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January 10th, 2014

1/10/2014

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AS NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMISTS LIKE REICH AND KRUGMAN SHOUT OUT AGAINST THE WEALTH INEQUITY OF TODAY WITHOUT EVER ACKNOWLEDGING THAT IT ISN'T INEQUITY-----IT WAS A VISIGOTH LOOTING OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY BY MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD------WE SAY, A GOVERNMENT THAT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW SUSPENDS STATUTES OF LIMITATION!

I see in Baltimore all these middle-class homeowners that were able to keep their homes in hard times and I am shouting----financial analysts are warning to get rid of houses as this coming economic crash will bring a depression so you may be next!  Gentrification will go up the income scale!



I spoke last time about how Obama and neo-liberals played this entire crisis like a playbook written by Wall Street.  We saw how these main street bailouts were deliberately written so that only the affluent homeowners would access help and the FHA, a vital agency with a long service to families was targeted to be shut out.  Neo-liberals are working just as hard as republicans to end all War on Poverty and New Deal programs and fair housing goes!!!!  So, the middle-class  holding on to jobs and their homes now had better buckle-up because financial analysts are calling for people owning homes to get rid of them as the next, more powerful economic collapse comes soon......

THIS IS OBAMA'S LEGACY AND ALL OF MARYLAND'S DEMOCRATS ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND ALL EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE. 


SHAME AND DISGRACE FOR MARYLAND NEO-LIBERALS WATCHING SILENTLY AS THIS UNFOLDED.

What could we do, they say?  When 50 states attorney general shout out in 2005 that the mortgage industry is systemically criminal--------

YOU SHOUT OUT TO MARYLAND CITIZENS NOT TO GET INVOLVED IN THESE LOANS.  THEN, YOU SHOUT OUT OVER AND OVER THAT JUSTICE HAS NOT OCCURRED!

That is what a democrat would do!


Below you see the housing program that Obama and neo-liberals pretended was the bailout of main street and help in curbing foreclosures.  It was a ruse of course as they fumbled the roll-out long enough for most people that could have gotten help went under trying to get it!  Mind you....some people were helped.  The percentage I see over and again is 10% of foreclosures were saved.

 I sit and watch the same banks and mortgage corporations that created the massive subprime mortgage fraud now connected with HARP, earning more money from fees attached to yet another mortgage refinance.  From Quickens Loans to  Wells Fargo and Bank of America.....they are earning billions on HARP.

HARP Program Requirements In order to participate in HARP you need to meet the following requirements:

  • Your mortgage must be owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac
  • You must be current on your mortgage, and cannot have made a payment more than 30 days late in the past year.
  • You must have negative home equity (you owe more on your mortgage than your home is worth), but your mortgage cannot exceed 125% of the value of your home.
  • Refinancing must help the affordability or stability of your mortgage.
  • You must have the ability to continue making payments
  • Mortgage owned or guaranteed by the FHA, VA, or USDA are not eligible for HARP.
  • Your property must be 1-4 units.
  • Your property must also be your primary residence. 2nd homes are not eligible for refinancing under HARP.
________________________________________________
As you see, HARP deliberately excludes FHA and the other government mortgages from this 'stimulus' and these loans are for those needing the help the most.  See why tens of millions of people went into foreclosure?  They were the ones most affected by the massive frauds and simple Rule of Law would have kept those homes with those families.

The reason Obama and neo-liberals in Congress chose Freddie and Fannie for this stimulus is that these loans were private mortgages and they wanted bank mortgages to be stabilized with the higher end prices and they are trying to end FHA and low-income homeownership. Neo-liberals work with republicans to end all War on Poverty and New Deal programs!

Obama and neo-liberals called these homeowners 'responsible' because they were able to weather years of recession.


Remember, they wanted everyone out of property ownership and into rentals because Pottersville landlords can keep people poor with high rents and control where they live!  Neo-liberals are socially engineering this return to Medieval society with the serfs outside the castle gates....into what is suburbia.  What about equal housing and access?  THE BILL OF RIGHTS GOES WITH TPP YOU KNOW!  In Maryland, the ACLU is actually helping with this even as it is unconstitutional.


The FHA was a successful program for decades causing very little cost for taxpayers.  So, the only reason to get rid of it is that it took away profit for banks wanting the mortgage business. 





Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages from financial institutions, providing a way for those financial institutions to have more cash to continue to lend money for additional mortgages. Congress enacted a statutory mission for these GSEs to bring "liquidity, stability and affordability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets."


FHA mortgages were created by the United States government to give borrowers with low credit scores and down payments who could not qualify for a Freddie Mac mortgage the opportunity to buy a home.


_____________________________________________


When Obama chose to suspend Rule of Law and allow all this mortgage fraud go without justice it was the old, women, and children who were hit the hardest.  Seniors taking home equity loans thinking they would be able to address them over time did not know massive corporate fraud was being allowed to go unabated.  These were the 'irresponsible' homeowners Obama and neo-liberals allowed to be taken under.

Now, Wall Street wanted all real estate back into the hands of the banks so if you watch TV you are familiar with the REVERSE MORTGAGE DEALS THAT HAND HOMES TO THE BANKS AFTER SENIORS DIE.  This is handy for families with seniors struggling to survive, but it was yet another device to move homeownership away from average people as these families who would normally have inherited these homes now had no inheritance.  Meanwhile, the estate taxes are being eliminated slowly but surely for the wealthy.


THE FIRST THING A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY DOES IS PROTECT THE OLD AND YOUNG....NOT NEO-LIBERALS!

THIS WAS MASSIVE FRAUD AND THE ECONOMY WAS DAMAGED BY THIS FRAUD.  ALL OF THE AID BY CONGRESS SHOULD HAVE COME TO MAIN STREET.  RULE OF LAW DEMANDS IT SO------WHEN GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW THEY SUSPEND STATUTES OF LIMITATIONS!

Senior Citizens Worst Hit By Foreclosures in America
Filed Under Repo Homes

It is the senior citizens that have been worst hit by the foreclosure crisis in America. About 28% of those boiling in the foreclosure cauldron are aged above 50. A recent study by AARP has questioned the validity of the hitherto popular surmise that the seniors have escaped the crisis because of they had built up sufficient equity on their houses.

The research done by AARP show that 684,000 persons aged 50 are in foreclosure during the last six months of 2007. Those who were above 50 comprised of 28% of all those who were in the foreclosure soup. Of these 684,000 senior borrowers, 50,000 were in foreclosures and lost their houses.

At the close of 2007 the rate among senior citizens of America who were in foreclosure was 0.24%. This was half of those who were aged less than 50 and have less equity than their elders.

Susan Reinhard of Public Policy Institute said that the seniors of America are dependent on their houses both as a shelter and an asset when retirement knocks. She said, “Losing a home jeopardizes long-term financial security with limited time to recover.”

The report also highlights the effects of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on those who were aged 50 and above. This group was 17 times more likely to be caught by foreclosure than those with prime mortgages. The states with high repo home rates among the seniors are California, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan.

Older Americans had made use of the equity on their houses for making repairs to their property and financing the higher education of their children. But seniors with fixed income are facing problems making mortgage payments. The sluggish economy with inflation is making the going even tougher for those with advancing age. Fall in the real estate market has affected all age groups.

Daniel Alpert of Westwood Capital that both young and old who had siphoned off the equity on their houses are now rocking on the same boat of foreclosure Many seniors like the juniors contracted teaser loans thanks to the aggressive peddling of the same by agents. The mortgage forms were also difficult to comprehend. The call of the hour is simplified mortgages. So it was a question of sales talk and trust that were misused for disastrous consequences for all – the lender, the borrower and the community together with the hapless individual whether young or old.




______________________________________________



Below you see an article from Fall 2011 talking about how very few on main street were able to access HARP from the time it rolled out with the bank bailout.  This was supposedly main street's bailout but between the long-term unemployment creating the environment of missed payments and the banks constantly 'losing paperwork' that basically caused most people applying to fail to be considered. 

ALL OF THIS WAS DELIBERATE AS THIS ENTIRE MORTGAGE FRAUD WAS ABOUT GETTING MAIN STREET OUT OF THEIR HOMES SO THE GOAL WAS TO GET AS MANY HOMEOWNERS AS POSSIBLE INTO FORECLOSURE. 

Here in Maryland advocates for people heading to foreclosure shouted even into 2012 that  the money intended to augment people heading to foreclosure from the $25 billion mortgage fraud settlement was not getting to people.  So, just think, people who we all know were struggling from the economic downturn were left from 2009-2012 mostly unable to get the help they needed with this HARP policy. 

Flash forward to 2013 and we see Obama shouting that those funds set aside for HARP be used.  By now, most people of average means have lost their homes to foreclosure.


The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP): What you need to know

By Hayley Tsukayama, Published: October 24, 2011

On Monday, the federal government announced that it would revise the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), implementing changes that The Washington Post’s Zachary A. Goldfarb reported would “allow many more struggling borrowers to refinance their mortgages at today’s ultra-low rates, reducing monthly payments for some homeowners and potentially providing a modest boost to the economy.”

The HARP program, which was rolled out in 2009, is designed to help. Those who are “underwater” on their homes and owe more than the homes are worth. So far, The Post reported, it has reached less than one-tenth of the 5 million borrowers it was designed to help. Here’s a quick breakdown of what you need to know about the changes.

Video

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Edward J. DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, talks about the regulator's mortgage relief program that will expand to allow homeowners to refinance regardless of how much their houses have dropped in value.

Gallery

  Flashback: Last year, some mortgage lenders and government officials took action after discovering that many mortgage documents were mishandled.


What was announced? The enhancements will allow some homeowners who are not currently eligible to refinance to do so under HARP. The changes cut fees for borrowers who want to refinance into short-term mortgages and some other borrowers. They also eliminate a cap that prevented “underwater” borrowers who owe more than 125 percent of what their property is worth from accessing the program.

Am I eligible? To be eligible, you must have a mortgage owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, sold to those agencies on or before May 31, 2009. The current loan-to-value ratio on the mortgage must be greater than 80 percent. Having a mortgage that was previously refinanced under the program disqualifies you from the program. Borrowers cannot not have missed any mortgage payments in the past six months and cannot have had more than one missed payment in the past 12 months.

How do I take advantage of HARP? According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the first step borrowers should take is to see whether their mortgages are owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. If so, borrowers should contact lenders that offer HARP refinances.

When do the changes go into effect? The FHFA is expected to publish final changes in November. According to a fact sheet on the program, the timing will vary by lender.



____________________________________________

I speak quite often about the targeted families in urban centers because of what is happening in Baltimore.  The black middle-class was hit hardest as their wealth was often tied to these urban areas hit with mortgage fraud and as we know the US Justice Department has failed to give any justice to people of color in these urban centers.  City Hall is not only allowing the subprime loan fraud go without justice......I have spoken about how City Hall is actually preying on these citizens with home seizures from faulty utility bills or small amounts of back taxes.

THIS IS NOT A DONE DEAL AS ALL OF THIS HAS YET TO SEE JUSTICE AND RULE OF LAW WILL HAVE LOW-INCOME HOUSING FOR VICTIMS OF FRAUD IN THE CITY CENTER!


The Great Eviction: Black America and the Toll of the Foreclosure Crisis From predatory loans to evictions at gunpoint, neighborhoods are hosting bitter conflicts between activists and market forces—By Laura Gottesdiener

| Thu Aug. 1, 2013 1:04 PM


We cautiously ascend the staircase, the pitch black of the boarded-up house pierced only by my companion's tiny circle of light. At the top of the landing, the flashlight beam dances in a corner as Quafin, who offered only her first name, points out the furnace. She is giddy; this house—unlike most of the other bank-owned buildings on the block—isn't completely uninhabitable.

It had been vacated, sealed, and winterized in June 2010, according to a notice on the wall posted by BAC Field Services Corporation, a division of Bank of America. It warned: "entry by unauthorized persons is strictly prohibited." But Bank of America has clearly forgotten about the house and its requirement to provide the "maintenance and security" that would ensure the property could soon be reoccupied. The basement door is ajar, the plumbing has been torn out of the walls, and the carpet is stained with water. The last family to live here bought the home for $175,000 in 2002; eight years later, the bank claimed an improbable $286,100 in past-due balances and repossessed it.

It's May 2012 and we're in Woodlawn, a largely African American neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. The crew Quafin is a part of dubbed themselves the HIT Squad, short for Housing Identification and Target. Their goal is to map blighted, bank-owned homes with overdue property taxes and neighbors angry enough about the destruction of their neighborhood to consider supporting a plan to repossess on the repossessors.

"Anything I can do," one woman tells the group after being briefed on its plan to rehab bank-owned homes and move in families without houses. She points across the street to a sagging, boarded-up place adorned with a worn banner—"Grandma's House Child Care: Register Now!"—and a disconnected number. There are 20 banked-owned homes like it in a five-block radius. Records showed that at least five of them were years past due on their property taxes.

Where exterior walls once were, some houses sport charred holes from fires lit by people trying to stay warm. In 2011, two Chicago firefighters died trying to extinguish such a fire at a vacant foreclosed building. Now, houses across the South Side are pockmarked with red Xs, indicating places the fire department believes to be structurally unsound. In other states--Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York, to name recent examples—foreclosed houses have taken to exploding after bank contractors forgot to turn off the gas.

Most of the occupied homes in the neighborhood we're visiting display small signs: "Don't shoot," they read in lettering superimposed on a child's face, "I want to grow up." On the bank-owned houses, such signs have been replaced by heavy-duty steel window guards. ("We work with all types of servicers, receivers, property management, and bank asset managers, enabling you to quickly and easily secure your building so you can move on," boasts Door and Window Guard Systems, a leading company in the burgeoning "building security industry.")

The dangerous houses are the ones left unsecured, littered with trash and empty Cobra vodka bottles. We approach one that reeks of rancid tuna fish and attempt to push open the basement door, held closed only by a flimsy wire. The next-door neighbor, returning home, asks: "Did you know they killed someone in that backyard just this morning?"

The Equivalent of the Population of Michigan Foreclosed
Since 2007, the foreclosure crisis has displaced at least 10 million people from more than four million homes across the country. Families have been evicted from colonials and bungalows, A-frames and two-family brownstones, trailers and ranches, apartment buildings and the prefabricated cookie-cutters that sprang up after World War II. The displaced are young and old, rich and poor, and of every race, ethnicity, and religion. They add up to approximately the entire population of Michigan.

However, African American neighborhoods were targeted more aggressively than others for the sort of predatory loans that led to mass evictions after the economic meltdown of 2007-2008. At the height of the rapacious lending boom, nearly 50% of all loans given to African American families were deemed "subprime." The New York Times described these contracts as "a financial time-bomb."

Over the last year and a half, I traveled through many of these neighborhoods, reporting on the grassroots movements of resistance to foreclosure and displacement that have been springing up in the wake of the explosion. These community efforts have proven creative, inspiring, and often effective—but in too many cities and towns, the landscape that forms the backdrop to such a movement of hope is one of almost overwhelming destruction. Lots filled with "Cheap Bank-Owned!" trailers line highways. Cities hire contractors dubbed "Blackwater Bailiffs" to keep pace with the dizzying eviction rate.

In recent years, the foreclosure crisis has been turning many African American communities into conflict zones, torn between a market hell-bent on commodifying life itself and communities organizing to protect their neighborhoods. The more I ventured into such areas, the more I came to realize that the clash of values going on isn't just theoretical or metaphorical.

"Internal displacement causes conflict," explained J.R. Fleming, the chairman of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign. "And there's no other country in the world that would force so much internal displacement and pretend that it's something else."

Evictions at Gunpoint
It was three in the morning when at least a dozen police cruisers pulled up to the single-story, green-shuttered house in the African American Atlanta suburb where Christine Frazer and her family lived. The precise number of sheriffs and deputies who arrived is disputed; the local radio station reported 25, while Frazer recalled seeing between 40 and 50.

A locksmith drilled off the home's locks and dozens of officers burst into the house with flashlights and handguns.

"Who's in the house?" they shouted. Aside from Frazer, a widow with a vocal devotion to the Man Above, there were three other residents: her 85-year-old mother, her adult daughter, and her four-year-old grandson. Things began to happen fast. Animal control rounded up the pets. Officers told the women to get dressed. Could she take a shower? Frazer asked. Imagine there's a fire in your house, the officer replied.

"They came to my home like I was a drug dealer," she told reporters later. Over the next seven hours, the officers hauled out the entire contents of her home and cordoned off the street to prevent friends from helping her retrieve her things.

"I have no idea where some of my jewelry is, stuff I bought when I was 30 years old," said Frazer. "I am sixty-three. They just threw everything everywhere, helter-skelter on the front lawn in the dark."

The eviction-turned-raid sparked controversy across Atlanta when it occurred in the spring of 2012, in part because Frazer had a motion pending in federal court that should have stayed the eviction, and in part because she was an active participant of Occupy Homes Atlanta. But this type of militarized reaction is often the outcome when communities—especially those of color—organize to resist eviction.

When Nicole Shelton attempted to move back into her repossessed home in a picket-fence subdivision in North Carolina, the Raleigh police department sent in more than a dozen police officers and an eight-person SWAT team. Officers were equipped with M5 submachine guns. A helicopter roared overhead. In Boston, one organizer with the community group City Life/Vida Urbana remembers the police acting so aggressively at an eviction blockade in a Haitian neighborhood that the grandmother of the family had a heart attack right in the driveway.

And sometimes it doesn't require resistance at all. On the South Side of Chicago, explained Toussaint Losier, a community organizer completing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, "They bust in the door, and it's at the point of a gun that you get evicted."

Exiles in America
There have been widespread foreclosures—and some organized resistance—in predominately white communities, too. Kevin Kirkman, captain of the civil division of the Lee County sheriff's office, explained, "I get so many [eviction] papers in here, it's unbelievable."

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More than 75% of the residents in North Carolina's Lee County are whites. But Kirkman still sees the ripple effects of mass foreclosure here. "You're talking about a mudslide where a lot of things are affected. You're talking about taxes, about retail sales if people move, about food services, about gasoline. You see what I'm talking about? When you lose a family in the community? Some people leave the community. I have seen people leave the state of North Carolina."

He added, "I'm going be honest with you, my feeling is that I would not do these evictions."


______________________________________________
I wanted to end with this main stream shout out that the subprime mortgage loan fraud is recognized by all and the amount of these frauds are in the trillions of dollars and as of now we have gotten maybe a trillion in subprime loan settlement and most of that has been sent right back to banks as developers......WE ALL KNOW THIS!

Op-Ed Columnist The Mortgage Fraud Fraud

By JOE NOCERA Published: June 1, 2012 

I got an e-mail the other day from Richard Engle telling me that his son Charlie would be getting out of prison this month. I was happy to hear it.

Charlie’s ordeal isn’t over yet, of course. When he leaves prison on June 20, Charlie, 49, will move temporarily to a halfway house, after which he will be on probation for another five years. And unless he can get the verdict overturned, he will have to spend the rest of his life with a felony on his record.

Perhaps you remember Charlie Engle. I wrote about him not long after he entered a minimum-security facility in Beaver, W.Va., 16 months ago. He’s the poor guy who went to jail for lying on a liar loan during the housing bubble.

There were two things about Charlie’s prosecution that really bothered me. First, he’d clearly been targeted by an agent of the Internal Revenue Service who seemed offended that Charlie was an ultramarathoner without a steady day job. The I.R.S. conducted “Dumpster dives” into his garbage and put a wire on a female undercover agent hoping to find some dirt on him. Unable to unearth any wrongdoing on his tax returns, the I.R.S. discovered he had taken out several subprime mortgages that didn’t require income verification. His income on one of them was wildly inflated. They don’t call them liar loans for nothing.

Charlie has always insisted that he never filled out the loan document — his mortgage broker did it, and he was actually a victim of mortgage fraud. (The broker later pleaded guilty to another mortgage fraud.) Indeed, according to a recent court filing by Charlie’s lawyer, the government failed to turn over exculpatory evidence that could have helped Charlie prove his innocence. For whatever inexplicable reason, prosecutors really wanted to nail Charlie Engle. And they did.

Second, though, it seemed incredible to me that with all the fraud that took place during the housing bubble, the Justice Department was focusing not on the banks that had issued the fraudulent loans, but rather on those who had taken out the loans, which invariably went sour when housing prices fell.

As I would later learn, Charlie Engle was no aberration. The current meme — argued most recently by Charles Ferguson, in his new book “Predator Nation” — is that not a single top executive at any of the firms that nearly brought down the financial system has spent so much as a day in jail. And that is true enough.

But what is also true, and which is every bit as corrosive to our belief in the rule of law, is that the Justice Department has instead taken after the smallest of small fry — and then trumpeted those prosecutions as proof of how tough it is on mortgage fraud. It is a shameful way for the government to act.

“These people thought they were pursuing the American dream,” says Mark Pennington, a lawyer in Des Moines who regularly defends home buyers being prosecuted by the local United States attorney. “Right here in Des Moines,” he said, “there was a big subprime outfit, Wells Fargo Financial. No one there has been prosecuted. They are only going after people who lost their homes after the bubble burst. It’s a scandal.”

The Justice Department has had a tough run recently. Last week, Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general — who was recently given a role by President Obama to investigate the mortgage-backed securities issued during the bubble — complained publicly that he wasn’t getting the resources he needed from the Justice Department. And, of course, on Thursday, a federal judge declared a mistrial on five charges of campaign finance fraud and conspiracy in the trial of the former presidential candidate John Edwards.

In the Edwards case, the Justice Department spent tens of millions of dollars, and trotted out novel legal theories, to prosecute a man who was essentially trying to keep people from discovering that he had had a mistress and an out-of-wedlock child. Salacious though it was, the case has zero public import. Yet this same Justice Department isn’t willing to use similar resources — and perhaps even trot out some novel legal theories — to go after the pervasive corporate wrongdoing that gave us the financial crisis and the Great Recession. (I should note that the Justice Department claims that it “will not hesitate” to prosecute any “institution where there is evidence of a crime.”)

Think back to the last time the federal government went after corporate crooks. It was after the Internet bubble. Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay of Enron were prosecuted and found guilty. Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom, went to jail. Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco was prosecuted and given a lengthy prison sentence. Now recall which Justice Department prosecuted those men.

Amazing, isn’t it? George W. Bush has turned out to be tougher on corporate crooks than Barack Obama.






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January 08th, 2014

1/8/2014

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AS WITH THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND RACE TO THE TOP......THESE NEW MORTGAGE RULES SUPPOSEDLY 'CONSUMER' FRIENDLY ARE ACTUALLY CREATING BOUNDARIES FOR HOME-OWNERSHIP FOR THE PEOPLE THE FHA WAS MEANT TO SERVE.  ALSO, LOOK AT WHY SOME RULES, LIKE JUMBO LOANS, CAME AND WENT.  IT WAS ALL ORCHESTRATED AROUND THOSE TRILLIONS IN PROFIT FROM FRAUD AND REFINANCING OVER AND OVER AND OVER.  TAXPAYERS PAID MUCH OF THAT REFINANCING WITH $700,000 LOAN LIMITS!



About Housing

The Office of Housing provides vital public services through its nationally administered programs. It oversees the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the largest mortgage insurer in the world, as well as regulates housing industry business.

Legislation in the 1960s expressed the social concerns of providing decent and sanitary housing and ensuring that such housing is made available to all. In that sprit, Executive Order 11063, Equal Opportunity in Housing, was issued in 1962 and represented the first major effort by the federal government to combine civil rights with housing. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 assured nondiscrimination on federally assisted programs. Equality in housing opportunity was legislated by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination in the sale, financing, or leading of housing. The full protection of the law was expanded by the Fair Housing Amendments of 1988, further prohibiting discrimination based on familial status or handicap.

In 1965, the Housing and Urban Development Act created HUD to succeed the HHFA as a cabinet-level agency.

The 1960s brought a new method of developing low-income housing. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 initiated a new leased housing program to make privately owned housing available to low-income families. The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 (1974 Act) replaced Section 23 with the Section 8 Leased Housing Assistance Payment Program (Section 8). Title I of the 1974 Act created a new community development block grant (CDBG) program.



The Present

The mission of HUD, to “promote adequate and affordable housing, economic opportunity, and a suitable living environment free from discrimination” continues to focus the department’s initiatives.




'The new rules will help protect consumers and reduce the risk that the economy will crash again because of shoddy lending, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachussetts, said yesterday'.

Let's take a look at the new rules from Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) regarding mortgages handled by federally insured Fannie and Freddie.  Now, keep in mind that neo-liberals and neo-cons are working to dismantle these two agencies and end the Federal government's involvement in the mortgage industry.  That was one of the goals of imploding these agencies with fraud after all!  So, new rules for mortgages by the CFPB seem to come just as they will no longer be needed.  This is why the article shows how Wells Fargo.....a leader in private mortgage business and SUBPRIME MORTGAGE LOAN FRAUD EXTRAORDINAIRE......is building a structure for handling loans outside these new rules by the CFPB.  Keep in mind that Warren is being sold as a darling of the progressives when in fact she is a global corporate and free market supporter.....none of that is progressive.

IT IS A HOAX TO KEEP THE CURRENT FHA FROM DOING THE JOB OF SECURING LOANS FOR LOW-INCOME PEOPLE WHILE TRANSITIONING/CLOSING THIS PUBLIC AGENCY.


Remember, the Federal Housing Agency was started to provide low-cost housing loans to low-income people and worked successfully for the few decades it was independent.  No drama, no improper and fraudulent loan activity....simply a well-run Federal agency that helped people become homeowners.  THIS IS A GOOD THING WE WANT TO KEEP.  It was when it was made into a public private partnership as Freddie and Fannie that it became profit-driven and fraudulent and this was the plan.....to blow up a strong public sector service and send it back to Wall Street.  This is what these mortgage reforms are all about!  This is not consumer friendly.....it protects the banks.

Wells Fargo Creates Swat Team to Keep Loans In-House: Mortgages

By Dakin Campbell and John Gittelsohn Jan 8, 2014 8:08 AM ET

  Wells Fargo Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), the largest U.S. home lender, has assigned about 400 underwriters to originate mortgages for the bank to hold, with as many as 40 percent of the loans likely to fall outside government guidelines taking effect this week.

The bank is training the group as a way to increase lending without losing control of quality, according to Brad Blackwell, head of portfolio lending for the San Francisco-based lender. The group will review loans including those with terms that prevent them from qualifying for protections provided by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, under new rules, he said.

Wells Fargo, responsible for about one in five U.S. mortgages last year, is pushing the initiative to compete for clients seeking non-conventional loans such as those with interest-only payments. That segment will be increasingly sought-after at a time when rising interest rates are curbing borrowing demand and banks are facing the biggest regulatory overhaul since the Great Depression.

“As rates continue to rise and refinancing volume continues to contract, lenders are going to be looking for a way to keep their staffs busy,” said Erin Lantz, director of mortgages at Zillow Inc.

Congress directed the CFPB, formed as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, to create the qualified mortgage rule after banks were blamed for helping spark the 2008 credit crisis by giving mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them. The regulations provide a measure of legal protection to banks that meet guidelines and expose them to legal liabilities if the loans charge high fees or require total debt payments exceeding 43 percent of the borrower’s income.

‘Sweeping Re-Regulation’ “What you see happening on Jan. 10 is the most sweeping re-regulation of mortgage finance that I’ve seen,” said Pete Mills, senior vice president of residential policy at the Mortgage Bankers Association, whose home loan career started in 1983.

Unlike the loose lending practices of the last decade, most lenders now approve borrowers only after fully documenting their incomes and assets. At a time when government-backed loans account for 90 percent of the market, non-qualified mortgages can’t be insured by the Federal Housing Administration or sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the government-controlled enterprises that package home loans into bonds.

Changing Structure Wells Fargo wants to give its clients more loans that can’t be sold to the government-backed firms. The bank is confident the new underwriting group, which will make both qualified and non-qualified mortgages, will allow it to originate debt that doesn’t meet the CFPB’s safe harbor, said Blackwell. Non-qualified mortgages could be about 5 percent of the bank’s total mortgage production, he said.

The approach represents a change for the bank, which long made loans with the intention of selling them all.

“In the early days of our history, we were a mortgage bank: our primary responsibility was to originate and sell,” Blackwell said. “Today we are originating for our portfolio. These are loans that we will hold for their lifetime.”

Wells Fargo added $14.5 billion in nonconforming mortgages in the six months ended September, bringing the total held by the bank to $72.4 billion, according to a bank presentation.

Bank of the West, a subsidiary of BNP Paribas SA (BNP), also plans to offer non-qualified mortgages to its clients regardless of amount, according to Stew Larsen, executive vice president of the mortgage banking division based in Omaha, Nebraska. The rules are an opportunity for banks that have capacity to hold loans on their balance sheets to take market share from mortgage companies that lack that capability, he said.

Potential Expansion Non-qualified mortgages have the potential to be a $400 billion a year market, starting with the most creditworthy borrowers and broadening as home values and the wider economy improve, according to Raj Date, who stepped down as deputy director of the CFPB a year ago to found Fenway Summer LLC, which plans to offer non-conforming loans in 2014.

Lenders are responding to mortgage volumes that are forecast to plunge 33 percent this year to $1.17 trillion from 2013, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Rates on 30-year mortgages averaged 4.53 percent last week, up from 3.35 percent in early May, according to Freddie Mac.

The rate increased when the Federal Reserve signaled plans to reduce $85 billion in monthly bond purchases and already has diminished the refinancing that accounted for two-thirds all home loans in the last two years.

Refinancing Declines Declines in refinancing have led the largest lenders to start cutting jobs. JPMorgan (JPM) Chase & Co. said it may dismiss 15,000 employees, Wells Fargo cut more than 6,200 positions and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) eliminated at least 3,400 mortgage-related workers. Citigroup Inc. (C) also said it’s looking to trim staff.

Banks are being cautious about testing the limits of the new rules as they continue settling disputes arising from the last decade’s lending spree.

JPMorgan, which agreed to pay $5.1 billion in October to resolve claims by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about debt sold to the financing companies, has no plans to expand or discontinue products after Jan. 10, including non-qualified mortgages for borrowers with a high-net worth, according to Amy Bonitatibus, a spokeswoman for the New York-based bank.

Bank of America will continue providing interest-only loans to “preferred customers in a very conservative manner,” according to bank spokesman Terry Francisco.

Citigroup Offering Citigroup will offer some loans such as adjustable-rate mortgages and those too large to qualify for agency guidelines, according to Mark Rodgers, a bank spokesman. The loans will only be made when they are “appropriate and suitable” for borrowers, he said.

The new rules will help protect consumers and reduce the risk that the economy will crash again because of shoddy lending, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of Massachussetts, said yesterday.

“The rules will reshape the mortgage market for the better,” Warren, who first proposed creating the CFPB, said during a floor speech. “They will give people a better chance to buy homes and a better chance to keep those homes, and they will force mortgage lenders and servicers to compete by offering better rates and customer service, not by tricking and trapping people. ”

Initial Reluctance While lenders initially will be reluctant to extend non-qualified mortgages to borrowers with lower incomes, limited assets or low credit scores, they will probably stretch the rules as they seek to expand business, just as they began offering loans to subprime borrowers in the last decade, according to Richard Eckert, an MLV & Co. analyst who worked as a risk management analyst at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco in the 1990s.

“Just like back in the early 2000s, to keep the party rolling they slipped into subprime,” he said. “People that were high and mighty and were going to take the high road a year ago when quarterly loan originations were $400 billion and now seeing those dry up to as little as $150 billion, I think they are taking a real hard look at what they may have passed up.”

Even as it cuts mortgage jobs, Wells Fargo has selected between 300 and 400 underwriters who will execute different policies and report to separate bosses than peers who check over loans the bank sells to investors, Blackwell said in a telephone interview.

Separate Groups “We have separated the underwriting group into a separate team that only underwrites loans” for the bank’s own balance sheet, he said. “We found it impossible to achieve our objectives” with the two groups together, he said.

The underwriters will be located in six locations around the country and the training of the group and policy writing will be completed by the end of the year, Blackwell said.

This may lead to faster closing times and fewer mistakes, according to Joseph Morford, an RBC Capital Markets analyst based in San Francisco. That should build trust with the company’s financial advisers and private bankers, who are expected to refer wealthy customers, he wrote in a Dec. 23 note to clients.

“The brokers should feel more comfortable that their customers will be handled appropriately, which over time should lead to more mortgage referrals,” Morford wrote after meeting with David Carroll, head of Wells Fargo’s wealth and retirement unit.

Already, the new policy has “allowed us to do more volume with better service and better quality,” Blackwell said.


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MIND YOU, SOME OF THESE RULES ARE FINE.  WE NEVER BELIEVED A LAW WAS NEEDED TO REQUIRE A BANK TO CHECK PERSONAL QUALIFICATIONS LIKE INCOME AND EMPLOYMENT.....THAT WAS FRAUD.  THE 45% OF MONTHLY INCOME WOULD NOT BE BAD IF PRICES FOR HOMES WERE NOT SO HIGH FOR EXAMPLE IN CITIES.

Keep in mind the mortgage crisis was created by Wall Street and it is these same requirements in this bill placed on homeowners that was needed on banks to stop the next crisis......20% capital on hand in the banks has never happened and they are now leveraged with derivative debt beyond the $600 trillion of last economic crash.  So, Wall Street and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is placing the requirements needed for banks in these mortgage rules for consumers.


Let's look at jumbo mortgage loans for example.

The first thing our neo-liberal Obama and Congress did when they were elected in 2008 was to extend Federal protection FHA for loans to a whopping $700, 000.  Keep in mind the FHA is a low-income agency. 

They did this so affluent homeowners could qualify for all the mortgage write-downs and low-interest refinancing that was supposedly helping main street keep their homes.  Most of the money spent in this Federal program went to these $700,000 homeowners while main street went into foreclosure by the tens of millions.  So, we now have a Federal agency insuring home loans for hundreds of thousands of dollars-----JUMBO MORTGAGES.  Why end that now?  Because these five years of Obama's term has moved those tens of millions of foreclosed homes and refinanced those high-end mortgages all that is needed and now they are ready to handle the mortgage market in a way most profitable. 




How will new mortgage rules affect you?

By Polyana da Costa • Bankrate.com Highlights
  • The mortgage rules are designed to ensure that borrowers can repay.
  • Jumbo loans will be harder to qualify for; interest-onlies will be rare.
  • Homeowners will get renewed protections when they fall behind on payments.


The home loan industry will soon have to adapt to new mortgage rules that will offer borrowers much needed protection against lender abuses and reckless lending standards. But the changes may not please all borrowers.

Some of the new mortgage rules the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued this year will influence qualification requirements and the types of mortgages that borrowers get. The new standards go into effect next year -- but expect lenders to start adjusting to the new policies in coming months.

The gist of one of the main rules is simple: Lenders will be required to ensure that borrowers have the ability to repay their mortgages. In return, lenders will be protected from borrower lawsuits so long as they issue "safe" mortgages that follow guidelines.

These safe mortgages are what the CFPB calls "qualified mortgages." As defined by the CFPB, only 12.8 percent of new mortgages in 2012 didn't meet the "qualified mortgage" standard, according to real estate data provider CoreLogic.

The new mortgage rules won't affect the majority of people seeking to buy a home or refinance their home loans, because lenders have already tightened their lending standards since the financial crisis.

But certain groups of borrowers will notice a difference, analysts say. This is especially true for borrowers seeking larger mortgages. Self-employed borrowers also may need to jump through additional hoops to get a home loan.

"There are all sorts of ways to prove income, but what's no longer at the table is just asserting that you make X dollars per year," says Julia Gordon, director of housing finance and policy for the Center for American Progress and former manager of single-family policy at the Federal Housing Finance Agency.


What will change for jumbo loans?Mortgage professionals in high-cost areas say they worry that the new rules may create obstacles for some borrowers seeking large loans to buy or refinance a home. That's partly because a mortgage that falls outside of the conforming and Federal Housing Administration loan limits (which vary between $417,000 and $729,750) will not be considered a qualified mortgage if the borrower's debt payments exceed 43 percent of monthly income.

About 9 percent of jumbo loans issued in 2012 went to borrowers with debt-to-income ratios higher than 43 percent, CoreLogic data show.

"A 45 percent debt ratio seems to be slightly more common than a 43 percent ratio these days, so lenders will most likely reduce their max ratios for nonagency loans," says Matt Hackett, operations manager for Equity Now in New York City.

Interest-only loans will be harder to findBorrowers who rely on interest-only loans will see changes, because loans that don't require borrowers to pay principal during an initial period are not considered a qualified mortgage under the CFPB's rules.

These loans were widely available during the housing boom and contributed to the crisis, as many homeowners couldn't handle the larger payments once the initial interest-only period expired. Most lenders have stopped offering interest-only loans, but they are still popular for jumbo mortgages and in high-cost areas.



___________________________________________


Bank of America Loan Modification Plan Requirements Explained Posted by admin On April - 27 - 2011

What does it take to get approved for a Bank of America loan modification?  What are the requirements for approval that homeowners need to meet in order to get a lower mortgage payment?  These are questions that most borrowers need answers to – and it is important to know the answers before you send in your application.  Here is some helpful information on the specific requirements used for the loan modification plan.

Bank of America Loan Modification Requirements:

The government has mandated that every homeowner who asks to be reviewed for this program must be given the chance and during the review process their home cannot be foreclosed.

  1. for owner occupied homes only – so it will not HAMP Loan Mod Program work for rental property or second homes.  Bank of America may have an in house plan that can be used on those types of loans.

  2. You must be facing a financial hardship situation – this means that due to circumstances out of your control your current mortgage payment is not affordable and you are at risk of default.  Loss of home value alone is not a valid reason for a loan modification – some good reasons are loss or reduction in income, increased expenses, medical bills, divorce, military, lack of reserves, high debt
  3. The  plan is only for loans with a balance less than $729,750 and those that were taken out before January 1, 2009.  Jumbo loans will not qualify, but you can request a Bank of America in house loan mod if your loan balance is too high.
  4. Your current mortgage payment must equal more than 31% of your household gross monthly income – this calculation is called debt ratio and it is a big part of the approval requirements.
  5. Your monthly income, monthly expenses and current bank balances must fit within a standard approval formula that Bank of America uses.  This is called the Waterfall Method of Modification-if your income is too high or too low you will not qualify.  You may want to Sample Budget-Automatically!

    run your own monthly budget through the loan modification software calculator in order to be sure that your figures are acceptable before submitting it for review.

Below you see that the mortgage loans above $417,000 are the jumbo loans.  As the article below this shows.......refinancing of jumbo loans in CA, NJ, NY, and FL over what was then this $417,000 limit sky-rocketed and Obama and neo-liberals in Congress raised that to $700,000 to cover that difference.....

IT WAS A DELIBERATE MOVE TO COVER WHAT WERE ILLEGAL REFINANCING ABOVE AMOUNTS SET BY THE FHA CREATING HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN PROFIT.  SEE WHY THIS NEW MORTGAGE RULE NOW FORBIDS THIS!  THE DEAL IS DONE!


So, we hear in the press that Jumbo Mortgages will not be included in Obama's bailout and then we see that indeed, jumbo loans are what was intended for bailout.  Think about the states committing these crimes all for billions in bank profits and the fact that most of them are neo-liberal. 


Three Options for Refinancing a Jumbo Home Loan With Reduced Income [Aug 5, 2009.]

For homeowners with home loan amounts of $417,000 or less, the Obama Administration's Home Affordable Refinance Program can help get that tough refinance done. This so-called "conforming loan limit" is acting as a sort of dividing line between those who are eligible for government mortgage refinance assistance and those who aren't.

It's not really a surprise, then, that many holders of jumbo home loans (loans above $417,000) are feeling a sense of hopelessness about refinancing their home loan. This hopelessness can set in especially hard for borrowers suffering from reduced income due to unemployment or cut hours.

But before giving up, consider these three options for refinancing a jumbo home loan:

1. Jumbo Loans May Qualify for the Home Affordable Modification Program

 Although it's true that the Home Affordable Refinance Program does not apply to jumbo loans, the Obama Administration's Home Affordable Modification Program does contain eligibility for certain jumbo mortgages. Check out the details of the program here.

Borrowers who are paying more than 31 percent of their income to housing expense (mortgage, taxes, insurance) may qualify for this modification program--even for jumbo home loans.

2. Get a Co-Signer

Not the most appealing option in the universe, sure, but tough times call for tough measures. If Mom and Dad are sitting on a paid off house, have ample retirement savings, and don't want to see their children (or grandchildren) suffer the impact of a foreclosure, co-signing may be the best option available.

Especially in the case of reduced income, Mom and Dad's income can make a difficult refi possible.

3. Contact (Harass) the Bank Repeatedly

Not to put it bluntly, but borrowers whose debt-to-income ratios have been skewed for the worse by reduced income have to work a lot harder for a jumbo loan refinance than the rest of America. Part of this hard work entails contacting a lender directly and trying to work out a plan that respects borrower circumstances.

But don't just base such arguments on an emotional appeal. If good credit history is there, if unemployment is the reason why a refi is temporarily impossible, if job leads are coming down the pike, mention all that and more. Develop a personal relationship with the lender if at all possible.

And use numbers to make it clear that a foreclosure is in no one's best interests. Here are some foreclosure cost figures that help make the point that refinancing is the best option for both the borrower and the bank.

_______________________________________________

FHA loan limit back up to $729,750


Tuesday November 22, 2011 11:30 AM By Ellen Yan


Home loan borrowers will once again be able to get federally guaranteed loans of up to $729,750 on Long Island -- but only from the Federal Housing Administration.

The new law that funds five federal departments, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, did not extend the higher limit, which had expired Oct. 1, to loans guaranteed by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

President Barack Obama on Friday signed the measure after the final congressional vote on Thursday. The Federal Housing Administration extension expires Dec. 31, 2013.

Republicans in the House had stripped the extension for Fannie and Freddie, which are overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The report from House and Senate negotiators on the bill cited the two agencies' "questionable business practices" and "extravagant management bonuses."

The finance agency's acting director, Edward J. DeMarco, had defended millions of dollars in pay for Fannie and Freddie executives, saying "competent executives" were needed during these challenging times.

But congressional negotiators said they allowed the extension for FHA loans because it is subject to "greater congressional scrutiny."

The federally guaranteed loan limit was raised from $625,500 in 2008 as a temporary measure to give the housing market a boost. Federally guaranteed loans are less risky for investors, and when lenders sell these loans on Wall Street, this frees up capital for the lenders to lend again.

But as the loan limit was due to expire Oct. 1, supporters called for another extension because the housing market was still weak, while opponents saw it as a subsidy for the rich to buy expensive homes. Anything over the limit is considered a "jumbo loan," which usually carries higher interest rates and down payments.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Roslyn Heights), who helped lead the charge to extend the limits, fired back at Republicans in a Friday statement: "By not fully restoring the loan limits, they have deprived a large portion of the housing market of its main source of liquidity in the middle of the most catastrophic housing crisis since the Great Depression."

He said he would push legislation to give Fannie and Freddie the higher loan limits.



_______________________________________________
Requiring 20% down for a FHA loan?????  REALLY????

SHOUT OUT TO THE FEDERAL AGENCIES BELOW THAT WE DO NOT WANT THESE DOWN-PAYMENT REQUIREMENTS!


What caused so many people with low-income loans to default was the fact that when families sign these loans they expect to have 30 years to pay them.  So, they know they will have to grow in income to meet these loans.  What they did not know was that Wall Street was blowing up the market and a crash would bring the conditions of long-term unemployment, lost retirements/savings from fraud that we have yet to have justice!  So, where some people were playing the loose lending and flipping houses.....most people were simply ordinary people feeling sure that in 30 years they could pay for those houses.  STATISTICS SHOW THAT WITH FHA LOANS IN THE PAST....THIS IS TRUE.

So, requiring this high of a down-payment is not necessary, it is simply to keep most people out of the home-ownership arena.  Keep in mind that 80% of Americans are now at poverty line.


FHA down payment - Wikipedia

A borrower's down payment may come from a number of sources. The 3.5% requirement can be satisfied with the borrower using their own cash or receiving a gift from a family member, their employer, labor union, or government entity.


Below you see that historically a 31% of income has been recommended, not required.  This new rule now requires a 45% of income and that is a huge jump for an agency created to help low-income people.

FHA Qualifying Ratio Explained

Also known as debt to income ratio, the FHA permissible qualifying ratio is simply expressed as the fraction of your gross monthly income that goes toward your monthly recurring expenses. The FHA permissible qualifying ratio is divided into two main categories:

  1. Mortgage Payment Expense to Effective Income Ratio: This ratio focuses only on your mortgage payment expense in relation to your gross income. The FHA guidelines recommend a qualifying ratio of 31 percent for your total mortgage payment expense to effective income. The FHA sets a higher ratio of 33 percent if your home qualifies under the Energy Efficient Homes (EEH) program.





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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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