue reading)
Tweet Greatly Reduce or Even Eliminate Client Complaints, Increase Firm Effectiveness, Improve Morale & Increase Profitability. If you’re helping homeowners with loan modifications, this shouldn’t be missed under any circumstances. Â It’s shouldn’t be considered optional, and I’m only doing it... (Continue reading)
Okay, so does anybody have any questions about what’s going on here? Commercial real estate, a couple of trillion worth, is now circling the drain and soon we’re all going to hear that loud flushing sound we’ve all come... (Continue reading)
A Hundred Thousand Homeowners - A wake-up call in Washington. By contributing $1.00, you’ll be supporting something important… something that will be heard… something that will make a difference, because when politicians see that 100,000 people have taken the time to... (Continue reading)
Housing counselors and lending experts say that HAMP is having a meaningful impact on the global foreclosure rate, and Lucely Figures, a housing economist at Muddy’s expects at least another 3 billion loan modifications next year. ... (Continue reading)
Regardless, it's hard to imagine that you can cost investors $1.6 billion, get caught with a paper and email trail that shows that you knew what you were doing as you lied your ass off along the way, and then... (Continue reading)
1. University of Miami Law School says homeowners should hire lawyers if at risk of foreclosure. 2. Is the Great Recession Over in the Headlines? 3. ABC's Bob Weir and Truth. 4. House painting as a career choice. ... (Continue reading)
So far this year, while most Americans have seemingly been preoccupied with other things, the banking lobby has managed to have its way with every single piece of legislation our legislature has considered or ultimately passed. ... (Continue reading)
I’m announcing today that I will write and publish every story I receive about a homeowner being jerked around by IndyMac/One West Bank. Every single one. Write to me and I’ll put it out there. ... (Continue reading)
The motive, he said, was simple: force people into foreclosure as a way to earn higher bonuses. "We would call the customers and ask them what bridge they were going to live under," Ocwen's Ron Davis testified. ... (Continue reading)
Of course, I’m no real estate expert, but maybe… just maybe… our government should step in and do something about the crimes being perpetrated by banks and mortgage servicers against homeowners and our nation every day in this country. ... (Continue reading)
Tweet Wading through ambiguities in language in order to interpret the legislative intent of a new law isn’t easy, but the moral of the story is that it can be done, and thanks to the combined efforts of the attorneys... (Continue reading)
And I most definitely want the $28.3 million that the administration was about to piss away on a company offering to staff a call center with a handful of underachievers that will answer questions like: “How do I find the... (Continue reading)
And you do… absolutely have to, I mean. It’s important because until more Americans come to understand what’s really going on in this country today, we’re not going to be able to stop it. And until we stop... (Continue reading)
According to FDIC, the program was established a year ago at the height of the financial crisis, and was intended to “help thaw the freeze in bank-to-bank lending,” and it’s obviously been very effective in that regard. Mark that... (Continue reading)
Elizabeth... damn it. That doesn't make any sense and you have to know that. First of all, I would argue that you don't have to ask in advance where your $700 billion will be going because IT's $700... (Continue reading)
So, come to find out that the California Bar Journal is running ads for a company called “Nice Mod,” a DRE licensed company that presumably accepts no money until the client’s mortgage has been modified, paid off in full, and... (Continue reading)
2. Goldman must either start lending like a bank, or it's not allowed to keep its status as a "Financial Holding Company," which is what allows it to put more than $125 BILLION at risk without having to worry about... (Continue reading)
The judge also said that fixing the documents after the fact, which is what Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank did in the case he was ruling on, isn’t kosher, and I can’t believe that Wells or U.S. Bank would think... (Continue reading)
He says he's retired, but can you retire from lying? Can you be a retired liar? How would anyone know for sure when you retired? ... (Continue reading)
There’s no question now, but that the Bar is going to have to fix up their own glass house before their going to be allowed to collect dues from their members, and since they’ve been spending so much of their... (Continue reading)
There are lots of options available to homeowners in financial trouble today, and the most important point, according to both Zach and Rory, is that foreclosure is never the right choice.... (Continue reading)
There's no question that we NEED to reform the bankruptcy code to allow judges to modify the mortgages on primary residences. Why? If you have to ask, you're not paying attention...... (Continue reading)
From the beginning, the banking lobby has tried to blame this crisis on everyone but the banks. It was the banking lobby that started the P.R. campaign that blamed borrowers… then they blamed mortgage brokers… then sub-prime lenders… everyone... (Continue reading)
All in all, I wanted to list REC because I've heard from quite a few people that its become hard to tell who you can trust in the Phoenix area, and when you need a loan modification, the last thing... (Continue reading)
I have to say that I was not originally in favor of SB 94's provisions on advance fees, as I saw the language and what I thought to be the original intent as being harmful to homeowners as I saw... (Continue reading)
It would seem that they told themselves that the Funds' bleak prospects would change, come around, and that their incomes and reputations would remain intact. Just a couple of months later, on June 9, 2007, when the Funds' collapse... (Continue reading)
Does it bother you to realize how much more time you’ve dedicated to caring about who loses three grand, as compared with how much time to spend worrying about who is losing a house at this very minute? Did... (Continue reading)
I’ll jump in with an answer to that one: Because the banking lobby isn’t interested in promoting those… they’re only interested in promoting stuff about loan modifications because they don’t want homeowners to have professionals helping them when attempting... (Continue reading)
While Phil was talking with Marks a woman came into his office crying tears of joy. “Thank you, thank you,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get my loan modified for eight months now, and I was finally... (Continue reading)
So, as you might expect, our single mom tried to call her Wells Fargo representative at the number she had been given while she was saving her dream two months earlier… but she was never put through to her. ... (Continue reading)
1. A Trial Period Modification is NOT a Modification 2. Mandelman’s Mandates… 3. Bernanke Blathers… 4. A Deflationary Spiral That Dreams of Being a Standstill 5. How’s the President Doing With His Whole Loan Modification Thing? 6. How About a Principal Reduction? Why yes,... (Continue reading)
In the press release issued by the State Bar on Friday, Weiner said that the lawyers listed have “allegedly taken fees for promised services and then failed to perform those services, communicate with their clients or return the unearned fees.”... (Continue reading)
Well, as it turns out, one investor, Impac Funding/Impac Holdings, has run a calculator on this and discovered that you’ve been right all along. They would in fact be better off modifying… but they can’t seem to get servicers... (Continue reading)
And just to add further insult to life-threatening injury, Ms. Reed also received an email from the attorney for U.S. Bank. Apparently, US Bank doesn’t even want to see checks. They simply and unequivocally reject any extension to... (Continue reading)
Being a modification service is a hard and thankless job, in part because of dolts like you who stand willing to open your mouth and speak about a subject you know absolutely nothing about in the press. It’s unbelievable,... (Continue reading)
The NPV formula is also, according to the HAMP guidelines, to be disclosed and transparent… the two things it’s never been close to being, and which, I’ve been told by a very credible source who didn’t want to be identified... (Continue reading)
You can just imagine what happened next. The Prices began calling the servicer asking to speak with the three representatives that had been speaking with over the last several months… the ones that had told them about the waiver... (Continue reading)
They declined to participate. Am I the only one that feels like a 5 year-old just told me he or she wasn’t going to take a bath as requested? Oh really? Get in the damn tub now…... (Continue reading)
First of all… I’m sure the house-sitting Wells executive that hosted parties throughout the summer never invited anyone from Wells Fargo… or B of A… or Chase, IndyMac, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I’m sure most of the exec’s friends are... (Continue reading)
With the foreclosure crisis still being allowed to ravage the country unchallenged, the risk to banks going forward is both significant and real. The line between being accepted by the public and being a pariah, is as thin as... (Continue reading)
Regardless, the Commission has determined that there is an acceptable way to work under SB 94, AT LEAST UNTIL THE LAW CAN BE CHALLENGED IN THE COURTS. And the thirty-some firms will soon be forty-some and then fifty-some. ... (Continue reading)
The HOPE NOW people reported a six percent jump in homeowners delinquent by 60-days plus. That means that 3.1 million more Americans are now behind on their mortgage payments, one step closer to losing their homes.... (Continue reading)
What I find most worth noticing is that this past week, the National Association for Business Economics reported that almost half the economists surveyed believed the Fed’s policy to be inflationary. Yet the fact is, not only is the... (Continue reading)
Extending unsecured credit to homeowners that are already struggling to pay their bills, and then having to sue them in order to collect simply isn't a business model that attorneys, or anyone else for that matter, are likely to embrace.... (Continue reading)
Months ago we weren’t sure of many of these things and so you could say just about anything related to the loan mod process and no one could call you on it. Now the jury has come in. Guess you’ll... (Continue reading)
Further, if the legislature is allowed to affect attorney compensation practices in this instance, what will they attempt to limit next? Homeowners have the right to representation before losing their homes to foreclosure. Attorneys have the right to... (Continue reading)
Yet, here in California, the legislature is dangerously close to passing a bill that would establish quite clearly that lawyers… all lawyers… are individuals not to be trusted. And even more so, that attorneys in large number are the... (Continue reading)
It was the worst of times… it was the worst of times. Okay, so go ahead… tell me your story… Homeowners #1 – The Smiths We bought our home in 2002 for $700,000. By 2005 it appraised for $1.1 million. We... (Continue reading)
So, the Federal Reserve said: “Okay, we’re sorry,” and released the information. What? It could happen. It didn’t, of course, but it could… maybe… someday. In real life, the Fed is preparing an appeal. ... (Continue reading)
Today, his mother said: "Now the bank will get what they wanted... his house."... (Continue reading)
What's the deal Obama? I don't need this kind of charity. If you're intent on continuing this sort of thing, I'm going to start writing articles in support. ... (Continue reading)
I read her testimony throughout last night, until the sun started to rise outside my window. And when I finished, I sat there and I cried. It’s been a long road… and I pray that this document at... (Continue reading)
Computer technology has always annoyed me. It almost never works the way it should, always costs more than it was supposed to, and the people who write the manuals are clearly not people with whom I’d want to converse. ... (Continue reading)
“It is now widely understood that the current economic situation originated primarily in the largely unregulated non-bank sector. Banks watched as mortgage brokers and others made loans to consumers that a good banker just would not make and they... (Continue reading)
Of course, today Attorney General Cuomo has crossed over to the other side and is looking to play a very different role in the foreclosure crisis. Today, he’s going after mortgage brokers, rating agencies, loan modification firms, Fannie, Freddie…... (Continue reading)
So, now a federal bankruptcy judge in Phoenix, Judge Randolph Haines, has ordered that a top Wells Fargo executive must come and testify about the bank's loan modification policies. ... (Continue reading)
Before Traut Law Group agrees to take on a client the case is reviewed by a strategy panel. The Traut Law Group is comprised of some of the most experienced and talented Real Estate & Mortgage minds in the... (Continue reading)
In 2009, not only did all of that happen… and more, but more importantly, in 2009 we all started to realize that our way of life… the one we’ve come to know over the last thirty years, would not be... (Continue reading)
August finally arrived, and each had their convention, Starring McCain's Jewish sidekick, and John Kerry, the Frenchman. And while Barack was on fire, McCain seemed to be ailin'. Until from straight out of nowhere, rode in a woman named Palin.... (Continue reading)
Okay, so I just got back from vacation... and I'm feeling particularly impish. So, I thought it might be a good time to bring up a couple of things that have been swirling around in my overly active and... (Continue reading)
“A loan modification is the result of a renegotiation of the terms of an existing legally binding contract, which results in the revision of some of the material terms of that contract. To think that every consumer is going... (Continue reading)
I’ve got it now… so, the Federal Reserve recommends that consumers contact an attorney when involved in contract disputes with banks, but the California legislature is about to pass a law saying that lawyers can’t charge a client a fair... (Continue reading)
When the Nevada legislature began discussing a proposed bill that threatened the very existence of the private sector loan modification firms, Mandy wasn't dissuaded for a moment. Although she had never considered a career lobbying government before, she... (Continue reading)
Another servicer, Ocwen, is apparently in line to receive more than $500 million from the Treasury, but is defending a federal class-action suit for harassing homeowners, charging illegal fees, and adding unnecessary insurance premiums to borrowers' bills. The complaint... (Continue reading)
HERE IT IS... Issue #2 of Mandelman's Monthly Museletter! INSIDE THIS MONTH'S ISSUE: Scammer Servicers, JPMChase Mods Begin at Home, The Servicers Pledge, Countrywide's Lying Again, Barney's Pissed, 1/10 in CA, Banker Bonuses, FTC's Hunt, Mod Performance, New... (Continue reading)
What we’re apparently missing is the “spirit of innovation” and according to the president, we have to recapture it. I knew this was going to end up being our fault somehow. Okay, who was supposed to be watching... (Continue reading)
When the client walked into Feldman’s law offices with his documents in hand, Steve had been told that the man had a sale date that was two days away, but very quickly found that the sale date was that same... (Continue reading)
People are losing their homes. And they feel let down. Let down by their banks, let down by their government, let down by society. Many still blame them for having created the situation in which they now... (Continue reading)
Pay $45,000 for a car worth $500, over a 3-4 day period, so that someone can buy a car that may not even be made here, and then only target those who would have likely purchased a car to replace... (Continue reading)
Servicers charging loan modification fees? See, I had thought President Obama said that no one should ever have to pay for a loan modification. No? No kidding… I was almost positive that’s what he said. ... (Continue reading)
Obviously, I like Harvey Garte a lot. He's like an uncle of mine that always tells me when I have something stuck in my teeth, or that my hair is sticking up. And if you ask me, I... (Continue reading)
Breaking News: In a freak accident earlier this morning, Bad Biz Finder’s Erin Baldwin was doused by a large bucket of water. A witness reported seeing steam being emitted through her skin, and then she began shrinking in size... (Continue reading)
My Universal CarCare program will not cost most taxpayers any more money than they're paying now. I've proposed that the plan be funded through a special sales tax on jewelry, which after what I've done to the economy, no... (Continue reading)
It occurs to me that transparency is not something you should need to provide. As long as you don’t add any opacity, you’ll have transparency, no? ... (Continue reading)
Sub-prime borrowers hate moving… especially their refrigerators. They can't afford fancy moving companies who come pack everything up and unpack it at the next homestead. They call friends like me who are stupid enough to always own a truck. The... (Continue reading)
Geithner went on to say: "We have the deepest and most liquid markets for risk-free assets in the world. We're committed to bring our fiscal deficits down over time to a sustainable level. We believe in a strong dollar ... and... (Continue reading)
"The evidence from a huge national database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater... (Continue reading)
Subscribe to the Mandelman Muse by clicking the SUBSCRIBE tab and you'll receive my electronic "Museletter" at least once a month... and maybe more often than that... but I'm not promising. Do it today!... (Continue reading)