If the week’s economic news has you feeling down, enjoy this fun segment from The Daily Show about the Florida couple that successfully foreclosed on Bank of America.

The Washington State Legislature passed a new law this year requiring all lenders to offer borrowers mediation before foreclosure. The goal of the law, which takes effect starting July 22, 2011, is to allow more Washington State homeowners to modify the loans to avoid foreclosure.

Under the current system, many homeowners are losing their homes unnecessarily simply because they are unable to navigate the Making Home Affordable Modification Program (aka “HAMP”). Many of these homeowners would be able to stay in their homes with a little help. At Seattle Debt Law, our attorneys have already attended training on the new law and we are prepared to assist clients through the process.

There are numerous reasons why you may need an attorney consultation even if you are following all the guidelines of the state sponsored program. The new law gives important deadlines and notices that you must comply with to take advantage of the mediation, but even if you miss those deadlines, you can still get help all the way up to the day before foreclosure. Don’t let the predatory lenders take your house—fight back and stay informed!

For more information, visit the Foreclosure Mediation Program website or read the Department of Commerce’s handout on the program.

Christopher Marconi was in the shower when he heard a loud banging on his door. By the time he grabbed a towel and hustled to his front step, a U.S. marshal’s sedan was peeling out of his driveway. Nailed to Marconi’s front door was a foreclosure summons from Wells Fargo, naming him as a defendant. But the notice was for a house Marconi had never seen — on a mortgage he never had.

A long, important Associated Press story this morning about the wrongful foreclosures caused by the banks’ high-speed foreclosure procedures and inadequate recordkeeping practices. As the story reminds us, these procedures have included fraud as a routine practice:

Depositions from employees working for the banks or their law firms depict a foreclosure process in which it was standard practice for employees with virtually no training to masquerade as vice presidents, sometimes signing documents on behalf of as many as 15 different banks. Together, the banks and their law firms created a quick-and-dirty foreclosure machine that was designed to rush through foreclosures as fast as possible.

Former employees at banks and foreclosure law firms have testified that they also knowingly pushed through foreclosures on the wrong people.

If you receive a notice of foreclosure, contact an attorney immediately so you can take advantage of all your options!

Yet more proof that HAMP alone may not be enough to save your home from foreclosure:

Some struggling homeowners say they’re being unfairly foreclosed on despite making all their payments under trial mortgage modification programs.They equate that to mistreatment by banks who agreed to help borrowers when they took part in the government’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue.

If you’re lucky enough to have gotten through the HAMP application process and have been given a trial modification program, as this article makes clear, it doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods.

Your HAMP trial modification is based on a formula that requires you to make a payment based on your income and suggests that your mortgage debt-to-income ratio should be 31% of your gross (pre-tax) monthly income.  The trial modification will give you a reduction if you qualify for a modification. (See the calculator at http://www.makinghomeaffordable.gov/payment_reduction_estimator.html).

However, if your trial payment is less than what your current payoff of the loan would be at a 3.0% fixed interest rate over 30 years, it is unlikely you will be approved for a permanent loan modification and you could be headed for foreclosure.

Don’t take that risk!  If you have received a foreclosure notice from your bank, regardless of your process in the loan modification you should consider filing a Chapter 13 bankruptcy.  A Chapter 13 cannot change the terms of the loan you already have–it can only cure existing arrears over time and strip off wholly unsecured second mortgages. But a HAMP loan mod combined with bankruptcy may be the ticket to solve your problems. You have the security to know that the bank cannot foreclose on you because you have filed a bankruptcy, which gives you that assurance and protection, and you can still pursue the HAMP loan modification process while in BK.

Also, Seattle Debt Law, LLC has just recently agreed to assist in the HAMP loan modification process through the use of a special computer portal that cuts through the hassle of spending hours on the phone with the bank counselors, better known as the “Burger King Kids,” and you will have the piece of mind that your situation is being taken care of.

For more info on the “Burger King Kids” issue, see this October 13 New York Times article.

Banks are so paranoid about short-sale fraud that they’re pushing homeowners into foreclosure–even when it costs the banks money:

Ms. Sweetland, 47, tried such a sale this summer out of desperation. She had lost her high-paying job and drained her once-flush retirement savings, and her bank, GMAC, wouldn’t modify her mortgage. After seven months of being unable to pay her mortgage, she decided that a short sale would give her more time to move out of her Phoenix home and damage her credit rating less than a foreclosure.

She owes $206,000 and found a buyer who would pay $200,000. Last Friday, GMAC rejected that offer and said it would foreclose in seven days, even though, according to Ms. Sweetland’s broker, the bank estimates it will make $19,000 less on a foreclosure than on a short sale.

With all the recent publicity about mortgage fraud and loss of documentation by the mortgage lenders you would think they would wise up and agree to short sales that are in their financial interest, so we could get out of this foreclosure mess. But the banks want everything their way, so even when you agree to a short sale you have to watch out that the banks are not going to come back and sue you on a deficiency that you could have gotten canceled by letting the property go into foreclosure. “Banksters” indeed!

With bank seizures of foreclosed homes at record levels, the Obama administration continues to treat bankruptcy court as the proverbial elephant in the room. As this New York Times editorial observes, the administration’s Pollyanna-ish belief in the willingness of banks to voluntarily modify principal balances for homeowners facing foreclosure has led to a standoff between primary and secondary mortgage holders:

Investors, including pension funds and mutual funds, often hold the first mortgages. Banks often hold home-equity loans and other second mortgages. Investors reasonably believe that second liens should be reduced before the primary mortgage is modified, but banks balk at that because it would prompt write-offs they don’t want.

Fortunately, investors are getting tired of this foot-dragging:

Some investors, notably the powerhouse group BlackRock, have called for a special bankruptcy process to resolve the standoff. The court would seek to reduce bankrupt borrowers’ total debt to affordable levels, starting with unsecured debt like credit cards, then undersecured debt, like second mortgages, and then, if necessary, the primary mortgage debt.

Giving bankruptcy judges permission to modify the terms of mortgage loans–isn’t that what we’ve been saying for years? Maybe this time the message will get through to Congress and the administration.

Having trouble modifying your mortgage?  You’re not alone.  The New York Times recently reported that mortgage servicing companies have little interest in helping troubled homeowners lower their monthly payments because of the “lucrative fees” they can collect on delinquent loans. 

According to the Times article, the Obama administration’s foreclosure program, which provides a $1,000 incentive to servicers for each loan they modify (plus $1,000 a year for the next three years) is no match for the revenue generated from delinquencies and foreclosures:

“For many subprime servicers, late fees alone constitute a significant fraction of their total income and profit,” said Diane E. Thompson, a lawyer for the National Consumer Law Center, in testimony to the Senate Banking Committee this month.  “Servicers thus have an incentive to push homeowners into late payments and keep them there: if the loan pays late, the servicer is more likely to profit.”

What’s more, the article reports, some mortgage companies (Ocwen, for example) have established their own title companies in order to keep more of the revenue from foreclosures. 

Scary stuff, but kudos to the Times for shedding light on these dark dealings.

(Please don’t let this post stop you from trying to get a modification…many people have successfully lowered their mortgage payments! The loan modification and forbearance section of our website can help you get started.)

Maybe so, according to Bloomberg (via the P-I‘s real estate blog):

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank threatened to revive the mortgage “cram- down” bill that stalled in Congress this year, saying lenders aren’t being aggressive enough in modifying troubled home loans.

Cram-downs let federal judges lengthen terms, cut interest rates and reduce mortgage balances of bankrupt homeowners, even if the lender objects. Congress gave the mortgage industry every legislative tool it requested to allow them to more easily modify loans for those facing foreclosure, and the results have been below expectations, Frank said in a statement today.

“People in the servicing industry and in the broader financial industry must understand that if this last effort to produce significant modifications fails, the argument for reviving the bankruptcy option will be extremely strong, and I think there is a substantial chance that the outcome will be different,” Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said.

Great news, if it happens. Meanwhile, last night’s Daily Show brought us the story of one particular man who might want to take advantage of such an option:

Via Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, here’s another reason why passing cramdown now is important: the existing loan modifications aren’t working.

Mortgages modified in the third quarter failed at a faster pace than those revised in the first, and the delinquency rate on the least risky loans doubled, signs of deteriorating credit quality, U.S. regulators said.

Loans modified in the first quarter to help borrowers keep their homes fell delinquent 41 percent of the time after eight months, and second-quarter loans had a 46 percent default rate, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Office of Thrift Supervision said in a report today. Third-quarter trends “are worsening,” the agencies said.

Yves notes that most of the mods that lenders are offering today involve interest rate reductions and lengthening maturities, which aren’t as successful as mods that reduce the principal owed. Unfortunately, principal reduction is rarely offered due to the way most mortgages today are securitized (i.e., cut up into pieces and sold to far-flung investors). The only thing that is likely to reverse this trend of increasing modification failures is if bankruptcy judges are given the power to rewrite loan terms.

The cramdown bill passes the House, 234-191. All of our Western Washington representatives voted for the bill except for Dave Reichert, the only Republican in the bunch.