Upside Down Mortgage

Archive for February, 2007

Loan Modification List

According to The Mortgage Bankers Association, a record 5.4 million homeowners in the United States are currently behind on their mortgage payments, as covered recently by The San Francisco Chronicle. As the economy weakens, taking the job market with it, the desperation level of these homeowners continues to grow. That combination makes for a fertile hunting ground for scammers looking to make a quick score. Being taken in a scam on a loan modification can cost a homeowner a lot more than the upfront fees which range from $1,500 to $5,000. If foreclosure is looming due to an extended period of missed payments the homeowner can literally lose the roof over his family’s head should he get burned by relying on a less than reputable company to handle this incredibly important mission.

Detecting and avoiding loan modification scams is a relatively simple task if one knows what to look for and where to look for it. Combine that knowledge with the willingness to spend a little time on due diligence and the homeowner can virtually eliminate the possibility of being scammed. The first priority is to a priority on working with an attorney to execute your loan modification. Follow that with getting some additional information. Get the attorney’s State Bar number. Ask whether the attorney will be representing you or the law office. Find out how long the office has been doing loan modifications and how many have been successfully executed.

Further due diligence can be done by investigating each firm at the local Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org) and the website for the state bar in your area. Look for ratings, complaints and disciplinary actions. Sticking with accredited sites will give you a much better picture of the firms on your list than some of the sites that do not regulate content and can be used to post false information and misleading statements. Rip Off Report, Bad Biz Finder, and a variety of complaint sites are now being used by unscrupulous companies to discredit reputable firms without recourse. Steven Feldman, founder of The Feldman Law Center in California was recently attacked by one such site in February of 2008. In a recent interview he said, "When we started helping home owners avoid foreclosure with loan modifications there were just a few attorneys in the entire country providing this service. Now I think there are more loan mod companies and newbie attorneys doing loan mod’s than there are McDonald’s across the country.” Commenting on the attempted character assassinations on some of the sites being used as tools of lesser companies he said, “It's amusing to me that these people even exist. It wasn't until the Feldman Law Center assisted in shutting down these companies doing loan modification scams that these unfounded allegations hit the internet. I have been an attorney for 30 years and just can't believe what I read these days.”

Get answers that satisfy your questions and accept nothing less. Work with an experienced law firm that meets your ethical standards. Get those two tasks completed and you are on your way to a successful loan modification. The team at The Feldman Law Center stands ready to answer any questions you might have regarding modifying the mortgage on your home. Please call them at (800) 527 8497.

The information contained herein is provided for general information and advertising purposes only and is not intended to convey a legal option nor legal advice for any particular case or situation. Nothing in this article shall create an attorney-client relationship. Nothing sent to this law office via e-mail shall constitute an attorney-client relationship. Nothing contained in this article shall be construed to be a guarantee or prediction of result. Prior results are provided for general information purposes only and do not guaranty, warranty or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter.   Results achieved depend on individual circumstances and not everyone will qualify or be successful in restructuring their mortgage loan.

About the Author:

The Feldman Law Center is one of the premier loan modification companies in California, and our skilled loan modification professionals are trained to successfully and carefully guide homeowners through the loan modification process.

Source - Detecting and Avoiding Loan Modification Scams

Loan Modification, Lenders Contact List

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Mortgage Help For Homeowners

Question: "President Bush announced he plans to help out homeowners in this mortgage-lending crisis and...?

"President Bush announced he plans to help out homeowners in this mortgage-lending crisis thing that's going on. He said millions of people could lose their house, and you know, he knows what he's talking about. Last November he lost a House and the Senate."

We should not pay for people silly mistake!
What do you think?

Answer: the people who made all the cash by giving out the loans made a fortunate; once again, the burden will fall on the middle class to pick up and pay ; the rich get richer etc; look up those people and bring up criminal charges not to mention that these people should have known better?? I would drive by these outrageously priced houses and wonder what these people did for a living to be able to afford all these houses in CT in excess of 365,000 and no land to go with them? : I knew that I couldn't afford it and still have a car, eat , clothes etc; these people all had luxury in their eyes and no sense; we shouldn't have to flip the tab for everyone whose focus was living above their means and those that made a killing by exploiting people with no common sense.

Mortgage Loan Modification Help for Homeowner - TV Interview

Mortgage Fraud Sentences

However many euphemisms we may choose to use we are, to all extents and purposes, in a recession. Calling it a “credit crunch” or using similar nomenclature merely serves to reduce trust and confidence- after all, if those “in the know” feel the need to sugar-coat the problems, clearly we should start panicking.

The obvious scapegoats are the bankers and traders who, in the first instance, bought sub-prime mortgages, and have since been massively castigated. They blundered, and the economy suffered. But it is by no means all their fault, and it is important to remember that, however much we may enjoy their pain, however gleefully we accuse them of greed, sin and vice, it was because of their hard work that we had such prosperity in the first place. Every advantage of modern society is ultimately down to banking and trading.

For my money I would blame Gordon Brown for utter financial incompetence. During a decade of fantastic growth and economic strength, he raised the average tax paid (even when reduced so as to be relative to income) at a staggering rate, thereby stifling consumerism. Even now, with (relatively) high unemployment and limited purchasing, he wants to raise taxes, thereby making unemployment a relatively more attractive option (to earning) and purchasing a less viable one. To add to his list of errors, he also failed to set aside any money for a proverbial rainy day (and in fact selling half our gold reserves at a long-term low in the market, costing the country staggering sums), thereby forcing him to borrow excessively, weakening the pound, making importing harder, and therefore damaging the economy still further.

So what is to be done? The first part of the solution is to reduce taxes. That may require a cut in public spending. If it does, then privatize the NHS and give grants (direct to health insurance firms, for children at least- adults can choose to take their chances) for health insurance. This will not only lead to better-run hospitals, it will also put a whole host of new, obviously and directly valuable commodities (as opposed to the still valuable but more intangible and volatile derivatives, for instance) on the market, massively increase trade, and recover the market and therefore confidence.

The second part is to legalize drugs and prostitution. There are all kinds of reasons for doing so- it happens anyway, so it is better to regulate it and, for example, give purity guarantees and STD checks, than to pretend it doesn’t exist; it would free up prison space and police time for genuine criminals (murderers, rapists, etc); without trades to protect (most trades use the police, but these are obviously an exception) there would be no need for guns and knives, so gun and knife crime would plummet and pimps would be out of a job; and of course, it is totally unjustifiable to prescribe what people can and cannot do to themselves in the privacy of their own homes. What right has the government to ban suicide (which is obviously far more dangerous than drugs), or alcohol (which, unlike cannabis, has a known lethal dose)? Adults can take the risks if they choose- otherwise why give them the vote? Either trust adults to make their own decisions or don’t let them choose their leader, anything else is logically incoherent. However, the relevant point here is the economic one. The UN estimates the value of the drug trade as around $400billion, and it is estimated to be around 1/3 to ½ the size of the cigarette and alcohol markets. There is enough money in drugs to tip the balance and turn slowdown into growth. That alone should be enough.

Finally, fraud costs the economy huge sums, directly and indirectly (confidence, labour costs, quality of labour costs- if your best employee is hunting fraud, he/she is not trading and making money, merely preventing its loss, etc.). Fraud is very rarely caught and has short sentences, making the incentives to commit fraud high. To combat this, we should use the US model and impose far harsher penalties for white-collar crime.

There are, of course, other things that would help- for instance, a more attractive Prime Minister would increase confidence. However I see no reason not to implement any of these reforms. Finally, in case of a recurrence, future leaders should learn from this government’s mistakes and save money in prosperous times.

About the Author:

Source - Ending the Recession

Mortgage Fraud Update with Rachel Dollar for October 23