News Topic: Mortgage Debt & Home Equity

Elected justice moves swiftly. The Michigan Supreme Court handed down its opinion in  Residential Funding Co. v. Saurman  on Wednesday, a couple of weeks after oral argument. They were in a rush to get the opinion out, it seems. Unfortunately, it's a ... Read full article

This last week the Permanent Editorial Board of the Uniform Commercial Code came out with a report bering the none-too-thrilling title of " Report on Application of the Uniform Commercial Code to Selected Issues Related to Mortgage Notes ". ... Read full article

The United States has no housing policy. And there's none on the horizon either. That's a scary thing, given the centrality of housing to domestic economic woes.   Once upon a time, the US had a housing policy. It was focused on increasing ... Read full article

The New York Times came out with a strong editorial urging state AGs and the Administration not to rush into the proposed multi-state settlement deal. I think it's worthwhile reviewing what we know about the deal and the arguments for and against it. ... Read full article

OCC and the Federal Reserve announced this week that banks who service mortgages will be sending letters to homeowners this month and next, offering them an opportunity to request review of any 2009 or 2010 foreclosure.  Every homeowner who asks gets a ... Read full article

The NY Times had some details today about the multi-state attorney general mortgage servicing settlement in the works. It looks every bit as awful as one might have feared. Here's the criticial take-away:  this is bupkis. It gives meaningless relief ... Read full article

The Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) has been the target in a lot of lawsuits during the mortgage crisis for its shoddy, opaque practices. But because these suits tend to be brought by borrowers in default, the courts have been willing to ... Read full article

The Financial Stability Board, an international organization operating under the auspices of the G20 countries, this week issued its Report on Consumer Finance Protection. http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/publications/r_111026a.pdf FSB emphasizes ... Read full article

The Financial Stability Board ... Read full article

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court just handed down a second major mortgage foreclosure ruling, Bevilacqua v. Rodriguez .  The case was an Ibanez  follow-up dealing with the rights of a purchaser at an invalid foreclosure sale. I thought this was a ... Read full article

There is $700 billion in negative equity in the US. That is the critical figure. Any housing plan that doesn’t take a serious bite out of that $700 billion isn’t worth discussing. It’s just window dressing. And that’s exactly what the latest iteration of ... Read full article

The latest proposal for dealing with the mortgage crisis comes from The Way Forward by Daniel Alpert, Robert Hockett and Nouriel Roubini (AHR), a policy paper sponsored by the New America Foundation.  AHR present is an incredibly wide-ranging proposal ... Read full article

A simple google search for "foreclosure file reviewer" turns up a bunch of interesting things, including who is searching, what Level 2 means (as opposed to Level 1 or Level 3) and the involvement of Promontory, a financial services consulting ... Read full article

Do you have what it takes to be a Mortgage Foreclosure File Reviewer Level 2?  An intrepid researcher forwarded to me a job ad for a mortgage foreclosure reviewer  who will be reviewing bank foreclosures per the OCC/Fed servicing fraud consent orders. ... Read full article

The WSJ reports on the latest development in the implementation of the OCC's mortgage servicing fraud consent orders.  It seems that the banks will have OCC approved "independent" foreclosure review consultants (chosen and paid by the ... Read full article

The Arizona Supreme Court currently has under review a mortgage documentation case, Vasquez v. Saxon Mortgage, Inc. Just by chance, the Court was on its annual visit to the University of Arizona law college, where I teach, for the oral argument on Sept. ... Read full article

I'm testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday about the role of the government guarantee in housing finance (a/k/a wtf do we do with Fannie and Freddie). My testimony is  here . ... Read full article

The Nevada AG is looking to reopen the 2008 AG settlement with BoA:  the AG alleges rampant and immediate non-compliance with the settlement.  The NYT coverage missed what is arguably the bigger story:  the Nevada AG came out and alleged a securitization ... Read full article