Occupy group to protest foreclosure

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Occupy Youngstown will protest the foreclosure of the Pig Iron Press, 26 N. Phelps St. in the city’s downtown, from 11 am to 2 pm today.

Pig Iron provides photocopies and office services and also is a thrift shop.

Jim Villani, owner of the business and an Occupy Youngstown member, failed to pay his property taxes from 2007 to 2009, an amount he said was $4,088.67. The Mahoning County treasurer sold a tax lien on his business to American Tax Funding, a Florida company that buys liens.

ATF began foreclosure proceedings against Pig Iron Press in 2010, but that was stayed when Villani filed for bankruptcy. Villani then withdrew the bankruptcy request and said he paid $9,000 to ATF last year.

But the company had billed him for $16,500 for the unpaid taxes and penalties, and refiled a foreclosure case against Villani in March.

Villani and Occupy Youngstown object to the compounded late fees, ATF not telling the building owner of his debt before foreclosure proceedings, offering a payment schedule, and that the $9,000 was an effort to meet his debt obligation.

Villani concedes he should have made arrangements to pay his debt and he should have a penalty, but it shouldn’t be the 18-percent compounded interest the company accessed.

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That New Foreclosure Tsunami? Still Waiting

By Robbie Whelan and Alan Zibel

For at least the last six months or so, a lot of people were talking about a “new wave” of foreclosures threatening to smother the US housing market in gloom once again.

The reasoning was that because of the “robo-signing” scandal, and the subsequent foreclosure freezes, a huge number of foreclosures had been put on pause, and that the banks would eventually have to deal with their delinquent borrowers, meaning foreclosures would re-start in a big way.

According to data released this week by LPS Applied Analytics and CoreLogic, the waters are still relatively calm: no big waves on the horizon just yet.

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Exploring changes in state’s foreclosure process

The mortgage foreclosure process in Illinois may be in line for a tweaking.

A week ago, in a windowless room a few blocks from where foreclosure cases are heard in downtown Chicago, 35 to 40 people gathered to offer their thoughts on potential changes to mortgage foreclosure rules in Illinois.

The purpose of the public hearing, mainly attended by attorneys, was to discuss recommendations made by a committee that was formed a year ago to study the current system.

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Mortgage industry has long way to go to clean up its act

WASHINGTON _ Nearly two years after the robo-signing scandal forced a reboot of the nations home-foreclosure process, mortgage servicers have begun the hard work of buffing up their industrys tarnished image after years of making life miserable for Americans struggling to hold on to their homes.

Changing the industrys bad behavior will be a slow and painful process for servicers who collect mortgage payments and manage the accounts on behalf of lenders, however. The inappropriate fees, mishandled accounts, shoddy paperwork and illegal foreclosures that first came to light after the 2007 housing crisis were long-standing problems that had gone largely unnoticed for years.

Whether it was obtaining loan modifications, arranging short sales, negotiating principal reductions or refinancing homes through the federal Home Affordable Refinance Program, mortgage servicers were more obstacle than facilitator during the housing meltdown, according to many housing advocates and consumer attorneys. And depending on whom you talk to, not much has changed.

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DC Region Monitors Foreclosure Wave

For years, the Washington metro area has ranked high on every list of the nations hottest markets. Now, however, the regions multiple listing service, MRIS, is holding its breath and closely monitoring the situation as a wave of backlogged foreclosures freed by the resolution of the Robogate processing scandal prepares to wash over local markets and threaten vulnerable jurisdictions.

The Capital region includes two jurisdictions, or judicial states, where court orders are required to foreclose, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Both have seen foreclosure activity contract as lenders brought processing to a standstill in the wake of the Robogate scandal. Now, the piper is waiting to be paid.

Indeed, the piper, in the form of stepped up lender foreclosure activity, may have already arrived. Initial default notices that start the foreclosure process in Maryland increased 100 percent in January 2012 compared to January 2011, the third straight month of year-over-year increases in default notices. Virginia scheduled auctions, the first public notice of foreclosure in that state, increased 12 percent in January 2012 compared to January 2011 — the first year-over-year increase after 14 consecutive months of year-over-year decreases, according to RealtyTrac.

Whether the wave of backlogged foreclosures affects values many depends more on how it arrives that its size. Current foreclosure inventories are modest. The Capital regions foreclosure inventory is only 2.3 percent. Baltimores is higher, at 3.10 percent, but both are below the national average of 3.4 percent according to CoreLogic. Maryland currently has about 16-month supply of REOs, according to RealtyTrac, and more are on the way as foreclosure starts pick up.

Maryland homeowners are more vulnerable than those in suburban Virginia or DC. With only 12.4 percent of mortgages under water and another 4.2 percent nearly so, District ranks the 36th among states in negative eqyuity. Some 26 percent of Marylands homeowners with mortgages are seriously underwater–their home values are more than 25 percent below what they owe on their mortgages. The states underwater percentage is slightly below the national average of 28 percent, according to RealtyTrac. About 4.64 percent of all mortgages in the state were over 90 days delinquent at the end of the year, according to the MBAA. That was the third highest percentage in the country, behind Nevada (6.33 percent) and Mississippi (4.65 percent). A report by a state foreclosure task force earlier this year found that 1.9 million homes in the state have lost more than $31 billion in value since 2009.

Marylands two poorest counties, Baltimore City and Prince Georges, may be the most vulnerable.

In the third quarter of 2011, RealtyTrac data reported that over 27.0 percent of all foreclosures statewide occurred in Prince Georges County, by far the largest share among all Maryland jurisdictions.

Baltimore City with 507 foreclosure filings (15.6 percent of the total) had the second highest number of foreclosures in Maryland. In March CoreLogic reported that some 125,000 homes in the Baltimore region were worth less than what their owners owed on the mortgages at the end of last year, up from nearly 120,000. CoreLogic ranked the Maryland ninth nationally with nearly 30 percent of its mortgages below or near negative equity.

Short sale discounts in the region are substantial and rank higher than the national average, a sign of market instability. In DC, short sales sell on average 55 percent below normal prices. The median discount in Maryland is 29.19 percent and in Virginia it is 26.31 percent, compared to the national average of 21.28 percent according to RealtyTrac.

The DC home price index in February decreased 0.8 percent from the previous month, the fifth straight month-over-month decrease for the index after hitting a 17-month high in September 2011. Meanwhile Washington area foreclosure activity in February increased 2 percent from the previous month, the third straight monthly increase in overall foreclosure activity.

As it monitors the potential impact of increased foreclosure activity in local markets, MRIS, whose footprint includes counties in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and DC., has to deal with the confusion caused by different terms used by the regions jurisdictions to describe properties as they go through the pre-foreclosure and foreclosure processes.

Local laws label foreclosures and short sales differently at different points in the process. The result makes it virtually impossible to compare data and trends in adjoining jurisdictions and to understand the big picture, said John Heithaus, chief marketing officer at MRIS. MRIS is working with the Association of Real Estate License Law Officials (ARELLO), states and the MLSs customers to resolve the problem and create greater uniformity.

From Real Estate Economy Watch

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Richie Farmer faces foreclosure woes

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) –Former Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer is in legal trouble again. This time, itswith a bank.

A Manchester, Ky. bank has filed a foreclosure suit against Farmer and his wife.

The suit is seeking more than $300,000 due on a mortgage that the bank says hasnt been paid on since at least January.

An attorney for Rebecca Farmer — who filed for divorce last April — says Richie is responsible for making the payments, under an agreement in the divorce case.

The suit comes after a state audit that found what it called a toxic culture of entitlement and self-dealing during Farmers tenure as agriculture commissioner.

Copyright 2012 WDRB News. All Rights Reserved.

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Banks foreclose on churches in record numbers

LOS ANGELES &— Banks are foreclosing on America’s churches in record numbers as lenders increasingly lose patience with religious facilities that have defaulted on their mortgages, according to new data.

The surge in church foreclosures represents a new wave of distressed property seizures triggered by the 2008 financial crash, analysts say, with many banks no longer willing to grant struggling religious organizations forbearance.

Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group.

In 2011, 138 churches were sold by banks, an annual record, with no sign that these religious foreclosures are abating, according to CoStar. That compares to just 24 sales in 2008 and only a handful in the decade before.

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The church foreclosures have hit all denominations across America, black and white, but with small to medium size houses of worship the worst. Most of these institutions have ended up being purchased by other churches.

The highest percentage have occurred in some of the states hardest hit by the home foreclosure crisis: California, Georgia, Florida and Michigan.

“Churches are among the final institutions to get foreclosed upon because banks have not wanted to look like they are being heavy handed with the churches,” said Scott Rolfs, managing director of Religious and Education finance at the investment bank Ziegler.

Church defaults differ from residential foreclosures. Most of the loans in question are not 30-year mortgages but rather commercial loans that typically mature after just five years when the full balance becomes due immediately.

Its common practice for banks to refinance such loans when they come due. But banks have become increasingly reluctant to do that because of pressure from regulators to clean up their balance sheets, said Rolfs.

“A lot of these loans were given when the properties were evaluated at a certain level in 2005 or 2006,” Rolfs said. “Banks have had to reappraise the value of these properties, whether it’s a church or a commercial office building. Values have gone down, so the loans cannot continue in the same form.”

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The factors leading to the boom in church foreclosures will sound familiar to many private homeowners evicted from their properties in recent years.

During the property boom, many churches took out additional loans to refurbish or enlarge, often with major lenders or with the Evangelical Christian Credit Union, which was particularly aggressive in lending to religious institutions.

Then after the financial crash, many churchgoers lost their jobs, donations plunged, and often, so did the value of the church building.

Congregations in trouble

Solid Rock Christian Church near Memphis, Tennessee, took out a $2.9 million loan with the Evangelical Christian Credit Union at the beginning of 2008, to construct a new, 2,000 seat, 34,000 square-foot building to house its growing congregation.

In the middle of construction, the economy crashed. The church raided its savings to finish the project, but ended up defaulting on the loan.

The ECCU foreclosed and put the church up for auction.

“We are still fighting this,” a church spokesman told Reuters. “We have filed for bankruptcy to stop this foreclosure and to restructure our debt.”

At the iconic Charles Street African American Episcopal Church in Boston, Massachusetts, churchgoers and clergy accuse the bank of being unwilling to negotiate.

The church is being threatened with foreclosure and a March 22 auction by its lender OneUnited bank, America’s largest black-owned bank.

The bank says the church, which was founded in 1818 and played a major role in the anti-slavery movement, has defaulted on a $1.1 million balloon loan that came due in December 2011.

A balloon loan is a long-term loan, often a mortgage, that has a large, or balloon, payment due upon maturity. They often have very low interest payments and require little capital outlay during the life of the loan due to the large end payment.

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The church is also involved in separate litigation with OneUnited involving a 2006 loan of $3.6 million that financed the refurbishment of two buildings into a community center.

“We want to refinance and we want to pay. It’s doable, we have the means to do it but we can only do it if they actually sit down and talk to us,” said the Rev. Gregory G. Groover Snr, the church’s pastor.

Ballooning loan

Groover said the church did not default by missing monthly payments, but is in trouble because the loan ballooned.

“We don’t have a million dollars to pay off the loan. I don’t know what church does. The idea of auctioning off a church is senseless,” he said.

In a statement provided to Reuters, OneUntied said it was not its practice to discuss the details of “any discreet customer relationship”.

“It is not the practice of the Bank to exercise collection remedies including foreclosure in the absence of good cause. We trust the community will not rush to judgment without full knowledge of all the facts,” it said.

Axel Adams, an Atlanta, Georgia official with the Rainbow PUSH coalition, the civil rights and economic justice organization led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said he had seen a “tremendous increase” in churches facing foreclosure.

“And some pastors have not notified their congregants,” Adams said. “They are fearful that if they do, they will lose congregants prematurely.”

Flat Rock Church in Lithonia, Georgia, which dates back to 1860, took out an $850,000 balloon loan with Sun Trust Bank in 2005 to fund a new 300-seat church.

In May 2010 the loan became due. The bank foreclosed and the church is due to be auctioned off next month.

“The bank has refused to negotiate and to this day I just don’t know why,” said Binita Miles, the church pastor.

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A spokesman for Sun Trust said: “We view foreclosure as an action of last resort. We have been working for several years to address the issue with the client in hopes of avoiding foreclosure.”

There are more than 300,000 churches in the United States.

“The church foreclosure market isn’t anything extraordinary,” said Rolfs. “It’s simply another byproduct of the credit bubble.”

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Foreclosure looms for Lebanon Township homeowner, while the banker has …

LEBANON TWP. On March 15 a Musconetcong River Road resident and her daughter could be forced out of their home unless the courts grant a stay of foreclosure.

Meanwhile the banker that is foreclosing on the home is headed to prison for rigging the process in his favor.

Jeanne Lang Boyer said Crusader Servicing will become the owner of her home that day unless the stay is granted. She has lived in the home for 37 years.

Boyer pleaded with the Township Committee at its March 7 meeting to ask their attorney to support a motion for a stay on the redemption of the tax sale certificate.

Boyers nightmare started when she did not pay her 2001 property taxes on time. Previously the taxes were paid through the mortgage company, she said. At the time she was applying for the property tax freeze afforded to senior citizens, which she was later granted.

Because of the unpaid taxes, a lien was put on the home by the township and Crusader Servicing purchased the lien in June, 2002.

Boyer said she tried to redeem the tax sale certificate but discovered that Crusader was charging the highest amount of interest allowed by law 18%. The original amount of about $5,000 in taxes owed had quickly ballooned to more than $24,000, payable in one lump sum. She asked to work out a payment plan but the bank refused to accept anything less than the full amount.

Interest continues to accrue at about $35 each day while the legal battle continues. The amount is now about $80,000.

Crusader filed suit in 2008 in Superior Court and the matter has been tied up in court ever since then.

Meanwhile, Robert W. Stein of Huntington Valley, Pa., who is president of Crusader, pleaded guilty on Feb. 27 for conspiring with David M. Farber of Cherry Hill, NJ to rig bids for the sale of tax liens auctioned by municipalities throughout the state, the Department of Justice announced. They arranged it so there would be no competition and they could get the highest rate of interest possible, according to the Department of Justice.

Early on, Boyer suspected something was wrong and now firmly believes she is a victim of Crusaders fraudulent activities.

Boyer said she has been frustrated by poor communication between her lawyer and attorneys who are representing the township in the matter. They have made my job of saving my house near impossible, rather than becoming a welcome ally with me, still a township citizen, against the now proven crooks Crusader, Boyer said in a letter to the township.

In an e-mail, her attorney said it would not hurt the township, and in fact may be beneficial to support the stay.

According to the DOJ press release, when the owner of real property fails to pay taxes on that property, the municipality in which the property is located may attach a lien for the amount of the unpaid taxes. If the taxes remain unpaid after a waiting period, the lien may be sold at auction.

State law requires that investors bid on the interest rate delinquent homeowners will pay upon redemption. By law, the bid opens at 18% interest and, through a competitive bidding process, can be driven down to 0%. If a lien remains unpaid after a certain period of time, the investor who purchased the lien may begin foreclosure proceedings against the property to which the lien is attached.

Because the bidding was rigged, Stein and Farber admitted to Sherman Act violations in US District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark.

Boyer believes that the tax sale should be voided on account of Steins guilty plea.

According to the Department of Justice press release, from as early as 1998 until approximately spring 2009, Stein participated in a conspiracy to rig bids at auctions for the sale of municipal tax liens in New Jersey by agreeing to allocate among certain bidders on which liens to bid.

According to the court documents, Stein conspired with others not to bid against one another at municipal tax lien auctions.

Property owners were therefore made to pay higher interest on their tax debts than they would have paid had their liens been purchased in open and honest competition.

At the Township Committee meeting, Mayor Brian Wunder said he would have to speak to the attorney who is handling the matter.

Other residents at the meeting asked the Township Committee to do whatever they could to keep Boyer in her home.

No new court dates are currently scheduled.
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Man sentenced in scheme that sent 14 homes into foreclosure

A Bowie man whose fraud scheme sent more than a dozen homes into foreclosure and caused owners to lose more than $1.2 million in home equity was sentenced Thursday to more than three years in prison, prosecutors said.

Charles Donaldson, 58, recruited homeowners struggling with their mortgages for what he said would be a foreclosure rescue plan: They would sell their homes to investors, remain there as renters for 12 to 18 months and then buy the properties back after repairing their finances, according to a statement Thursday from Marylands US Attorneys Office.

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Why Brooklyn Foreclosure Numbers Could Get Worse

Last year Brooklyn had the dubious distinction of being the New York City borough with the highest number of notices of foreclosure, at 4,772. This year the borough faces an additional problem: more homeowners could lose their homes to foreclosure if the state budget does not include funding to provide them with legal advocacy.

In Brooklyn more than 20 non-profits that provide foreclosure education, counseling, and legal representation are at risk of losing their funding. They are part of the statewide Subprime Foreclosure Prevention Services Program, a network of nonprofits that started in 2008 with $25 million from the state budget. The money runs out in April.

Without these legal advocacy, outreach, and educational services, advocates say more New Yorkers could lose their homes, and an already clogged foreclosure court system could become even more congested.  ”It could throw a monkey wrench,” said Catherine Isobe, a lawyer at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Legal Services.

While initially funded through the state budget, in 2009-2010 $21.8 million in federal money was given to the program as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, money that, after an extension, took the program through March. However as April swiftly approaches, advocates are running out of options to find funding for the upcoming fiscal year.

During the 30-day state budget amendment period, in which changes to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget can be proposed, homeowner advocates and state representatives requested that $25 million be apportioned to the Subprime Foreclosure Prevention Program, budget office spokesperson Morris Peters said that there were no current plans to add new amendments that would provide funding.

The resulting financial uncertainty has already rippled through the non-profit organizations and caused at least one foundation to institute changes.

In Brooklyn, the Erasmus Neighborhood Foundation has provided a preview of what might happen to other organizations across the state. The East Flatbush-based foundation originally took on cases in a manner of a law firm. Each homeowner was given a lawyer to work with throughout the foreclosure process. Late last year, as funding became uncertain, the foundation shuttered this branch of its services.

Paula Heaven, the senior foreclosure attorney at the foundation, said she is concerned for the homeowners that the foundation had to turn away. Heaven explains that homeowners without legal counsel often miss key information that can make the difference between saving or losing their home. “They’re so full of emotion that things that they should be able to see clearly, they don’t,” said Heaven. “They think they’re going to lose their home the next day.”

Heaven recalled one case in which the bank had miscalculated the amount the homeowner owed. The bank’s attorneys were pushing for foreclosure, even though the homeowner owed only $215. Heaven not only had to point out the miscalculation to the homeowner, she had to officially challenge the calculations in order to get the loan modified. “When the calculations are that intense, the lay person [often] will not see them,” said Heaven.

In addition to turning away new cases, the Erasmus Neighborhood Foundation had to turn over 50 pending cases, some over three years old, to a different non-profit organization. Heaven says that this kind of turnover can hurt a homeowner’s situation, since his or       her new counsel has to learn the entire case from the beginning.  ”There’s a relationship and trust built between the attorney and clients,” said Heaven, who had to talk one former client into accepting their new counsel. “It’s hard to transfer that relationship.”

In addition to affecting homeowners, the loss of foreclosure attorneys and counselors could also affect a backlogged court system. The average New York foreclosure case started in the fourth financial quarter of 2011 will take an estimated 1,019 days to resolve. And some homeowner advocates believe that bank attorneys sometimes stretch out the proceedings as a tactic to discourage the homeowners, so that astounding number of days could grow even larger.

Without legal assistance, homeowners will have to represent themselves and attempt to file and decipher legal documents that frustrate even veteran attorneys. Mark Ladov, council for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, explained that if fewer attorneys participate in foreclosure courts there will be less oversight of bank attorney’s actions.  “There’s been a lot of concern how bank attorneys have been handling these cases,” said Ladov, who explained that foreclosure attorneys were often the first to call attention to any suspicious legal practices. “Bringing a lot of these questions to light, that has an impact system wide.”

Many in the legal services cite homeowners, who have recently received foreclosure notices, as the most at risk for losing their homes.

Heaven says that if there is no funding for non-profit legal services, the same homeowners who fell victim to predatory lending could fall victim a second time to people who claim they will be able to end their foreclosure hardships. “You’re going to see a lot of fraud,” said Heaven. “You’re going to see the same mortgage brokers that got them into this mess, resurface as mortgage modification specialists.”

One bright spot for the non-profit organizations is the $26 billion dollar settlement brokered last month between representatives of the 50 states and the five of the major foreclosure service banks. New York State is expected to receive $136 million from the settlement, although it remains unclear how exactly the money will be apportioned between homeowners, victims of improper foreclosures, and foreclosure prevention programs.

Heaven said she is optimistic that the settlement money will eventually reach the Erasmus Neighborhood Foundation and replace the lost funding.

“It’s seems to be out there in the cloud in the universe and we’re waiting for it trickle down,” said Heaven of funding. “We hear things and it has yet to be manifested.”

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