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From the FAR newsletter:

Fla. files lawsuits for foreclosure rescue fraud TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – May 3, 2011 – Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office filed a lawsuit on Friday against three South Florida companies that allegedly charged upfront fees for loan modification services to homeowners facing foreclosure. Charging upfront fees is illegal under Florida Statute 501.1377.

The three companies are: Home Owner Protection Economics Inc., DC Financial Group, and Deleverage America Inc. The company’s owners, Dennis Fischer and Christopher S. Godfrey, purportedly collected thousands of dollars monthly in upfront fees for loan modification services they never provided. READ THE REST
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Investors often tell me that they own a home, tenants left or are not paying their rent, and the property is not cash flowing (mortgage is more than the rental income). What is an investor to do? Most tell me that they have put in too much money to let the house go via short sale or foreclosure. Without knowing the actual financials of a situation, it is worth considering whether the time value of money makes a short sale a better option than holding on until the market recovers. To illustrate, here is an example:

EXAMPLE
Investor buys a house for $350,000 in 2006. The tenant pays $1500 per month, the mortgage payments on $300,000 is $2,250 with tax and insurance.

The house is now worth $225,000. The investor loses his job. Tenant leaves and new tenant can only pay $1250. The investor can’t afford to pay $1,000 out of pocket each month, which is the difference between the rent and the mortgage.

The investor tries for a loan modification and is denied; he tries again and is denied several times before he gives up.

What does the investor do?
If the investor can show true hardship, he can either (1) use up all of his resources to keep the home; of (2) attempt to short sale the home.

Often investors will say, “I don’t want to lose the $50,000 I put into the property?” – they should consider the following.

No Short Sale: Starting $125,000 in the hole, the owner pays $1,000 a month for 5-10 years for the value comes back to 2006 level and owner’s equity to return. Investor will have to pay $24,000 or more to keep the place from going to foreclosure (assuming 2 years without rent increasing).
OR
Short Sale: Sell the property and start over. If the lender will agree to waive any deficiency liability, the investor can walk away from $125,000 in unsecured debt. Investor can clean up his credit and buy again in 2-3 years. Instead of investing $24,000 to keep the payments up, the investor can use that $24,000 to invest in a property and at year 3 has $24,000 in equity in a new property that is appreciating instead of still being more than $100,000 in the hole.

Please contact a NextGEN representative if you have any additional questions at 877.647.3911.
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Finally, distressed homeowners and those looking to modify their loans are getting a chance to shake up the banks thanks to the US Treasury. Shock waves are rolling though the banking community as the Treasury Department causes fissures in the banks cavalier handling of underwater homeowners.
Complaining to the Treasury Department forces the bank to expedite your request for a loan mod because the Treasury Department can shut a bank down. Your bank can be fined and is quaking over the idea that US Treasury agents could set up camp inside the bank eyeballing their every move. For the banking community this is akin to a 9.5 earthquake on the San Andreas.
To fight the banks, preparation is crucial. File your complaint with the Office of the Comptroller, a subsidiary of the US Treasury. Within 48 hours the executive office of the bank will send your mod request directly to one of their finest escalation teams. You will get an almost immediate response.
To file, got to www.OCC.gov and on the home page click on Dispute Resolution on the right column, then click on Consumer Complaint and under Customer Assistance Group, click the Online Customer Complaint Form link and file your complaint. Then sit back and wait as tremors cause your bank to spring into emergency mode.
Wait 30 days after making your written request for a loan mod before you file the OCC complaint or the bank will say that you did not give them enough time to address your request.
OCC regulates all of the big National Banks. If your bank is not a National Bank, then it will be handled by the Office of Thrift Supervision at www.ots.treas.gov. The website has no online complaint form, so you will need to print, fill it out and fax or mail it.
This strategy is extraordinarily effective as the bank can be fined $10,000 for lack of response within 60 days. If the bank receives 10,000 complaints from the OCC at $10 grand apiece that is a loss of $1OO million dollars per year.
The little guy wields uncommon power now that you can create your own natural disaster for the banking industry.
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I got an offer in January from an out of area Realtor on a duplex I had listed as a short sale.  I thought this was kinda strange they never saw the property that I knew of.  I figured maybe they where related to a tenant.

 

The beginning of April we had gotten approval. With no deficiency to sellers.  My seller had been difficult to deal with from the beginning, getting info to submit price changes, signing the offer, ect.

 

The buyer/Realtor told me she was new to all this and she was very confused.  She had been licensed since 2007 and I'm guessing not doing much in Real Estate.  I asked if they would be doing an inspection of the property.

 

The week before closing I was still trying to get the lease agreements from the seller.  During that time I had sent the buyer/Realtor an arms length affidavit. Two days later I was told the deal was off buyer/Realtor decided not to continue with the purchase.  By this time I had been pulling my hair out of my head getting the seller to co-operate.  One unit had no lease just month to month, I thought this was the reason for buyer was not going forward. Seller also stated no rent was received for April there was no security deposit and no last months rents paid for the unit with no lease.

 

I sent the buyer an email asking if they would reconsider if the tenant would sign a lease agreement.  We then got notice they would close. So I asked if we where still on for inspections.  I understood the buyers husband would be present and the hired inspector.  The morning of inspections I spoke to the tenant to clarify he never paid Aprils rent, no security deposit and no last months pre paid he told me that was all untrue.  Oh did I mention the buyers never showed for the inspection.  I had the tenant write a statement of the facts. The other tenant made a comment that she thought the sellers mother was buying the place, my comment was I wasn't aware of that.

Meanwhile I thought these people where crazy this inspector has no clue of what be was doing. I had never met this guy so I thought he must have been from the area where the buyer/Realtor is from. Then again was that my business? The property was bringing in a 14% cap rate and I thought that's why they where wanting to purchase.  This was Friday morning closing was for Monday afternoon.

 

That day (Friday) I got a fax from the seller stating she was as frustrated as I was and didn't appreciate my petty comments and I had a fiduciary to her.  Note I'm a transaction broker.  I didn't understand the comment of petty remarks.  If begging and pledging to get the seller to co-operate is petty then OK.  At this point I took all my info and her fax and sent it to our lawyer who was doing the closing and said until I hear back from you I will not respond to this seller.

Monday morning I find out from the attorney that the buyer/Realtor is the sellers aunt, the inspector was the sellers step father (not a home inspector) and the step father was purchasing this also because they had formed an LLC, that they wanted us to change names at closing to this LLC.  The closing agent at this stage said she quits.  At this point I could careless if it didn't close I felt total deceived by the buyer and seller.  At this point there was no arms length affidavit from either party.  Gee I wonder why? 

The buyers husband shows up to closing acting as he knew nothing and brings a definition from some ask search, what the IRS claims is an arms length transaction is.  Mean while he has the arms length affidavit  with the signature of the Realtor on it. I take this and make a copy, then tell them I will NOT sign this.  Then they tell me that I knew this all along supposedly the seller had told me this in February.  If I had known do you honestly think I would have worked so hard to get no where? 

I feel this Realtor/Buyer has major ethic issues and I would like to go forward with an ethics complaint would you?

 

 

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