Upside Down Mortgage

Archive for March, 2007

Loan Modification Attorney Las Vegas

Loan Modifications and the Race Against Foreclosures

While there have been recent signs that the economy and real estate markets may be in the early phases of stabilizing, the foreclosure crisis appears to be rolling along unimpeded. The most recent evidence comes from a new study from RealtyTrac, Inc., an Irvine, California based housing research organization which reports that foreclosure filings in the form of default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions totaled a record 360,149 in July.

The total represents a monthly increase of 7% from June and a 32% rise from July of 2008. The month's total of foreclosure actions broke the existing record for the third time in five months.

Actual repossessions totaled more than 87,000 homes in July, up from about 79,000 homes a month earlier. The "sand states", where speculation in the boom was at its most rampant, posted the highest numbers in the rate of foreclosures. Nevada had the nation's highest foreclosure rate for the 31st-straight month, followed by California, Arizona, Florida and Utah. Las Vegas, Stockton and Modesto carried the highest rates among 372 metropolitan areas in the country.

According to industry watchers, the primary reason for the record setting month of foreclosures across the country is the unemployment rate, now standing at 9.4%. Another factor, separate from the recessed economy is the number of interest rate increases on adjustable rate mortgages pushing payments out of reach for already strapped homeowners.

The acceleration of foreclosure activity recently prompted the Treasury Department to summon executives of the major mortgage servicing companies to Washington to prod them into doing more Loan Modifications.

At the meeting, Treasury officials estimated that 230,000 loan modifications were in the trial phase under the guidelines of the administration's Making Home Affordable program and set an objective of 500,000 loan modifications in process by November 1st.

With 3.5 million foreclosure actions estimated for the full year it will take much more than what the government's plan hopes to accomplish to have any kind of meaningful effect on the crisis. Additionally, the next round of loan modifications will need to be structured closer to what the homeowner needs than what the lender is willing to grant in the form of concessions.

There was much discussion questioning the viability of loan modifications after studies on the first rounds of loan modifications done in 2008 came out showing re-default rates at greater than 50%.

As it turned out, the biggest issue with the modifications included in the studies was that a majority of them didn't reduce payments for the homeowners and in some cases actually increased them.

What is working now are modifications which include both lower payments and principle reductions to bring the amount owed on the home closer to its current value. When negotiated by an attorney, the modifications yield better terms for the homeowner, a factor which also works in the favor of lenders because the chances for re-defaults are lessened due to mortgage payment levels which are sustainable over the long term for the borrower.

Please contact Feldman Law Center today for a no cost Loan Modification Consultation or call 800-662-5133

About the Author:

Anthony Dean has helped hundreds of hoeowners avoid foreclosure. He can be contacted at http://www.feldmanlawcenter.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Loan Modifications and the Race Against Foreclosures

Las Vegas Loan Modification Attorney

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Loan Modification Business Plan

Question: foreclosing home, any legal advice?

my dad has owned this house since 1987 or something. he refinanced the house a while ago and we have pretty high house payments but his income has gone way down because he has his own business and alot of his clients are going bankrupt in this economy. Also my dad has been struggling with cancer on and off for almost 10 years. i guess my dad was planning to pay the house payments he was missing with this big business deal that never went through. so we got an eviction notice for the 19th of this month, is there anything we can do? any legal advice? my dad said he was going to put in a loan modification but i think its too late. any help would be appreciated i really dont know what to do

Answer: I would like more information on this TILA issue. I had approached a dozen lawyers in my area 2 years ago when the whole process of my foreclosure started. I was told in every instance that while I was without question a victim of Predatory Lending that since the state of Ohio had no law against it (they do now but it is too late to apply to my situation) that there was nothing that could be done. With regard to the interest rate issue (which is explained later) no one wanted to touch it with a 10 foot pole to take on the mortgage company, when I would tell lawyers who my mortgage company was they wanted no part of it and would only say they are known for this exact type of action and are impossible to deal with on any level and told me more or less to have a nice day.

We have been in our home since 1994 and opted to refinance in November of 2003. At closing, which took place in our living room, we were informed of the interest rate being fixed for 2 years and our payment was $1180. We were also aware that our interest rate would adjust after that time but we were told that it was based off of the current Federal interest rate that time and we were told that the interest rate could go either up or down based on that, but we were assured that with how low the federal interest rates were that while they could go up that it was unlikely.

While we did make the HUGE mistake in not having a lawyer at closing, since we had taken out a 2nd mortgage previously in 1999 in addition to when we initially bought the house in 1994 and never used a lawyer we didn't think we would need one then either because we figured there were laws that would protect us from anything shady, boy have we learned differently! Once we got the first payment with the adjustable rate having kicked in the payment went from $1180 to $1570....in 13 months time the payment was up to $2400! We tried to refinance as soon as we received the first adjustable mortgage payment but were unable to since I had since become self employed and hadn't been self employed for long enough at that time even though I had no lapse in employment from a traditional employer to being self employed and had a higher income than I did when I worked for a traditional employer (2 years self employed and all the lenders we spoke with wanted to see at least 5 years) for anyone to be willing to consider us regardless to my husband's employment as a teacher and coach for several years.

Mind you when we did this refinance we were by no means high risk or had bad credit. We went from a Prime mortgage and a 2nd mortgage which was also prime to a subprime mortgage which initially for the 2 years it was fixed gave us lower payments than the 2 other payments we had combined before. We had no idea that we were being lumped into a subprime group and our credit and job history at that time would not have qualified us as subprime either as we had no previous late payments in over 5 years (we had a couple late credit card payments of 30 days once in 1997). We were told by the mortgage broker that it was the best we could qualify for after she claimed to have sent our information to over 20 different lenders, and since the payment was lower we thought we were getting a better deal.

Since then, after a year of trying to keep up with the outrageously high mortgage payments, we made the determination that it just wasn't worth it anymore as trying to keep up with the mortgage payment which more than doubled in 13 months time we were falling behind on other bills and we made the decision that this house just simply wasn't worth $2400 a month (we had a 135K mortgage), so we let the bank foreclose.

Since the foreclosure papers were first served in February of 2007 we still received notices from the bank of what our new payment was with the new interest rate adjustment which went as high as $3,000 per month, nearly triple our original payment.

What we learned about our refinance just before we let the house go into foreclosure when we first sought out a lawyer to look everything over with our original mortgage papers with them and all 3 years of statements we had received from them was that when the interest rate first adjusted was that the interest rate was GUARANTEED to go up from the rate we received the 2 years it was fixed by 1% every 6 months INDEFINITELY until it reached the cap interest rate of 16.9%! With of course a bonus of an extra 1% with the first initial adjustment. The interest rate had absolutely nothing to do with the current Federal interest rate what so ever as we were told at closing. The interest rate was supposed to be capped to never exceed 16.9% and in December of 2006 when we receive the notice that the new payment starting in January of 2007 was going to jump to $2400 I called the mortgage company to see if anything could be worked out and they offered no help at all, it was pay it or get out sort of attitude, and at this point the mortg

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Loss Mitigation Jobs

Question: How do I find a job in loss mitigation? (Real Estate).?

How do I find a job doing loss mitigation? Real Estate NOT insurance?

Answer: You have not indicated your location or educational qualification !!
As a loss mitigation executive ,you offer loss mitigation services to help homeowners who are going through or in danger of going through foreclosure to keep their homes and stop the process.
Loss Mitigation is the art of helping delinquent homeowners, in or close to foreclosure, to save their home. You will have to represent them and negotiate on their behalf with the lender; using government and non-government programs and regulations, and other proprietary techniques to resolve the delinquency and keep them in the existing mortgage and home.
Please visit the following sites for job opportunities :-
www.flipdog.com
loss.mitigation.specialist.jobs.com
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www.careerbuilder.com
Best of Luck !!

LOSS MITIGATION JOBS