Sunday, March 3, 2013

Foreclosure victims to get compensation alerts in $9.3B agreement starting Friday


Foreclosure victims to get compensation alerts in $9.3B agreement starting Friday

By Danielle Douglas, Published: February 28

Within the next 31 days, 4.2 million homeowners who suffered abusive foreclosure tactics at the hands of some of the nation’s largest banks will be notified of their compensation, banking regulators said Thursday.
The Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued the final details of a sweeping $9.3 billion agreement with 13 mortgage servicers, including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank andBank of America, under consent orders for fraudulent and flawed foreclosure practices.
(View each bank’s share in the settlement here)
Regulators have hired Rust Consulting to dispense $3.6 billion in cash payments to borrowers whose homes were in foreclosure in 2009 and 2010. Those whose homes were wrongfully seized and sold will be awarded up to $125,000. Borrowers who were charged improper fees during foreclosure or hit with higher rates than they should have will be entitled to a few hundred dollars.
Homeowners will be assigned to one of 11 categories based on the types of errors that could have occurred. Categories include “denied modification,” “insufficient follow-up” and “borrower not in default.” Servicers are still determining how many borrowers will fall into each category.
(View all the categories here)
Payments will be doled out in waves starting in April. No action is required by borrowers. They will receive payment whether or not they filed a form requesting a review.
The remaining $5.7 billion from the servicers will be used for reducing loan payments or interest rates on mortgages. Servicers will also offer forgiveness of deficiency judgments — he difference between the price the home sold for at the foreclosure sale and the total debt that was due under the mortgage. They can use this portion of the settlement to help any of their customers who need aid to prevent a foreclosure.
The requirements are being used as an incentive for institutions “to further improve their efforts” to prevent foreclosures, Morris Morgan, deputy comptroller of large banks at the OCC, said during a call with reporters.
The agreement, first announced in January, replaces an independent foreclosure review that was established shortly after the consent orders were handed down in 2011.
In the 12 months that the government’s foreclosure review was up an running, not a single homeowner received a dime in compensation for the abuses they suffered at the hands of some of the nation’s largest banks. But the eight consultants managing the process were paid a total of $1.9 billion.
By some estimates, it would have taken well into 2014 for the millions of borrowers affected to be paid. The slow process and inordinate amounts spent on operations alone is why federal regulators say they had to shut down the system and forge a new agreement.
But when regulators announced the foreclosure settlement to replace the review, lawmakers and consumer advocates questioned the abrupt conclusion of the initial program and whether the new deal would be any better.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) are among the lawmakers pressing banking regulators to explain what happened with the original review process.
At a housing luncheon held in February, OCC comptroller Thomas Curry defended the new agreement, saying that is has several times the potential payout of the original review.
“Changing course was the right thing to do, for borrowers, for servicers, for the federal banking system and for the housing markets,” he said. “Our new approach will get more money to more people much more quickly.”
© The Washington Post Company

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

JOHN,

Have you seen this Vimeo video of the secret underground roadway system in the U.S. that stretches for thousands of miles? You might want to post this on your site.

http://vimeo.com/60660614

Anonymous said...

The banks are throwing people a few bread crumbs, saying: "Now, go away."

Anonymous said...

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/bcreg20120621b2.pdf

This was what they were supposed to work with to settle with people they robbed, cheated, and stole from.

Cashing these settlement checks will probably be considered final settlement of the matter. During the foreclosure review, some people received $850.

Can you imagine paying for a home for years with sweat equity and labor and having someone force you from the home and paying you less than a penny a day for settlement?

Getting a signature is important to clear that title.

...Gift horses and their mouths.

Anonymous said...

I have a question or two here.

If a person lost a home that was worth considerably more than the $125,000, how are they made whole? Would it not seem that the 1 billion plus that went to the 8 individuals, should be promptly returned (if you do not do your job, do you get paid (?) no. Also, who is responsable for those that are now taking on the task of checking who should get what, and what errors were found? Are the foxes being put in place to oversee the henhouse?

With all my heart, I want this to be a genuine
reparation to homeowners, including my family.
But, given the huge profits that banks such as Chase had made this year, last year, etc., does it not seem only correct that if you lost a $300,000 dollar home, that you get paid $300,000. After all, did not the homeowner pay interest payments on that amount, hoping to own it (well, sort of, given how the system works),
fully?

I also don't understand how the so called "borrower", is not made whole, given that the banks were almost immediatly paid for the property that the "borrower" paid for when he (not known to him at the time) signed the note, so that they could monetize his signiature, through his hidden fiction (all capital letters name) trust. None of which he had any idea was occuring. Then, as the banks made several times the money from securitizing the note, or property, they again profited by way of the uninformed "borrower". Clearly the banks are the borrower, and the person with the mortgage is the creditor. Not to mentions the many payments that the person who took out the mortgage, that went to others, again, unbeknownst to him/her.

So, where is the equity to the person who lost their home, in this little arrangement? Sorry to say, it appears to me, to simply be a very inexpensive way to sidestep the truth of the fraudulent process, and fool the people, once again.

Please correct me, somebody, if I am wrong, but this is just another fraud upon fraud, that once the person getting the reparation money signs the documents, relieves the bank legally,
by way of the acceptance signiature, be it a few hundred dollars, or the $125,000 for the whole property. (Nice if that is what your home was worth, not nice if it was worth considerably more).

There will be a little pinch of justice here, for some. But the larger picture is the elephant in the room. And it is a massive and unhappy one.

If this is not obvious to everyone, someone needs to put in a link here, to educate those that do not understand what the banks have done,
under the guise of legal procedural business, as
to the total scam that was perpetrated upon homeowners ("borrowers").

Sorry to be so blunt, but it is too obvious to me to not say something.

My home and another property, were paid for. The bank refuses to acknowledge this fact.
Did they abscond with the money, then happily take my property(s)? Or, did someone deep inside embezzle the rather large amounts of money paid? And why would the bank not help me find where it went, if they are blameless?
This is a really egregious situation, as the truth shows on the Bloomberg screens. And why does the judge look the other way to some hard facts place before him, and just ignore them?
These being the banks activity report showing paid, Bloomberg showing PIF, back of cancelled check, and a few other choice items...
And if I don't find a stand-up attorney that really understands these things, I will have to represent myself. Not, something I wish to do...
My attorney does not seem to know how to enter evidence into a case for an evidentiary hearing,
or, does he?

Anonymous said...

This agreement is bogus. Nothing is mentioned about those forced to sell their homes short saie like me, or face foreclosure. I'm told sell your home, or we'll foreclose and sell it for $1000 and you'll still owe what another person doesn't pay us. Nothing for us. Lies. Again. Another lie was their offering money to the BP oil spill and spraying us for four months with corexit9500. Nothing was offered to those who had no medical because we could not prove anything. Americans accept lies. That's what we're best at.

Unknown said...

This is a good start and will certainly show the right direction to help people that have been abused with these large banks, servicers etc. But I question that this needs to go deeper...example bundling of notes, deeds, and sold in the open market with only assignments done by robo signing, where is the original paperwork when a home is foreclosed on??? In some states, banks are not ordered to produce these documents, this needs to be addressed!

Anonymous said...

If a home was sold during short sale, that is considered settlement for the homeowner and the bank.

Each thing you do is like a contract. If I say sell short or I'll take it, you have two choices to contract, sell short via a contract you initiated or have it stolen via a contract I initiated.

We've done things kind of willy nilly and haven't learned that just like a contract can be made with a handshake, it can be made by signature and by doing as you are told even if it's not in writing.

Sign here is a written contract, go home and fill out the rest of the paperwork and send it in with money or a copy of your driving record, or claim no contendere or not guilty and appear in court on this day, is a contract by gesture.

It's all contracts, and even free people can put them selves in a position to work for someone for a living because they will contract their rights away and not know how to get them back, even if they are unalienable and can't be contracted away. If you think they are, you'll act like they are and that's a contract by gesture.

As for the guy with the attorney that won't file evidentary hearing information. That attorney has to earn a living in that courtroom long after you stop being the client.
Also, their first obligation is to the court, so there is no way they can ever do what you want unless the court wants it. The attorney having awareness of prior cases would know how that judge feels about a case like that, and how he/she'd rule. The entire system is corrupt. You'll spend a lot of money and have less in return. No home, no equity, and the lack of money spent fighting a fiction you'll never meet, but you'll meet their representative (one of many) in court. Listen to Rod Class, AIB Radio on talkshoe to get an idea of the legal system and how it's not what it seems. AS far as following what he does. You'll be walking in circles. You need a whole lot more well rounded information to step into the fray prepared, but you can learn a lot about the system from his audios.

Anonymous said...

What about the People who had their Homes Forclosed on in 2011-2012?

Anonymous said...

What about the People who had their homes Illegally forclosed on in 2011-2012? Any Compensation?