tagged w/ home foreclosure
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Mortgage industry employees are still signing documents they haven’t read and using fake signatures more than eight months after big banks and mortgage companies promised to stop the illegal practices that led to a nationwide halt of home foreclosures.Mortgage industry employees are still signing documents they haven’t read and... more
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Several thousand demonstrators marched through the New York financial district this past week in a protest led by labor unions. They said Wall Street's biggest banks must account for record profits while average Americans still suffer financially.Several thousand demonstrators marched through the New York financial district this... more
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The mortgage crisis affects everyone.
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(CNN) -- A 90-year-old Akron, Ohio, woman who shot herself as sheriff's deputies tried to evict her from her foreclosed home became a symbol of the nation's home mortgage crisis Friday.
Addie Polk is being treated at Akron General Medical Center after shooting herself at least twice in the upper body Wednesday afternoon, her city councilman said.
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, mentioned Polk on the House floor Friday during debate over the latest economic rescue proposal.
"This bill does nothing for the Addie Polks of the world," Kucinich said after telling her story. "This bill fails to address the fact that millions of homeowners are facing foreclosure, are facing the loss of their home. This bill will take care of Wall Street, and the market may go up for a few days, but democracy is going downhill."
Neighbor Robert Dillon, 62, used a ladder to enter a second-story bathroom window of Polk's home after he and the deputies heard loud noises inside, Dillon said.
"I was calling her name as I went in, and she wasn't responding," he said.
He found her lying on a bed, and he could see she was breathing. He also noticed a long-barreled handgun on the bed, but thought she just had it there for protection. He touched her on the shoulder.
"Then she kind of moved toward me a little and I saw that blood, and I said, 'Oh, no. Miss Polk musta done shot herself,' " Dillon said.
He hurried downstairs and let the deputies in. He said they told him they found Polk's car keys, pocketbook and life insurance policy laid out neatly where they could be found, suggesting she intended to kill herself.
(CNN) -- A 90-year-old Akron, Ohio, woman who shot herself as sheriff's deputies... more
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Foreclosures hit another record high in August: 304,000 homes were in default and 91,000 families lost their houses.
More than 770,000 homes have been repossessed by lenders since August 2007, when the credit crunch took hold.
The report from RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosures properties, is the latest in string of bad news for housing.
Foreclosure filings of all kinds, including notices of defaults, notices of auctions and bank repossessions, grew 12% in August over July, and 27% compared with August 2007.
The 27% jump over last August represents a more modest year-over-year increase than in previous months, but that's only because the housing crisis was already underway in August 2007, which saw a big spike in foreclosures.
"In August 2008 the total number of U.S. properties that received foreclosure filings, as well as the national foreclosure rate, were both the highest we've seen in any month since we began issuing our report in January 2005," RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio said in a statement.
"We've been saying that the foreclosure trend has not yet peaked," said Doug Robinson, a spokesman for the foreclosure prevention organization NeighborWorks America. "Before it was a subprime problem," he said. "Now, it's everybody's problem."
Putting filings on hold
The August figures would have been worse, had it not been for new legislation passed in several states, including Maryland and Massachusetts, designed to make lenders wait before filing notices of default.
In Massachusetts, for example, a 90-day waiting period went into effect on May 1. Every Massachusetts homeowner now has to be notified of their lenders's intention to file a notice of default against them, and they get a 90 day window during which they can attempt to bring their payments up to date. Lenders are prohibited from filing a first notice of default until after that period.
The impact has been immediate. RealtyTrac recorded no new notices of initial default for the state during August. That helped drive down total foreclosure filings in the state by more than 46% compared with last year.
Other states didn't fare as well. Nevada once again had the highest rate of filings in the nation. One of every 91 households, or 11,706 families, received a foreclosure notice of some kind during the month, and more than 4,000 others lost their homes.
More than 101,000 Californians received foreclosure notices, which comes to about one in every 130 households, while more than 33,000 people there lost their homes. Arizona had the third-highest rate with one out of every 182 households in default.
All of these states saw tremendous home price run-ups during the boom, which meant that many buyers had to use exotic, risky loans in order to be able to afford a home. These mortgages include subprime, hybrid adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) that feature two or three years of low introductory rates before the loans reset to higher, often unaffordable levels and cause borrowers to default.
In some of the other hard hit states, such as Michigan (which had one filing for every 332 households) and Ohio (one filing per 444 households), which never saw a housing boom, delinquencies are being driven by fundamental economic woes like unemployment, rather than pricey real estate.
Eight of the top 10 worst performing metro areas were in California. Stockton, in the Central Valley, had the highest rate in the nation with one in every 50 households receiving a foreclosure filing during the month.
"You go up and down the central part of [California] and that's where you're seeing the carnage," said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac's director of marketing. Home sales are actually up in many of these cities, the prices have dropped, often precipitously. "What's selling is the bank owned properties," he said. To top of pageForeclosures hit another record high in August: 304,000 homes were in default and... more
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The City of Milwaukee is digging in its heels in its attempt to foreclose on the home of a man who failed to pay a fine for parking an unlicensed van in his parents’ driveway.
The city filed a response Thursday asking the judge to deny the request from Peter Tubic and his attorney to set aside the foreclosure or reduce his fine to the original $50.
"Giving special treatment out of sympathy to one property owner or waiving the statutory requirements of one property owner because his case was reported by the media, when there are dozens of others whose homes may have been foreclosed upon after personal difficulties, would destroy the integrity" of the foreclosure process, attorneys for the city wrote in their motion.
Tubic's case drew national attention after Public Investigator wrote about the story Aug. 3.
The city foreclosed on Tubic's $245,000 home on the southwest side in July after trying for years to collect the fine, which escalated to more than $2,600 and resulted in a tax lien.
Tubic admits to ignoring the many notices he received seeking payment but says he was emotionally unfit to deal with the situation.
The Social Security Administration has deemed Tubic mentally and physically disabled since 2001. He has a host of physical diseases and a personality disorder that limits his cognitive functioning, according to documents from the administration.
Tubic's attorney, Mike Gonring of Quarles & Brady, which is handling Tubic's case pro bono, said Tubic isn't looking for special treatment because the media covered his case.
"He has legitimate reasons," Gonring said. "This isn't a case of someone who didn't pay his mortgage. . . . He had a car without tags in his driveway. It's not like every other case."
Mayor Tom Barrett, who vowed to step in to ensure Tubic doesn't lose his home, did not return phone calls seeking comment on the issue Thursday.
A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 11. If the city retains ownership of the house, Tubic can remain there as a renter until the house is sold. After that, the new homeowners can decide if they want to continue renting out the house. Tubic can file a petition with the city to collect whatever money remains from the sale of the house after the city takes its cut.
The City of Milwaukee is digging in its heels in its attempt to foreclose on the home... more
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