Is this the break that millions of people have been hoping for?
Evidence continues to mount that major banks flouted their own foreclosure procedures — and possibly the law — when repossessing homes from owners who fell behind on payments.
And that begs the question: Can owners who were wrongfully evicted take their home back? ...
Experts say that very few homeowners will ever get their houses back. The possible exception: The handful of people who were wrongfully swept up by the mortgage tsunami, despite the fact that they were current on their payments.
But getting a judge to unwind a foreclosure is tough.
"The law imposes a very heavy burden on those seeking to attack final court judgments," says Robert Lawless, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law.
If a court does rule a foreclosure invalid, either because the lender didn't have the paperwork in order or because the mortgage was not actually in default, a home's title will revert to the original owner, even if the property has since been purchased by a third party. ...
But one thing is clear: If the original homeowner doesn't have the cash to catch up on the mortgage, the lender will restart the foreclosure process and, with the paperwork in order this time, repossess the house.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Will foreclosed homeowners get their homes back?
Regarding the recent foreclosure scandal CNN Money says, "Forget it. You're not getting your house back."
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Nothing irritates me more than the practice of referring to homedebtors as "homeowners."
ReplyDeleteIf these people really OWNED the homes, the wouldn't be being foreclosed on.
ownership is a word, just like any other. Fact of the matter is once you pay off a mortgage, you can still get foreclosed upon if you fail to pay property taxes and the like.
ReplyDeleteFact of the matter is that a deed grants someone "ownership" of the property in question. A mortgage or deed of trust (a completely separate document) does not grant ownership (outside of the "title theory") states.
Dont get me wrong, there is a distinction to be made between owners who have liens on their property, and those who do not - yet they are all still "owners" just the same.
Nothing irritates me more than the practice of referring to homedebtors as "homeowners."
ReplyDeleteWho owns the house, then? The bank? What if the mortgage is paid down to 50% of the house value? Who then? 20%? 75%?
What's the magic number where you become a "homeowner."
You are a silly fellow.
No they won't, but it should be fun to watch!
ReplyDeleteThis is all a very roundabout way of arriving at the loss of private property ownership rights, on a mass scale. Why else would such things as SMART GROWTH exist?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smartgrowth.org
Basically, convince people how environmentally evil it is to live in the country, due to all those evil CO2 emissions that are supposedly destroying the planet. Make legislation or enact tax laws that make it difficult to own property in the country. Move everyone into urban centers where people no longer own their home, and they are stacked like sardines for the sake of saving the planet from CO2 emissions.
This is the dumbest nightmare Satan could ever imagine. Must have been on PCP when he came up with this plan.
Hey Oboe,
ReplyDeleteWho owns the house when you dont pay ANY payments on your mortgage?
Oh thats right, the bank does!!!
You are a silly fellow too!
;)
Anom speaks the truth -- many areas in Europe have very few single family dwellings. The central planners favor apartments and duplexes. In Sweden a half dozen apartment buildings will share a single physical plant that provides hot water and hydronic heating.
ReplyDeleteIf that catches on here, then we are facing a 500 year supply of unsold homes -- wonder what that will do for prices?
I have a question for you. Has ANYTHING from europe caught on over here?
ReplyDelete1) using train instead of car
2) universal health care
3) eating smaller and healthier portions
4) educating our children with our tax dollars instead of funding useless failing wars
I could do this all day!!!
Actually, go back about 100 years and people in the U.S. did use the train instead of the car. It's using the car instead of the train that hasn't caught on in Europe.
ReplyDeleteThe thought that some longstanding, decades long, paradigmatic change, will suddenly take place here and depress prices is the hope of a someone who never was cut out for homeownership in the first place.
ReplyDeleteNo offense, but if thats the type of thing you worry about, you should just rent for the rest of your life (and be happy with it).
Well, one thing that seems to be catching on is a government keen on central planning. Once central planning rules, things change.
ReplyDeleteWe do seem to be tilting back and forth between funding various dysfunctional war efforts and our dysfunctional educational system as administrations change. More money doesn't seem to help either cause.
Maybe we should privatize both. Even if we don't get better results, it won't be your and my dollars buying the party.
The quasi-communal living in Sweden at least was the fruit of central planning back in the 1960s. The government came into various areas, took all of the land, flattened what was there and built many many multifamily structures.
My bad for implying that something would have to catch on here for that change to happen. We won't have much to say about it when it comes. America voted for Change, and boy are we going to get it.
Snoni,
ReplyDeleteOh I don't expect mutlifamily to drive down the single family market. No no no.
But there are plenty of factors already in play that will do that without a paradigm shift. This paradigm has lots of downside remaining.
For the record I paid cash for an 8000 sqft home 20 years ago, never intending to sell and not caring what the housing market does. I don't look at it as an investment, don't count on ever seeing a dime from it.
I do strongly prefer to own, and I am willing to pay a premium over renting to do so.
And I am happy with it. Very happy.
Just Google news under the terms "IMF," "Financial Stability Board," or "World Bank" on a daily basis and you will be the most educated and predictive person in your social group. Probably in your community, as well.
ReplyDeleteYou are going to see very public and readily available official statements from the most powerful people in the world, on a daily basis. And then you will notice that none of this is making headlines in the US news media, ever. As in never.
Since people these days are conditioned to respond to emotion and peer pressure so much more readily than they do to documented fact, it's easy to simply have the media or a blog tell people the readily available public information is non-existent or bogus. They then believe this because they believe everyone else believes it (it was on the TV!), so then they go out into the world and regurgitate what the TV told them. And many of them try to force this view on people who present facts.
And on and on the game goes on.
Central planning is not the offspring of the US government. Just cruise on over the Council on Foreign Relations web site and perus the publicly available books and documents there, published by the CFR.
ReplyDeleteThe CFR is the US branch of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, based in Europe.
Obama and his wife are CFR members. As were nearly all of the 2008 presidential candidates. Obama is also the chair of the UN Security Council.
Seeing a pattern here already? Ties to European bankers and the UN? If you can't change a light bulb, you will have trouble seeing the light here.
Maybe we should privatize both. Even if we don't get better results, it won't be your and my dollars buying the party.
ReplyDeleteAhahahaha...what a line of BS.
First off, this is exactly what the RayGun folks did back in the '80s: they privatized (military contractors which are really basically mercenaries) the military. Don Rumsfeld pushed full steam ahead on that little agenda. Two things: they are still government employees - just indirectly - since the only market (buyer) for their services is the US Government - the taxpayer. Oh, and um, yeah, it turns out they made a huge mess of Iraq and Afghanistan. The whole thing damn near came apart in '06 - the height of the "free market" experiment in "nation building".
Secondly, they have been trying to "privatize" the public schools - it's called "charter schools" and once again, just like the public schools, the only market is the taxpayer...and surprise, surprise, they do, on average, no better than regular public schools, on average.
Of course, a lot more "private entrepreneurs" get fat feeding at the gov't trough.
Oh, and while we're yammering on about "central planning" and "paradigm shifts" please 'splain to me just how the Rural Electrification, ISTEA and Federal Water and Sewer funding has zero effect on the free market development of sprawl? Nevermind the Oil and Gas exploration subsidies...
Early 'suburb' (versus ex-urb) development was organically "smart growth" - back when it was dictated by the true free market and developers (and buyers) had to directly shoulder all those externalities and pay the true costs of developing new housing. Making the per-unit costs affordable for buyers requires higher density. Why do you think the DC suburbs developed between the turn of the century and the second world war were so much higher density than Manassahole is today?
Montpellier...
ReplyDeleteAll valid, factual points and thanks for posting. The missing link is this:
In 1992 there was something called the Rio Earth Summit, organized by Maurice Strong. You may want to examine this closely, and read up on what came out of that summit. Therein lie the answers to your questions. This touches not just private property ownership, but all facets of life (religion, agriculture, energy, healthcare, economics, environment, etc.).
You will find a lot of PR spin around this stuff. Read from multiple sources of information to get the big picture view.
And that is what is different. It's also being funded by the most wealthy and powerful people in the world, which says something also.
@Anonymous: spare me the Rio summit conspiracies.
ReplyDeleteHere's what all the fear and noise produced by the "free market" crowd is really all about: they want to be sure the economy and system continues to operate as it does today - a "paradigm" under which this set of players benefits from the flow of government resources:
- Real Estate development subsidized with utility subsidies.
- Transportation subsidies (roads)
- Energy subsidies.
Their paranoid fantasies are very revealing: they engage in a lot of psychological projection and you will find that exactly the kind of sinister shadowy crap they attribute to the "left" via things like Rio and Kyoto are exactly the kind of crap they get up to via their money-in-politics and lobbying efforts.
All politics (and war is only politics by a different means) have always and everywhere been about the power to direct and control the flow of resources.
Forget Rio and 'environmentalism' - just stick to good old Austrian/Chicago school economics: if we didn't subsidize the hell out of cars and infrastructure (ie, transfer or redistribute private property - aka taxpayer dollars - to 'developers') then we'd be living in much denser communities, small communities clustered around things like rail stations.
Our enormous military expenditures in the Middle East are, in fact, Oil and Gas subsidies. You can piss and moan and whine all you like about evil anti-private-property conspiracies, but the reality is, if we weren't expropriating private tax dollars now, oil and gas would be a hell of a lot more expensive and a free market would put those energy supplies out of business.
There is no missing link. It does not matter if a Rio Conspiracy is true or not. We can see this now, for ourselves - who are you gonna believe: me or your own lying eyes?
What happened when gas got up to nearly $5/gal two years ago? Why are people opting to move back into an urban core and engage in gentrification? Why did the way-way-way out housing stock go in the crapper first when the bubble burst?
Oh, and bye the bye: The Koch Brothers have funded quite a bit more than George Soros, and for much longer. I'm not sure how Soros and Tides personally profit from the anti-capitalist conspiracies of Rio & Kyoto, but it's crystal clear how the Koch brothers - who are not as willing to be open about it - benefit from oil and gas subsidies and via Georgia Pacific rampant new development - indeed, they are thoroughly tied to an economy based on gasoline and cars.
The death of their economic model is not a public taking, nor is the protection their economic model a constitutionally protected 'private property right'. It's the invisible guiding hand engaging in some free market creative destruction.
James is exactly right: it's not that the we never adopted rail, it's that the Europeans never abandoned it.
New case shiller numbers are out. DC is now at 188.26, up 4.8% YOY, and up 13.4% since the absolute bottom seen 19 months ago.
ReplyDeleteMontpellier -- your uneducated, ill-researched, non-informed diatribe is a waste of my time and everyone else's on this forum.
ReplyDeleteYou are arguing that the Earth is still flat.
Wake up and smell the coffee already. The evidence is overwhelming in the extreme.
BTW, Montpellier -- my second-to-last post was not an invitation for you to participate in the PR spin I mentioned.
ReplyDeleteIt was an invitation to educate yourself so you don't have to resort to the debate style of an eight-year-old, pointing your finger and yelling "conspiracy theory" at anything that doesn't immediately suit you... (or your employer?).
Nationally, Year over year inventories are up, sales of new and existing homes are down, mortgage loan applications are down, unemployment is high, and other major economic indicators are not good.
ReplyDeleteBut DC is different! The people in the DC area are better than the people everywhere else! That explains the difference.
Hey, Monty is a zealot steeped in cliches. My wife's family is thick with them -- maybe we are related!
ReplyDeleteNo argument will move him, no information will change his thinking. And he can't learn from experience so it seems.
Raygun -- Manassholes -- really? That enhances the discourse in what way? Really showing your depth Monty. Keep it up.
Oh well, I'm sorry. Shouldn't make fun.
Have a good day, Monty! Why don't we close with a flourish of your clever misspellings? Maybe Rayhole or Assgun -- see I can't do it as well as you, but who can?
Who owns the house when you dont pay ANY payments on your mortgage? Oh thats right, the bank does!!!
ReplyDeleteLet's do a simple thought experiment. Let's say you and I buy a horse together. We each pay $1000. We also sign a contract that says, we will wash, brush, feed and water the horse on alternating days. If either of us neglects our duties for two consecutive days, the other gets sole ownership.
Who "owns" the horse? By definition, the answer is "No one".
As I said, silly semantic games.
Hey, Monty is a zealot steeped in cliches.
ReplyDeleteYou know, the true mark of a lunatic is an irrational projection. Nothing quite as entertaining as a spittle-flecked meandering discourse on "Big Green" coming for your children's wombs which--when met with quite reasonable arguments that suburbia is heavily subsidized by every facet of our national budget--results in accusations of "conspiracy-theory mongering".
Our logorrheaic "Anonymous" is starting to sound like the resident Lyndon LaRouche fanboy.
"Nonpartisan said...And now it is time to Watch-and-Learn again - beginning August 2010, you will see a RAPID decline in home prices resume - there will be no immunozone. May 15, 2010 7:37 AM"
ReplyDeleteBWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
@Partisan:
ReplyDeleteThat's just cruel.
Glad I didn't sell my house on his excellent advice, though.
I gotta say: it looks good for Partisan - the CS numbers do make it look like DC is gonna be different. It's not super-suprising since DC employment remains strong. I've started tracking forclosures in detail in my little micro-environment and even with a real pickup in foreclosures, inventory is down and listings are moving pretty darn quickly, and pretty much at the bubble plateau.
ReplyDeleteI *still* think it's a little nuts and prices *should* fall, but I'm increasingly persuaded that the DC bubble (by which I mean inside the beltway - which is more selective than the CS MSA) is in part due to some other fundamental shifts that would have happened anyway.
I don't think the MBA purchase index predicted this month's up-tick in sales. I'm tracking the foreclosures because I believe the banks are trying to manage inventory here - mainly because DC is not in free fall yet.
@Anonymous: Strike a nerve there buddy? I don't work for anyone (at least, none of this is related in any way to my work or my portfolio) though it wouldn't matter a bit if I did: I offered my arguments and the evidence for them. They can stand on their own merits.
Lyndon LaRouche -- wow, that takes me back. Even if the guy had a point he couldn't express it. At the end didn't they jail him for credit card fraud or some such? Can't see that he was ever about more than soliciting donations.
ReplyDeleteoboe, yeah, my bad -- Montpellier is just so tiresome -- but I should leave him alone. I was frustrated by trying to see if he had some good points buried in there and when I couldn't find any, well, I struck out. Again, my bad.
On a serious note, if we look at the infrastructure needs to support suburbia for another 100 years it's hard to imagine that we'll have money for anything else. Highways alone are a staggering undertaking, and once built, they have to be maintained.
I can see why planners find closing the suburbs and moving the population into urban centers with robust public transportation so attractive. And it works in many parts of Europe.
Rush hour is a great argument for a paradigm shift of some kind. Masses of people growing old behind the wheel separated from their lives and loved ones on a crawling river of asphalt. Surely there has to be a better way to do it.
Anyway, I'll say 'hi' to Lyndon for you. Time for his walk anyway.
"Montpellier said...
ReplyDeleteI gotta say: it looks good for Partisan - the CS numbers do make it look like DC is gonna be different. It's not super-suprising since DC employment remains strong. I've started tracking forclosures in detail in my little micro-environment and even with a real pickup in foreclosures, inventory is down and listings are moving pretty darn quickly, and pretty much at the bubble plateau."
See, this is why I dont pick on you. You are bearish, but bearish based on metrics. And likewise, when those metrics change (or hold) you change your outlook. This is fine, this is what normal people do.
Contrast that with our friends NOZ and his lil buddy NONPARTISAN.
NOZ was mostly just a clueless idiot. He meant well, but he had no idea what was happening here in DC. Further, no matter how many fundamentals changed, he kept insisting Case Shiller (DC) will hit 135 by 2013. Wow - just wow...
Even worse was NONPARTISAN. He doesnt give a rats ass about income gains, months of inventory, jobs, etc, etc,. All he does is make projections (CS will hit 100 by 2013) based on platitudes such as "all bell curves correct". Further, no matter how much fundamentals change (for better or for worse) he never changed his outlook - EVER!!!
NOZ has run away so I assume its because he now knows he is wrong and doesnt want to admit it. I kinda expected this - cowardly, but rational behavior.
Whats more interesting is NONPARTISAN. He continues to post here, meaning he may not yet think he is wrong - brave, but quite possibly insane behavior.
But again, nothing against you MP (one way or another). I always knew you were not insane :)
Oops - dont know what happened there, but that last post was from me, Partisan
ReplyDeletestill think I am correct. cracks in the dam are giving way - bell curve shifted by government intervention, and when the dam breaks all downstream will be drowned, and the curve overshoots.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there is a way out...that is to make the dollar near worthless to keep prices "stable".
"Let's do a simple thought experiment. Let's say you and I buy a horse together. We each pay $1000."
ReplyDeleteYeah but the bank isnt sharing the cost of the horse. They are BUYING THE HORSE OUTRIGHT FOR YOU. They own it until you pay them back in full and with interest....which is exactly why assholes can mail their keys right back to the bank and walk away.
You kinda suck at thought experiments.
I think that your post is totally relevant in a time when number of foreclosed properties has reached record levels. Many home owners are going through the trauma of watching their properties being foreclosed and there are others who are on the verge of having their properties being foreclosed. I would like to mention here that from the months of June to September, 288,345 properties have been seized by the bank all over the country. It has also been revealed that approximately 930,437 number of people received foreclosures warnings during the same period.
ReplyDeleteYeah but the bank isnt sharing the cost of the horse. They are BUYING THE HORSE OUTRIGHT FOR YOU. They own it until you pay them back in full and with interest....which is exactly why assholes can mail their keys right back to the bank and walk away.
ReplyDeleteWait, so you have no ownership stake in the house whatsoever until you you pay them in full? What about if you put 50% down? 15%? Is there some arbitrary threshold of equity at which you become an "owner"?
You kinda suck at thought experiments.
Clearly. One of the key considerations of a good "thought experiment" is that it lead one's audience through the issue in the most simple way possible. Obviously I failed in your case.
:)
"Wait, so you have no ownership stake in the house whatsoever until you you pay them in full? What about if you put 50% down? "
ReplyDeleteTell you what. You put 50% down on a house and dont pay a single payment. Come back here and tell us what happened.
;)
p.s. Lets take that experiment further!!
ReplyDeletePut 95% down on a house and dont make a single payment. The bank will still take your house from you! (of course, because THEY actually own it) Try it!
@flute:
ReplyDeleteGoing back to the original scenario:
Let's do a simple thought experiment. Let's say you and I buy a horse together. We each pay $1000. We also sign a contract that says, we will wash, brush, feed and water the horse on alternating days. If either of us neglects our duties for two consecutive days, the other gets sole ownership.
In your analysis then, if you eventually neglect your duties, it means I owned the horse all along. Conversely, if I eventually fail to hold up my end of the agreement, you owned the horse all along.
A bit like Schroedinger's Horse--very quantuum of you.
Nothing irritates me more than the practice of referring to homedebtors as "homeowners."
ReplyDeleteAt least we're getting some insight into why certain folks become irrationally frustrated over the use of pretty anodyne terms. Lot of imprecise thinking going on out there.
"Oboe said...At least we're getting some insight into why certain folks become irrationally frustrated over the use of pretty anodyne terms. Lot of imprecise thinking going on out there."
ReplyDeleteRight. Flute's basic point seems to be whether its 50% down, 95% down, etc., it can still be taken from you, therefore you dont "own" it.
Why stop at 95% down? Why not make it 100% down, but you decide not to pay your taxes? In this case, the city forecloses, therefore you dont even "own" it at 100%.
Since ownership is an impossibility, seems like we should just strike the term "ownership" out of existence. These people are not "homeowners", they are "home________"!!!
"Going back to the original scenario:"
ReplyDeleteThe bank buys the home outright and owns the house. You get to live in it while you pay them back. You dont own the actual house until you have paid in full.
There is no "both pay $1000 for the horse."
The correct "thought experiment" would be...
"We sign a contract. I buy a horse for you and you get to ride it until you pay me back. If you miss a payment or dont follow any other rules of the horse that I own, you no longer get to ride the horse."
"Why stop at 95% down? Why not make it 100% down, but you decide not to pay your taxes?"
ReplyDeleteBecause at 100% down, the bank no longer owns the home. You actually own it. Your home, car, paycheck and even the shirt on your back can be taken away even if you dont pay your income taxes....so why stop at property taxes?
Being behind on any taxes or even being sued have nothing to do with ownership of your house. Although your home could be taken away from you if someone sued you for enough money....it still has nothing to do with who owns it. The BANK owns your home until you have paid them back. Simple, not confusing, not complicated, even oboe can understand that concept...he is just playing dumb.
So please, don't you get retarded on us here too buddy.
"The BANK owns your home until you have paid them back."
ReplyDeleteThats just flat out wrong. Outside of the "title theory" states, the bank, just like the city or county has what can be described as an "inchoate possessory interest" in the property. There is no "ownership" transferred until the foreclosure by the bank or the city or county as the case may be.
This is apparently frustrating to a handful of bloggers who like to refer to it as homedebtorship. Still, the concept of ownership is clear - the person on the deed to the house has it. The entity on the deed of trust or mortgage on the house (i.e. the bank) does not.
I was reading your blog and thought i would leave you this: Bank Of America Has Admitted Finding Errors In 102,000 Foreclosure Files:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.irvineforeclosurelink.com/bank-america-bac-acknowledged-finding-errors-foreclosure-fles-bgins-resubmit-documents-102000-cases-wallsteet-joural-reports/
Nobody can argue the fact that there is a lot of pain out there with the loss of jobs and over leveraged balance sheets; however if one doesn't have the ability to pay their mortgage, then there is no right to keep the home. These technicalities will be corrected and sooner or later the lender will have the right to seize the collateral pledged for their non-performing loan.
ReplyDelete