This Country is in the middle of a foreclosure feeding frenzy!
Foreclosure activity up across most US metro areas
By ALEX VEIGA
http://www.ajc.com/business/foreclosure-activity-up-across-696779.html?printArticle=y
The Associated Press
Those states saw housing values surge during the housing boom years. When the boom ended, values collapsed and foreclosures soared.
But the latest data show that many of the metro areas in those states saw a decline in the number of households receiving foreclosure-related filings, while many cities in other states saw a spike in foreclosure activity.
“The epidemic is spreading from the states at the ground zero of the foreclosure problems out into areas that hadn’t been previously affected,” said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac.
The trend is the latest sign that the nation’s foreclosure crisis is worsening as homeowners facing high unemployment, slow job growth and uncertainty about home prices continue to fall behind on their mortgage payments.
In all, 133 out of 206 metropolitan areas with at least 200,000 residents posted an annual increase in foreclosure activity in the three months ended Sept. 30, RealtyTrac said.
The firm tracks notices for defaults, scheduled home auctions and home repossessions — warnings that can lead up to a home eventually being lost to foreclosure.
Eleven out of the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas saw foreclosure activity increase in the third quarter compared to the same period last year.
The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area registered the sharpest annual increase — 71 percent. One in every 129 households received a foreclosure filing.
The Chicago-Naperville-Joliet metropolitan area posted the second-highest annual jump, a 35 percent increase. One in every 84 households received a foreclosure notice.
Among the other metro areas where foreclosure activity jumped by a large margin this summer were Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, up 26 percent; Detroit-Warren-Livonia, at nearly 23 percent; and, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, up 20 percent.
Economic woes, such as unemployment or reduced income, continue to be the main catalysts for foreclosures this year. The U.S. unemployment rate hit 9.6 percent last month.
In the Seattle metro area, unemployment stood slightly lower at 8.5 percent in August and has been edging lower. It was 8.7 percent in August last year.
Still, many troubled homeowners have been unable to hang on. As a result, there’s been no letup in the inventory of foreclosed homes on the market this year, says John Bauer, an agent with ZipRealty in Seattle who represents lenders selling foreclosed properties.
“It has been on an upward trend curve ever since 2008,” Bauer said. “And not just the third quarter of this year, but the last 12 months, it’s been on a steady ascension.”
Chicago also had the third-highest number of homes repossessed by lenders during the quarter — 12,568 — behind the Phoenix metro area’s 14,317 and the Miami metro area’s 12,963, RealtyTrac said.
Banks have seized more than 816,000 homes through the first nine months of the year and are on pace to seize more than a million.
A controversy stemming from allegations that banks evicted people without reading foreclosure documents wasn’t a factor in the July-September quarter, Sharga said.
Lenders such as Bank of America and Ally Financial‘s GMAC Mortgage initially halted foreclosure activity but have since resumed processing foreclosures.
Preliminary data from this month shows almost no change in foreclosure activity versus September, Sharga said.
“We’re not seeing what we might have anticipated in terms of a falloff,” he said.
The Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev., metropolitan area topped the list of metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates in July-September with one in every 25 homes receiving a foreclosure warning — more than five times the national average. But foreclosure filings declined 20 percent from the same quarter last year.
“It’s not out of the woods yet, it’s just less bad than it was a year ago,” Sharga said.
Rounding out the rest of the top 10 metros with the highest foreclosure rate were Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.; Modesto, Calif.; Stockton, Calif.; Merced, Calif.; Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif.; Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, Fla.; Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz.; Bakersfield, Calif.; and Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif.
Came across my email today, from our friends at Foreclosure Fraud (4closureFraud.org):
October 14, 2010
Robert S. Mueller III
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20535
Robert O’Neill
U.S. Attorney
Middle District of Florida
400 North Tampa Street, Suite 3200
Tampa, FL 33602
Dear U.S. Attorney O’Neill and Director Mueller,
When it comes to foreclosures, there is mounting evidence of a state of rampant lawlessness in Central Florida. There are increasing signs that big banks routinely evade laws meant to protect homeowners, in many well-documented cases of ‘foreclosure fraud.’ Despite the demonstrated existence, for instance, of ‘robosigners’ signing affidavits attesting to documents that they have never seen, the parties engaging in such misconduct are not being brought to justice. Big banks are mischaracterizing this as mere ‘technical problems,’ and apologizing only where there is clear and very public evidence of harm.
It is not enough for big banks only to apologize for fraud, perjury, and even breaking and entering – when they are caught. It is time for handcuffs. Fraud does not become legal just because a big bank does it.
On September 20, 2010, after my office found evidence of systemic foreclosure fraud perpetrated by big banks and foreclosure mills, I called for a halt to illegal foreclosures.
Since then, big banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, GMAC, PNC and others have suspended foreclosures or foreclosure sales. These banks are still claiming that the massive fraud they have perpetrated amounts to nothing more than a series of technical mistakes. This is absurd. This is deliberate, systemic fraud, and it is a crime.
To give but two of the many available examples, attached is a deposition from an ex-employee of one of the largest ‘foreclosure mills’ in the state, the Law Offices of David Stern. In it, this employee testifies under oath that it was routine for that office to falsify documents regarding military records, in order to move foreclosure cases along more quickly.
The local media has reported on the case of Nancy Jacobini; a contractor for JP Morgan Chase broke into her home after the bank mistakenly foreclosed on it. JP Morgan Chase ‘apologized’ for terrifying her. But , US ; we have a system of laws. I am writing to ask you to enforce them.
The organized and systematic manufacturing of falsified documents to deprive people of their homes is not only a threat to the integrity of the legal system. It also aggravates and extends the weakness in the housing market. Who is going to feel comfortable buying a home if a big bank can simply take it, whether or not that bank has a right to it? Given the securitization of mortgage-backed securities, this misconduct is a threat to our securities markets as well. But fundamentally, this is a question of protecting basic property rights – if you don’t own it, then you shouldn’t try to take it. Without clear property rights, and a legal system that insists on clear proof of those rights before transferring ownership by force, the economy will fall apart.
If perpetrators of perjured affidavits and other systematic criminal activity can get off simply with civil liability – or even less, an insincere bureaucratic apology – the freedom that Americans enjoy will erode quickly in the face of lawless seizures of property. I appreciate your work on the joint Middle District of Florida’s Mortgage Fraud Initiative, and respectfully request that the efforts of your offices turn towards reining in this rampant criminality.
Regards,
Member of Congress
~
It reminds me of when DeKalb County Police Department sat and told us, when talking about the forged easement documents GA Power was using to claim an easement on our property, “Well we can’t arrest Georgia Power“. When asked what they would do if it were us using the same documents, we were told “We would arrest you”
Manifest Injustice 
T he ONLY way to stop a foreclosure is to attack the contract–PERIOD!
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Bank of America Announces That It Has Discovered Some Trivial Technical Problems With a Small Number of its Mortgages
Bank of America announced that it has discovered a few trivial, easily-remedied technical problems with some of its mortgages. “We will stop foreclosure sales in some states until our assessment has been satisfactorily completed, or until the politicians whom we have compensated so generously do their damn jobs and get rid of those pesky laws and rights that are slowing us down. Our ongoing assessment shows the basis for foreclosure decisions is accurate, except in those few regrettable cases where we repossessed a house that actually had no mortgage on it whatsoever—hey, nobody’s perfect, ha ha,” a Bank of America spokescreature said. “It’s really quite a lot of trouble to verify the address before we take someone’s house,” the spokescreature continued. “Comparing addresses on two documents slows us up by a good fifteen seconds. After all, we have a lot of houses to foreclose on. Anyway, many of those people actually do owe money to us, or to somebody, anyway. I know it is a bit confusing to citizens when our competitor HSBC and another bank simultaneously try to foreclose on the same property, especially when they are in a federal foreclosure prevention program. It’s sort of like one of those programs on Animal Planet where each hyena grabs a leg of the still twitching gazelle and tries to pull it away from the other hyenas. But that’s the way nature works—nobody asks those hyenas petty-minded questions about whether title to the gazelle was properly transferred, and to which hyena, and whether the title was properly notarized by an authorized local cheetah. Sometimes a company just has to sink its fangs into a customer, lock its jaws, which can exert a pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch, brace its legs, yank, and see what tears loose. If we get the wrong gazelle, we will make every effort to compensate it for our erroneous gnawing, bone-crushing, and marrow-sucking.”
“It appears that some of our process servers may not have actually served the owners with…
Continue on here…
~
4closureFraud.org
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Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac plummet on delisting notice – Atlanta Business Chronicle
June 21, 2010 by nootkabear | Edit
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Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac plummet on delisting notice – Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s stock prices plummet Wednesday morning after announcing they had been ordered to delist from the New York Stock Exchange.
Washington, D.C.-based Fannie Mae’s (NYSE: FNM) stock was down 45 percent Wednesday morning to 51 cents and McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac’s (NYSE: FRE) stock was down 47 percent to 65 cents. Both continued to fall.
Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have offices in metro Atlanta.
The companies’ regulator and conservator, the Federal Finance Housing Authority, ordered the companies to delist Wednesday morning after Fannie Mae fell below the NYSE’s $1 trading requirement for more than 30 days and received a delisting notice from the exchange. The agency also ordered Freddie Mac to delist, as its price was trading near the $1 mark.
The delistings will be effective around July 8, 10 days after the companies file a notice of delisting with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The companies will still post filings with the SEC and investors will still be able to buy and trade the stock on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board.
By trading Over the Counter, the stocks will lose a lot of liquidity they enjoyed under the NYSE, which has a specialist assigned to each stock on the exchange, explained Bert Ely, a monetary policy consultant with Alexandria-based Ely & Co. The specialist maintains an inventory of stock that they buy or sell to help fill orders, which helps reduce the bid-ask spread and allow for large trades.
After switching to Over-the-Counter, the trading volume will likely drop, prices will deteriorate further, price volatility will increase and it will become more difficult to trade a large number of stocks, he said.
Does the delisting make it less likely that Fannie and Freddie will ever emerge from conservatorship as private companies?
“It probably reduces the odds from one-in-10 million to one-in-11 million,” Ely said. “There’s no way they can earn their way back to health and return to the government the huge investment it has made in them. There’s no future for these companies as private enterprises.”
So far, Fannie and Freddie have gotten some $127 billion from the Treasury Department.
Freddie Mac spokesman Douglas Duvall declined to comment on what impact the delisting would have on the company.
In a securities filing, Fannie Mae said it does not expect the delisting “will affect, in any way, Fannie Mae’s ability to fulfill its mission to provide liquidity and stability to the mortgage market.”
Read more: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac plummet on delisting notice – Atlanta Business Chronicle
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