Interthinx Vice President Ann Fulmer breaks down what you can do to fight mortgage fraud.
Duration : 0:5:19
Mortgage Fraud Up 17%
Being a puppet: “That’s what I get paid for” BAC recording 6/13/09
A collector of Bank of America is candid in this call.
Duration : 0:8:49
Mortgage Modification – Use an Attorney to Negotiate a Loan Mod – RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com
http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/loan-modification/why-you-should-use-a-licensed-attorney-to-negotiate-your-loan-modification/ – Why you should use a licensed attorney to negotiate your loan modification –
Part 1 – Dan Havey thanks for taking the time to be with us tonight. Thank you Michael for having me and you are absolutely right 2008 for many people was a very tough year. Tough year for pretty much everybody that I know, how many banks have we lost in 2008? Hopefully the bleeding is gone; hopefully there arent too many more banks to fail. Quite a few banks have picked up some of the slack, but the reality of it is so many people have been faced with such hardships, we have solutions that we are maybe going to talk about today that they can look forward to, to make 2009 a great year.
Definitely that is what we are doing here with your organization at Velocity Financial and with the Modification Hotline and with many of the other things I am working on right now to help people out. When I first got into this business it was back in the late 80s, I moved here from Wisconsin after getting a degree in finance and I started selling repos for Fannie Mae, Countrywide, and the RTC. The Resolution Trust Corporation was responsible for getting rid of all the real estate owned by the over 1,800 S&Ls that failed. So I cut my teeth selling those reposed properties and got to know a lot about the laws and worked with a lot of attorneys and then in the mid 90s I moved into the mortgage business, and I immediately started there working with bankruptcy attorneys for the most part.
I was helping people get out of their bankruptcies, chapter 13 bankruptcies, to avoid bankruptcies, to stop foreclosures and I did that up until the fall of 2007 and at that point the market really changed for me as we know most of the subprime financing went away. Some people might look at me and say, my god you gave people subprime loans, well if you are in a chapter 13 bankruptcy and your payment to the trustee is $1,500 a month and I can get you out of bankruptcy and reduce your total monthly outlay by $1,200, your mortgage payment would go up a little bit, I think this is a really good use of a subprime loan. And I certainly never had any complaints from anyone when I got them out of bankruptcy or I stopped their foreclosure and saved their home.
So late last year I moved out of the mortgage business for a while but I never really left it because it is pretty much what I have done my entire adult life. Over 20-25 years I have been involved with real estate, mortgages and finance and I worked for a while for about 6 months last year on a model for an idea that we came up with of being able to accurately predict the top and bottom of all real estate markets and we perfected it for Arizona and most of California. It worked really well to the point that we could actually predict the bottom of the market 6 months in advance and then after the bottoms hit all across the country we kind of stopped working on it.
It is one of the things I am going to start working on again over the next few months. The title of the book is Real Estates Future and you can go to my website at http://realestatesfuture.com and get a copy of that if you want to, it is not available yet but just put in your information and I am going to give away a whole bunch of free copies of it.
The reason why I went through this entire story is because a few months ago Michael and Velocity Financial came to me and said he was going to do loan modifications and I had been approached by other people and I had seen a bunch of garbage on the internet and the thing that he said to me that sold me was, You know Dan, you have to understand, were using attorneys to negotiate these loan modifications.
And that is, I didnt mean to interrupt but that is the key; that is one of the reasons it took us so long to get in. Even though Velocity Financial was at the very beginning of this mad craze, heck you cant drive down the street without seeing a sign that says loan mod, kind of like back in 2006 in the heyday of the mortgage business where you couldnt drive down the street and see a sign that said, if your mortgage payment is more than 1% you are paying too much. Well now everybody is jumping into the loan modification game and it is dangerous.
And that is exactly it, it is every unemployed loan officer has gotten into the loan modification game and I guess I am guilty of the exact same thing. It is just after having 20 years experience of working with attorneys, I know what they are capable of doing, I know how they can go in and negotiate and the biggest thing is they are there to protect the home owner, to protect the consumer, to protect their client because they have a fiduciary responsibility to that client… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
Duration : 0:6:29
Loan Modification, Home Loan Modification, Mortgage Loan Modification, Mortgage Modification
http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/loan-modification/home-owner-negotiated-loan-modifications-may-have-too-many-pitfalls/ – Home Owner Negotiated Loan Modifications may have too many pitfalls –
Part 4 – Yes, I think that makes perfect sense, the only analogy that I can come up with is I could probably figure out how to change the oil in my car, but its not my expertise. Im certainly not going to take the time away from what I have expertise in in order to figure out how to do that, Im going to have a professional do that, and it is the same idea with when someone is considering a loan modification.
You can probably call up that loss mitigation department of that lending institution versus going through the legal department and try to work through that scenario. But you dont know what you dont know, and if you take that approach and make that attempt it could cost you money, it could cost you a higher interest rate, it could cost you something that you are not even aware of. That’s where your team and the loan modification professionals and this attorney network that you exclusively work with come into play.
Again you talk about choosing to not change your own oil, of course you could figure it out, you wouldn’t operate on yourself, if you got yourself into some legal trouble and you were an attorney you wouldn’t represent yourself. Even though you may know what to do and how to do it, you are just not going to do it because you need an unbiased, 3rd party that is truly going to fight for your rights.
And who has expertise in this particular area, specifically focused on working on the mortgage holders, the consumers best possible outcome. That’s right and that is a great point, we have example after example of people who have tried to do the loan modification on their own and most of the time what we see is a situation that is best for the bank, a temporary fix, well people don’t need a temporary fix.
Temporary being the key word there, well make it better for one year, three years, five years, whatever it is, but we will tack it onto the life of the loan. One of our strategic partners was just sharing a story on the break about someone he knows personally that did this, they did this themselves without the benefit of an attorney and the end result was a temporary, short term fix today, all of the back interest, costs etc. were tacked on to the other side of the loan, of this mortgage. That is not what you are after, with a loan modification.
And when you think about it a temporary fix is what put most of these people in the situation to begin with it, were a temporary fix. Remember the billboards that said if your mortgage payment is only $500 a month you are payment too much, call us for a 1% interest rate. Give me a break, people fell for it, everybody fell for it, it was a disaster. You don’t need a temporary fix you need a real fix.
A real fix that is going to meet your needs as a consumer, that is going to meet the needs of your family so you can stay within the home and that’s going to meet the needs of your cash flow monthly, to get a reduced payment, whatever it is going to be for you and your family, that is the whole idea behind modifying your existing loan.
Another important item we hammer down on so many of these issues, a loan modification is not for somebody who doesn’t care. This is if you care and it appears that you will be faced with foreclosure, if you are late on your mortgage, if it is getting ready to go up, any number of genuine true hardships financially that happen to you. Your main goal has to be that you want to stay in your house, keep your family in that house, you need to call, we are here to help, we are not salesmen.
If you are able to find another solution, you know what we are happy for you, the more people in my opinion that are affiliates of my firm that are out there to help us through this process the better off we all are, the sooner we get through this loan modification, these toxic mortgages, the sooner all things economic will recover. The housing market is the basis for this economic crisis and everybody knows that.
There is no question and a number of experts that have weighed in and who have credibility that I receive advice from in terms of helping my own clients, they talk about the stock market in terms of when does it improve and when do stocks get a foothold and go forward and the economy starts to rise and recession come to an end and all those things… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
Duration : 0:6:24
Fraud By Mortgage Companies Key Cause of Foreclosures
Fraud By Mortgage Companies Key Cause of Foreclosures
Call 818-642-8524 for help.Figuring out just how much junk major banks have on the books was a goal of the federal governments just released stress test for the 19 major banks receiving federal bail-out dollars. Theres still no clear answer, but we continue to see more evidence that a high percentage of sub-prime mortgages were steeped in fraud and have a high probability of failure.
The American News Project just released the video above which reports fraud carried out by employees of major sub-prime lenders, like Ameriquest, was a key factor in the mortgage meltdown. Consumer Warning Network first reported our findings on this very issue more than a year ago, and is cited in the ANP report. ANP reporter Lagan Sebert talks with a former Ameriquest employee who says her company promoted a system rife with fraud as a way to make profits faster.
Duration : 0:6:53
Money Merge Account Mortgage Accelerator Clip ch
Clip of Nationally Syndicated Consumer Advocate Clark Howard, Discussing Money Merge Account Equity Accelerator Mortgage Fraud.
Duration : 0:5:8
Loan Modification, Home Loan Modification, Mortgage Loan Modification, Mortgage Modification
http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/real-estate/were-in-recession-and-hank-paulson-holds-the-purse-strings/ – Were in Recession and Hank Paulson holds the purse strings. -
Part 1 – Brett has brought with him some updates on the economy and how things are changing theses days and he brought some great information to discuss with you. We talk about all these different things in the economy and let’s be honest there are a lot of problems out there, no one can dispute that, the unemployment rate is the highest it’s been in many year, with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac AIG being taken over by the government, Lehman brothers Bear Sterns, WAMU, Countrywide all gone, banks and insurance companies getting their bailout, the auto industry is the next one to get a bailout, were already working on our second stimulus package.
95% of the people according to President elect Obama are going to be getting a tax cut soon. Where is all of the money for all of this going to come from? It just seems to be a downward spiral. Brett’s got some great insight on this that he wants to talk about and some more, unfortunately, a little bit more dismal news, just want you to know before you drive off a cliff there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are going to talk about that so Brett, why don’t you share a little information if you could.
Yeah, I would be happy to, you mentioned a couple of things in your opening comments and one was about, the market seems to be anticipating bad news, and it certainly is not surprising it was a pretty significant down day on Wall Street again today, most of that was attributed to two things. Retailers such as Best Buy and Macy’s came out with their projections for consumer spending. Best Buy actually said something to the effect that it is the lowest level of consumer spending that they have ever experienced in the history of their business. Best Buy is actually one that hopefully will stick it out as we know Circuit City is filling for bankruptcy.
The other thing that you mentioned was jobless rate has climbed, the number has definitely increased, the NEBR is the government agency that is responsible for reporting when a recession begins and when it ends. They call it. They officially have not called one, but I think every reasonable person believes that we have been in one and probably have been in one for some time already.
So right supposedly there is some technical factor that says this is a recession that doesn’t mean that we flip the switch and boom here we are out of the recession is that right?
That is absolutely right and in hindsight is how they judge that time of when it started and when it comes to an end, and it’s usually several months after the fact, but it remains to be seen. We believe we are in a recession but we are going to talk about a couple of things that people are feeling this economic crunch and what they can do about it, specifically as it is regarding their home ownership and their mortgages.
A couple of interesting things that came out, Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson today made an announcement this morning regarding a change in the governments, they call it a rescue plan. Others call it a bailout. Thats the 700 hundred billion dollar plan, and apparently Wall Street is unhappy with the changes that took place, pretty significant.
The idea at the time this legislation was passed in congress and ultimately signed by President Bush into law was to use the funds to buy the bad assets, mortgage backed assets from banks and lending institutions, they changed that and recanted that today, Hank Paulson specifically announced that they are no longer going to be using those funds, that the current plan calls for 250 billion dollars of the 700 billion to be used to buy stock of those banks and financial institutions
Does Hank Paulson, does he need to get approval for this? One of the things that have been discussed all week long has been, was the fact that as this legislation was passed and approved, is that he has full power to make these types of decisions, without the benefit of it being discussed through congress and those traditional channels. He is currently the most powerful man in the world. He has the whole checking account to himself to decide what the best distribution of those funds is. It certainly appears that way and apparently he changed his mind and announced it today… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
Duration : 0:5:40
Home Mortgage Loan Modification – Consult an Expert Negotiator – RealEstateMarketingThisweek.com
http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/loan-modification/loan-modifications-are-all-the-craze-beware-and-only-work-with-an-attorney/ – Loan Modifications are all the craze, beware and only work with an Attorney –
Part 5 – I have been a part of these broadcasts where we have talked about the loan modification concepts exclusively and to your credit Michael and your team at Velocity I saw you guys as being first to the punch if you will, first to start introducing this concept not only to the listening audience but to your clientele whenever it might be appropriate for the people who need to look at that option. Now I am seeing on street signs that are handmade and posted on street signs all over the city, call me for loan modification. I am hearing commercials and radio broadcasts that are discussing this loan modification concept; I have seen infomercials regarding this now so its becoming a bigger and bigger scope, its a big buzz right now and maybe you could tell me, and I already know the answer to this how long have you been doing this? And then what are the criteria for someone to consider this process?
Its funny that the loan modification concept is new and its the new buzz word and everybody is talking about it and everybody is doing it and it has been around forever. People have been able to do this for many, many years. The banks dont want your house back; they really, really dont. They may act like it and when you talk to them it may sound like they do but they dont. Velocity Financial is working with a national network of attorneys that have been doing this for 16 years, they have done thousands of these.
These law firms have represented thousands of home owners helping them, keeping them from going into foreclosure. You will see yard signs, street signs, advertisements. As you know Velocity Financial does not advertise, the radio station does play a spot because its important for people to know there is legitimate, licensed help out there. What I want to point out is if you have tried to do it on your own and it didnt work out, I am sorry about that and it doesnt mean it cant be done.
Most importantly you want to deal with somebody that you can sit across the table from, that is here locally, and you dont want to write a check to anybody other than a law firm. A licensed attorney needs to handle this, it is the best way to handle this. Velocity Financial does not charge an up front fee; we take care of all of the necessary paperwork, the discovery work. We do all of that and we dont charge for that. You do have to pay an attorney to represent you and after the case is done and modified and everyone is happy, they will pay us for the work that we have done. So dont work with anyone who isnt an attorney, thats my opinion.
In most states its the law and in Arizona its the wild, wild, west once again as usual, loan modifications are just not regulated but you know what, if you need a legitimate firm, if you need a human being to talk to and sit down with and lets get this thing worked out.
Well as you know Michael I started in the business about 20 years ago and the entire time I have really been working with attorneys. When I was doing loans for 12 plus years, I worked almost exclusively with bankruptcy attorneys helping to bail their clients out of bankruptcy and out of foreclosure, and I had been approached by other people and seen plenty of stuff on the internet about how you can basically buy a book online for $495, or go to a seminar, or do whatever and suddenly youre this loan modification expert after you read the book and filled out a couple of forms and that just doesnt give you the knowledge, the background and especially the negotiating ability that you have when you’re dealing with an attorney… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
Duration : 0:5:40
Foreclosure Short Sale – Sell your home and Save your Credit Score – RealEstateMarketingThisweek.com
http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/short-sales/avoid-a-foreclosure-on-your-credit-report-short-sale-your-home-and-save-your-credit/ – Avoid a foreclosure on your credit report, short sale your home and save your credit
Part 8 – Ok, so that is good to know, I know there are people who want to try and do that and I really dont know. I am really a full time mortgage professional, I didnt get into the loan modification business on purpose, we write mortgage loans, real estate loans for residential and commercial, so therefore I dont know your laws on the same token you dont do loan modifications and you dont write loans, youre professional realtor.
Exactly, and one more thing, bottom line is you cant be defrauding the bank. Because then youre stepping into mortgage fraud, as you know. You do have to have a hardship, you honestly do have to show, if youre going to be benefiting from staying in the home, you have to show a hardship that you cant afford the current payment. If youre making a couple hundred thousand a year and have a ½ million in the bank and owe $200,000 the bank isnt on your side in that case.
There are a lot of situations though when a homeowner wants to stay in their home, if that is the case, then we market it to investors, because there is a lot of the people who are buying these homes so we work with the investor and we work out the lease amount and the homeowners can stay in their homes in those situations. Whatever it looks like at the end of the day, the homeowner needs to picture where they are going to be in the short term midterm and long term and where this house fits into those plans, if a loan mod isnt right a short sale is a significantly better option than a foreclosure.
They need to call now, they need to take action because you do need to find a place to live and were here to help you, you dont want to get two weeks to the point of foreclosure and have no where to move your family. And the Dreamvestors Team that is your main focus right now, but people still call you for first time home buyers.
We work with buyers as well as people who are short selling. We have been in real estate several years and we didnt want just short sales, were fortunate to have a very strong clientele base and were always taking new clients. We have just adjusted our focus as the market called for it and as our clients called for it.
The other thing too when we talk about these short sales, getting out of that home before it goes to foreclosure is always the best case scenario, the bank is happier with it, the house is more saleable in most cases, people are still living there, its still there home, they still feel like the pride of ownership.
Yes, and in addition, pride of neighborhood is another point. Your neighbors are going to like you better because there is not a foreclosure in their neighborhood, it helps keep the prices up when the bank takes them back the banks price them even lower typically, well sure and then its vacant and we have the potential problem of neighborhood kids turning the house into a paintball arena.
I saw that in a fantastic two story home with an amazing backyard, this house was to die for, a million dollar home and the neighborhood kids turned this house into a paintball arena. Now I am not going to lie, that might have been fun when I was a kid, but this house was trashed, wires hanging out, I mean it was just an absolute mess. The lenders dont want that, you dont want that. They need to take action they need to call you.
Yes educate yourself and call someone today. Folks its important to point out today that I would like to see you call Kalyn and Jeri for this because I know, I have seen their track record. I know their close ratio and I know that they generally care about you and your needs first, but if you have someone who does this and youre contemplating it, if you have a sale date coming up, you need to take action. Move on with your life, put this part of your life behind you.
One of the things to and we dont want to get to deep into this, Jeri or Kalyn, but after the short sale is done its all said and done, you have an affiliation with people who can help them out in getting their credit repaired and ready to go. We do, we really pride ourselves on being a one stop shop, so we help educate them, if its going to be a loan modification or a short sale once they get through the process then we begin working with them on credit repair. We have a program that we work ourselves, and if its a really sticky issue with your credit we have people that we work very closely with that we will refer you to, we also have a team that includes a bankruptcy attorney, a real estate attorney and a real estate CPA… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
Duration : 0:7:2
Foreclosure – Pitfalls of Lender Rescission to Stop Foreclosure – RealEstateMarketingThisWeek.com
http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com/foreclosure/the-pitfall-of-forcing-your-bank-to-rescind-your-loan-for-lending-violations-when-in-foreclosure/ – The pitfall of forcing your bank to rescind your loan for lending violations when in foreclosure –
Part 8 – I have a question on that, it is my understanding and I could be wrong, but they don’t need a copy of the note, they need the original note.
You are correct. Your attorney of course will get a copy, because they are not going to send them the original.
Items that your attorney is going to ask for, and I forget the number, I think its 47 different items that the attorney could ask for. Heres one. I’ve been in the industry for 20 years and I just heard this term a couple months ago, it’s known as an alonge. What the heck is an alonge? Well apparently it’s one of the documents that has to be in the file.
While essentially the whole purpose of this is to catch the bank, the lender having messed up your loan somewhere along the way. Because if it is true that they violated some kind of Federal Law in the past when they gave you the loan or are in violation of the loan now, you can then take them to court. And you can sue them. You can have your loan rescinded. Which basically means it comes off your credit report. This loan never happened. As good as that sounds that may not be the best thing for the home owner.
I want to back up just a little tiny bit, you mentioned the alonge, there’s more to the alonge then it sounds like. The bank needs to have the original alonge, more importantly, the person who signed the alonge has to have been authorized by the licensed entity to sign that alonge. And I know for a fact that several people in this town, in this industry, were signing alonges because they needed it signed before the loans could fund. And they were not qualified to sign.
So let’s go back to this discovery process, when we find the lender has to rescind. And I will admit after being in the real estate and mortgage industry for over 20 years, I would have to say that almost 100% of the loans that are originated, if you look at them hard enough you could find something wrong with them. Something wrong, where there could be a reason for you to rescind this loan.
So let’s say you go to that point and push it and get the bank to rescind your loan. Here’s the problem. The loan is gone, it is no longer on your credit report, but let’s say you have a $200,000 loan you took out two years ago, in that time, you would’ve paid about $35,000 in interest. You get a credit for the 35,000, and let’s say you had attorney fees to fight the bank, let’s say $10,000, I don’t think it would be that high but we are just throwing out numbers here. And $5000 in closing costs when you bought the house, so that total is $50,000. You get a credit for $50,000 off of the $200,000 loan, which means you still owe $150,000 on the house. You have to pay the difference.
You have to pay back to the bank $150,000. So its nice that we filed suit and won but frankly in this market where are you going to get the $150,000 from? I think it would be very difficult to find a bank or lender right now that will lend you $150,000 for your house. Chances are you may be several months behind on your payment and although the lender cant show your payment history because the loan was rescinded more than likely the new bank is going to say they need a mortgage payment history. And you say you have been in the house for two years, but the loan got rescinded and they say you need payment history, you cant produce it.
In this marketplace today you are not going to get that loan done. And so the attorneys know that and that’s why once they get the lenders attention they say to the lender, we dont want to rescinded the loan, we dont want to incur a ton of attorney fees but we will if we need to, if you dont want to play ball with us. What we want to do is to work together to get the best possible loan modification for our clients. So we can keep them in their home, keep their family intact.
The reality of a it is, here what we are doing we are working with a national network of attorneys that care about you and you first.
You can go to http://mortgageanswerman.com where there’s going to be information about everything including, one thing I’ll add really quickly. I have something there that is known as a Decision Matrix. The Decision Matrix will walk you through step by step by step, every single step of the process regarding what you should do with your property, should you do a short sale, should you do loan modification, should you just let the bank foreclose? Is bankruptcy an okay idea for you, or not? What are the tax consequences?… http://realestatemarketingthisweek.com
Duration : 0:6:54