The Florida Foreclosure Fraud Weblog
Where Florida homeowners fight back against foreclosure fraud
Here’s something most of you already know: federal government programs designed to help homeowners stave off foreclosure just aren’t working. A Congressional Oversight Panel investigating foreclosure relief programs found that the programs are almost universally disappointing: Only 1 in 6 homeowners in foreclosure crisis have been helped. Only one million families will lower their payments [...]
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Foreclosure should almost never be granted by summary judgment. That’s what I believe, and that’s what most of the lawyers who defend foreclosures in Florida believe. Now, it looks like there’s at least one judge who is starting to think that way too. Before I share with you why this judge may never again grant [...]
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New foreclosure lawsuit rules require plaintiffs’ mills to tell the truth -and boy, are they mad! On February 11, the Florida Supreme Court amended the rules of foreclosure proceedings in a radical way: they want someone to swear that the allegations in the complaint are actually true. (Buncha bomb-throwers, aren’t they?) The amended rule says: [...]
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The MERS Conveyance The heart of your mortgage – the most important clause in the entire document – is the “Transfer of Rights in the Property” clause. This is the language that creates the lender’s security interest backing the loan – it’s the sentence that allows them to foreclose if the borrower doesn’t pay. But [...]
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When you sell a piece of property you generally presume that you are no longer responsible for what might happen to the property after it’s transferred to the new owners, but that’s not what happened to a recent caller to the firm looking for help. This individual called to ask how she could be responsible [...]
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Your mortgage is a thick, dense, practically unreadable document that dictates many of the terms of the relationship between the borrower and the lender on a typical home loan. The document itself is written by the bank’s lawyers, and most of them tend to use specific language that has been tried-and-true in other deals. In [...]
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How to beat foreclosure Today’s St. Petersburg Times features a front-page story with the bold-face heading “How to Beat Foreclosure” and tells the stories of people who have stayed in their homes for years by gaming the system. Only one problem: filing bankruptcy time and time again is an abuse of the system, and can [...]
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Locked out Imagine this: you’re on a two-week vacation. You come back, and find a notice on your door: Entry by unauthorized persons prohibited. Alarmed, you try your key in the lock – it doesn’t fit. You peek through the windows and see that everything you left behind is gone – your furniture, your clothes, [...]
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Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure: Giving up the keys Just want to hand in the keys and walk away from your upside-down loan? Many of our clients – often facing impossible monthly payments or gut-wrenching shortfalls on their loan-to-value ratios – just want to turn in the keys and walk away from their loans. “What [...]
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Fighting on two fronts Imagine getting called up for military duty, torn away from your family, your normal life, and your job. Imagine the stress of going off to war, and then imagine coming back having lost your home. I am amazed and saddened to learn that for too many of our soldiers, sailors, and [...]
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Ever since word got out about Florida’s new foreclosure rescue fraud law, I’ve gotten feedback from lawyers all over the state. Many agree with me that the new law is a serious problem for homeowners and their attorneys. Others are not so sure. Here are some of the responses I’ve gotten from the “I’m not [...]
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On May 28, 2008, Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed into law House Bill 643, meant to protect homeowners in foreclosure from falling prey to foreclosure rescue scammers. The law addresses two of the most common type of foreclosure rescue scams in Florida: foreclosure consultant fraud, and foreclosure transaction fraud. Foreclosure consultant fraud The typical foreclosure [...]
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