NJ to Suspend Tens of Thousands of Foreclosures

Mortgage lenders ordered to appear in NJ court
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Six lenders who have combined to file nearly 30,000 Foreclosure actions in New Jersey this year face the possible suspension of their operations next month under a court order announced Monday by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. The action follows a report submitted to the Supreme Court that, citing depositions and court filings in other states, paints a picture of systemic abuses in the filing of foreclosures that include so-called "robo-signing," in which e...

Mortgage lenders ordered to appear in NJ court - National Business - MiamiHerald.com
Newark, N.J. -- Six lenders who have combined to file nearly 30,000 Foreclosure actions in New Jersey this year face the possible suspension of their operations next month under a court order announced Monday by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner. The action follows a report submitted to the Supreme Court that, citing depositions and court filings in other states, paints a picture of systemic abuses in the filing of foreclosures that include so-called "robo-signing," in which emp...

New Jersey warns foreclosure fiends
New Jersey has fired a shot across the Banking Industry's bow. The state's Supreme Court ordered the biggest lenders to prove they are acting lawfully in processing Foreclosures. While that only seems like common sense, Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner told the Wall Street Journal he believes this is the first case in which the state courts have placed that particular ball where it belongs, in the Bankers' court. Time for a Mortgage rule makeover? "It's important that the judiciary ens...

NJ Top Court May Block Foreclosures
TRENTON, N.J. (CBS 2) — New Jersey’s highest court was threatening to block six major lenders, suspected of irregularities, from foreclosing on most Homeowners. Those lenders, which include Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank, will have to appear in court next month and defend their Foreclosure practices. The Chief Justice of New Jersey’s Supreme Court said the court has become increasingly concerned about the accuracy and reliability of documents submitted to the office o...

Checkmate | BofA, GMAC, Chase, Wells, Citi, Onewest Face N.J. Foreclosure Freeze
KABOOM! BofA, GMAC, Chase, Wells, Citi, Onewest Face N.J. Foreclosure Freeze This is coming in from multiple fronts... Chink in the Armor The State Supreme Court of NJ has ordered a halt to all foreclosure in the state of NJ. This is most excellent news for the reason you may not realize: NJ is owned by the Wall St. Bankers. Remember the movie Copland about a town in NJ owned and run by a bunch of NYC cops? Guess who used to be Governor of NJ? Corzine. Guess what his job was before he became G...

Bank Of America Lawsuits Highlight Broken, Ineffective Mortgage Modification Programs
Bank of America Lawsuits Highlight Broken, Ineffective Mortgage Modification Programs The Attorneys General of Nevada and Arizona last week slapped Bank of America with lawsuits alleging widespread Fraud occurrs in the bank’s mortgage modification programs. BofA, the nation’s biggest bank, has consistently lagged behind the other big mortgage servicers in successfully modifying mortgages for troubled borrowers. Andrew Jakabovics and I also caught the bank violating the contract it...

Wells Fargo 'pick-a-pay' settlement - $2 billion
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Wells Fargo, in a settlement with California's Attorney General announced Monday, agreed to provide $2 billion worth of loan modifications to nearly 15,000 Homeowners. Under the deal, the bank is also paying a total of $32 million to borrowers who lost their homes to Foreclosure, according to the AG. Email Print Comment Attorney General Jerry Brown said Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) will offer modifications to 14,900 homeowners, who have so-called "pick-a-pay&q...;

Wells Fargo agrees to modify California ARM loans
Wells Fargo Bank has agreed to make $2 billion in loan modifications for California Homeowners with risky pay-option, adjustable-rate Mortgages that Wells purchased from other banks, and to pay $32 million to 15,000 borrowers who had similar loans and lost their homes to Foreclosure, according to an agreement with the California Attorney General's office. "Customers were offered adjustable-rate loans with payments that mushroomed to amounts that ultimately thousands of borrowers could not aff...

Wells Fargo Agrees to $2 Billion in Loan Modifications
Source: Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to provide loan modifications worth more than $2 billion to California Homeowners who have “pick-a-pay” loans, California Attorney General Jerry Brown said. Wells Fargo, the largest U.S. home lender, also will pay $32 million to borrowers whose homes were lost in Foreclosure, Brown said today in a statement. Pick-a-pay, or pay option adjustable-rate Mortgage loans, allowed borrowers to make payments at various levels, according to Brown. The highest l..

Strategy Number One: Shift Money from the Big Banks
One of the most discouraging things about the last two years was seeing swing voters in focus groups, when asked what President Obama's economic strategy was, repeat different versions of "Well, I know he said we needed to save the banks. Beyond that, I'm not sure." When Obama in his first State of the Union gave a vigorous defense of bailing out the banks, saying he knew it about as popular as a root canal, and saying "I get it", it was very memorable to voters. But when his predictions about...

LA Homeowners Arrested During Foreclosure Protest - Video
Apparently, something like 22 out of 120 Protesters were arrested on Thursday for trespassing when they refused police orders to vacate the premises as they demonstrated in front of the Chase bank branch at the corner of Hope and 4th in downtown  Los Angeles. The Homeowners say they are members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which bills itself as “a statewide Community Organization,” and the Home Defenders League, which was started by some of t...

In Obama Anti-Foreclosure Program, Thousands Of Homeowners Strung Along For A Year
More than 29,000 troubled American Homeowners have been stuck in Mortgage modification purgatory for at least a year, with no end in sight, under the Obama administration's anti-foreclosure program, according to a recently released report from a Watchdog panel appointed by Congress. These Homeowners were supposed to receive lower payments on a trial basis lasting three months and then gain so-called permanent Mortgage modifications--lowered payments lasting five years. But more than a year aft...

GOP Delays Confirmation Of Obama Nominee Because He Might Want To Help Underwater Homeowners
GOP Delays Confirmation Of Obama Nominee Because He Might Want To Help Underwater Homeowners The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the Obama Administration has been trying to cajole Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into writing down loan principal for troubled homeowners. Incoming House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL), however, is not on-board with the effort. And he’s evidently not alone. In fact, the GOP is so dead-set against helping borrowers who are u...

In California, Homeowners at Risk Struggle to Find Lawyers
In California, where Foreclosures are more abundant than in any other state, Homeowners trying to win a Loan Modification have always had a tough time. Gregory Royston, a Real Estate attorney, said winning modifications to Mortgages was never easy and often impossible. Now they face yet another obstacle: hiring a lawyer. Sharon Bell, a Retiree who lives in Laguna Niguel, southeast of Los Angeles, needs a modification to keep her home. She says she is scared of her bank and its plentiful resou...

How HAMP modifications are escalated
After publishing my post this morning about the way disputes are resolved in HAMP, I went back and forth with Treasury a few times. And it turns out that there’s much more to it than the Homeownership Preservation Foundation — although finding out exactly how it all works is basically impossible unless you know someone at Treasury. Transparent this is not. As far as I can make out, HPF runs something called the HOPE Hotline. The hotline then passes callers through to counselors who ...

22 Foreclosure Activists Arrested at Chase Bank in Downtown Los Angeles
In addition to the courts, the state Attorneys General and investors wanting to put back soured Mortgages on them, the banks have had to increasingly contend with direct action at their worksites. Thursday in downtown Los Angeles, 22 Activists, including the head of SEIU Local 721 and members of ACCE (the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), were arrested outside a Chase bank for protesting the Foreclosure crisis. The activists set up a “living room” in front of the...

Are Banks Afraid to Foreclose on the Rich?
I got this report from an attorney who is doing work in one of the top five Foreclosure states. I’m relying this account in a somewhat sanitized form; he provided far more in the way of specifics. One of his colleagues has a monthly Mortgage payment considerably above $20,000 a month. He has not made a single payment in over 18 months. He has also not received a Foreclosure notice or even as much as a call from his servicer. He knows of 20 people personally in his community who have mor...

Summary for Week ending December 18th
by CalculatedRisk on 12/19/2010 09:20:00 AM Note: here is the economic schedule for the coming week. Below is a summary of the previous week, mostly in graphs. A key story was that the proposed tax Legislation was passed by the Senate and House, and was signed into law on Friday. • Housing Starts increased slightly in November Click on graphs for larger image in graph gallery. Total housing starts were at 555 thousand (SAAR) in November, up 3.9% from the revised October rate of 534 thous...

Group calls for national mortgage servicing standards
A group of 52 academics and investment professionals are pressing federal Regulators to adopt national Mortgage servicing standards as soon as possible. Controversy over problems in Mortgage documentation now emerging in Foreclosure proceedings is threatening recovery in the Housing Market and the nation's entire economy, according to the authors of the letter, which was sent to federal financial regulators. "The chaotic situation in the Mortgage market today demands immediate action to ensure...

Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter Part 51
As the Foreclosure mills get ready to start up in January, it's important to note that 27 states don't have judges decide Foreclosure proceedings, and in those states, trustees hired by the banks conduct proceedings for evictions. All 50 U.S. states are investigating whether banks and loan servicers used false documents and signatures to justify hundreds of thousands of foreclosures. Attorneys general in non- judicial states, including Arizona, Texas and Washington, are conducting independent pr...

Arlen Specter accuses John Roberts and Samuel Alito of lying under oath at their confirmation hearings.
The former Republican, on the way out of the Senate, thinks this is worth saying: "The Supreme Court has been eating Congress' lunch by invalidating Legislation with judicial Activism after nominees commit under oath in confirmation proceedings to respect congressional fact finding and precedents... "Ignoring a massive congressional record and reversing recent decisions, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito repudiated their confirmation Testimony given under oath and provided the key votes t...

Roberts's Rules - Magazine - The Atlantic
Last July, I went to the Supreme Court to interview John G. Roberts Jr., who had just completed his First Term as Chief Justice of the United States. I was finishing a book about judicial temperament, and Roberts, who is a keen Student of constitutional history, had agreed to share some thoughts on the subject. I had interviewed Roberts once before, when his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was stalled in the Senate, but I had not talked to him since h...

Heads Up, Supreme Court! Specter Minces No Words on His Way Out
By Ashby Jones On his way out of the public spotlight, Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.), is heeding the words of Dylan Thomas and refusing to go gentle into that good night. Earlier this year, Specter lost his Reelection bid in the Democratic primary. So his time in the upper chamber is growing short. No time like the present, he seems to be figuring, to tell the world, well, how he really feels. In a Speech on Tuesday morning, Specter saved most of his bullets for the Senate itself, saying it had ...

Specter issues parting blow to Roberts, Alito
Source: CNN In his final Speech on the Senate floor, Specter, the former GOP chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, chastised Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito for "eroding the constitutional mandate of separation of powers." "The Supreme Court has been eating Congress' lunch by invalidating Legislation with judicial Activism after nominees commit under oath in confirmation proceedings to respect congressional fact finding and precedents," said Specter, who voted in favor ...

Tim Chen: The Dangers of no Preset Spending Limit Cards
While most people understand that using all of their available credit can be detrimental, they don't understand why it affects their Credit Score. It can be summed up in two words: Credit Utilization. Credit utilization is the amount of credit that a consumer has consumed versus the amount of credit that consumer has available. It is this ratio that FICO uses as part of the formula for a consumer's "amounts owed" section. This section makes up 30% of a person's FICO score. As FICO is the larg...