“I have been with this bank for almost 10 years…and this is the first time I’ve ever been late. Now I send them the payments and they won’t cash the check!”

Most of the “information” and “how to” tips for getting out of foreclosure are from the very folks who are now threatening to take your home away from you. Read on about what people often believe when dealing with mortgage lenders and loan modifications:
1) … “I’ve been a good customer of theirs for years.”

Back in the days, you had one loan and one lender. The person you met and the bank that you did your application with held that loan in its portfolio. It was a time when they actually DID care whether or not you made your payments. The same bank that you signed up with would then service the loan. If they did sell the loan, they would sell the whole loan so the new company would hold the note and service the loan. Most likely, your loan would get sold, you wouldn’t like the new company, some new procedures would be introduced, and a payment or two would get messed up.

Today, it’s completely different.

Your loan is sold immediately after closing and the servicer of the loan is separated from the actual dollars and cents of the loan. So now, there are two parts to the mortgage process. One is the origination side on the mortgage (they focus on new customer acquisition) and the other is the servicing (they focus on after sale activities). The Loan officer fills out the application and submits the documents to underwriting and gets you to the closing table AND gets paid a fee for the work.

Then, that loan closes and the servicing side takes over. They prepare your monthly statements, field calls, cash checks, etc. AND get paid for the work.

Here’s the bottom line: the person you are speaking with does not own the loan. Instead, they are servicing the loan.

You are not the customer of the lender; the servicer is a customer of the investor that bought your mortgage.

What does that mean?

It means the people you call are nothing more than a debt collector. You understand what debt collectors want and how they make their money, right?

For instance, if you were the customer of the bank and were unhappy with the service, you would hope that you can easily switch, like going from Direct TV to Comcast. However, with your mortgage, once you’ve signed the papers, you’ve just been demoted from Customer to Borrower. What this means is that you are no longer a customer, you won’t be able to easily switch, and the bank has now captured you as their revenue stream.
2) … “They can’t foreclose on me, I’m upside down, and they will lose money”

This is the all-time favorite because we hear this one just about every day.

Many people think that just because there is no equity or because they are upside down on a property, that it is better for the lender to keep them in the house. Absolutely NOT true.

They would, on the contrary, prefer to foreclose on the property. Here’s the process:

Your loans are sliced and bundled up with other sliced up loans and sold. It went from a loan to a stock. Now, these loan slices are then sold to entities, pension funds, mutual funds, etc. So, your loan has a 98% better chance of being owned by the retired teachers’ pension fund of South Carolina than it does by Bank of America.

When they bought your loan, they bought it at 60 cents on the dollar. In most cases, the bank can foreclose on your home, take it over, kick you out, clean it up, and then sell it at a 25% discount and still make profit. In fact, the sooner the lender forecloses the better because there are fewer risks involved.

Investors know that over 60% of loan modifications fail. For investors, it’s not IF it fails, it is WHEN it fails, so timing is critical. In perspective, investors are probably much better off foreclosing now than losing money every month for the next two years and getting less than they could if they were to foreclose today. When you do the math, it’s a no brainer decision.

Now the people who you talk with on the phone, the servicer, get paid for any fees associated with the foreclosure process. Do you think they would put their thumbs on the scale when it comes to these fees? The people on the phone will not lose money.
3) … “The lender doesn’t want my house. They’re a bank; they are not in the business to own my home. They came right out and said it on the phone.”

If that’s true, then why foreclose at all? If that’s true, why have there been over 9,000,000 foreclosures nationwide and why do loan modifications have less than a 5% success rate?

First of all, the lenders have field representatives that can take pictures, change locks, and winterize the property. Next, they have REO departments whose sole purpose is to take on the foreclosed inventory. They have construction crews that fix and rehab properties. They have title companies which allow them to insure they have the right documentation that they are the owners of the property and have a clean title. They have relationships with real estate agents, appraisers, and auction houses to get the house sold.

Lenders are fully equipped to take back any property in any condition at any time. In fact, there is no industry or group of companies that’s better prepared to own a home than the banks themselves.

They’ve had 9 million chances to get it right…

These fortune 100 companies have resources and they have the funds to hire an aggressive law firm to go against any homeowner.

How many times in the past have you negotiated against a fortune 100 company’s law firm with your house on the line and won?

The bank is in the business to own your home and just because they figured out it’s more profitable to take your home instead of help doesn’t mean we have to let them.

There is too much at stake for the average individual to try to properly address all the issues of the foreclosure process.

People make mistakes off of bad information from well meaning people or because of the lack of a coherent strategy. They fail to take any action and find themselves unnecessarily homeless and/or still hopelessly in debt.
4) … “The lender will work for me to find the best solution.”

The instructions given were to call your lender and your local government centers. Unfortunately, it seems that these federal programs don’t work, at least not in favor of the average person just trying to keep a roof over his head. The loan modification process can be very complicated, frustrating, and downright belittling.

Here are the top 4 complaints:

1) Losing important documents (sometimes multiple times)

2) Not responding to borrower’s needs, questions and concerns, emails, phone calls

3) Outright lies, mistakes or misrepresentations about the availability of loan modifications

4) Promising loan modifications and then proceeding with foreclosure anyway

First of all, you have to get the lender’s attention. By now, you’ve probably figured out that they don’t care and it appears they would rather take the house back than take your phone call. Depending on the source, you have less than a 1 in 20 chance of success for a permanent modification.

If you have a 5% chance of something, you better start thinking about your back up plan. The servicers are over worked and understaffed. Servicers for BOA get over 100,000 calls per day; one person may even be assigned and responsible for handling up to 500 loan modification files.

Makes you wonder why they don’t just add more staff doesn’t it? Well, the servicer gets paid a very small percentage of your monthly payment. So, when you stop making your payment, how can they make money off you now? Here’s how:

The servicers get to charge and keep fees on delinquent loans. So as long as you are late, they can continue to pad the loan with junk fees. Bottom-line: the more often you make a late payment, the more money servicers could potentially make.

Can you see now why Banks tell you that you have to be late before you can enter a Loan Modification Program?

That’s why trial modifications go on for so long. They get some money for the partial payment, but they can still charge 100% of the late fees and then if they foreclose on your property, they can also get the fees associated with the foreclosure process.

So for instance, if a servicer wanted to maximize his profits, the best case scenario would be that he would put you on a trial payment, string it out for a while so he could rack up fees, get paid for it, and then take the house anyway.

We talked with some servicers and these people are principally looking for any reason to deny a file, a denied file is a closed file and their job is to close files. Chances are they don’t have the time to listen to your story; they stopped listening to stories in 2008. If you get somebody new they will probably listen for the sake of common courtesy. But even then, you’re likely just speaking to hear yourself talk. If there is ANY reason to deny your file…they will do it.

Many servicers are evaluated based on how many files they resolve. Once the big rubber “denied” stamp hits the file, it’s just one more phone call they don’t have to take. Remember, their customer is the investor (NOT YOU) who profits from you losing your home. It is true they have to hit some loan modification numbers to keep in good standing, so they most likely will look for the low hanging fruit.

As an example, if you don’t know what they need and how the package needs to look, you’ll probably get denied. Proving you’re broke doesn’t help and proving you make the payment doesn’t help either.

Don’t you think the 9,000,000 people who got foreclosed on before you and lost their home have asked the bank if they could just make lower payments for a little while? Most definitely they have and failed.
5) … “I’m home free…I’m going through my trial portion of the modification.”

Many people who sought help under a federal program that was created to keep them from losing their homes are instead getting saddled with huge, unexpected bills.

Lenders routinely approve short-term “trial” loan modifications that reduce payments for desperate borrowers under the umbrella of the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program. But during the trial plan, the lenders continued to count the mortgages as delinquent or in default. Now instead of granting permanent modifications, lenders often are reinstating the original loan terms and demanding big back payments.

A family in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, was ecstatic when they were offered in November of 2009 to cut their monthly mortgage payments by about 25% under a trial modification. One of the spouses was out of work with a neck and back injury and with the other at 60% of his past income, they were having difficulty making ends meet.

After 19 consecutive trial payments and a year and a half later, the modification was denied and that they would have to pay $24,228 to bring their mortgage current to avoid foreclosure.

“We did everything that was asked of us, and it only pushed us deeper in the hole.”

We’re seeing a lot of really sad stories of families who thought they were getting help only to discover they’re $20,000 or $30,000 behind and still about to lose their house.

This is a scary proposition for any family to have to go through and it’s even more stressful when there’s no one readily available to provide families the necessary information to help them navigate the chaos and move on with their lives.

Going through foreclosure one time does not make one an expert. Being a real estate agent for a number of years does not make one an expert. Having a law degree does not make one an expert in this subject matter. If you are going to get advice about foreclosure, be sure to qualify them. Understand that having an opinion does not make one an expert…when it comes to foreclosure, everyone has an opinion.
The government is not your enemy or your savior…no one cares about your home MORE than you.

The Cover Your Assets 21 team, comprised of financial crisis strategist, Todd Rooker, foreclosure defense expert, Craig Nester, and Real Estate Professionals, Jason & Derek Walgrave, have successfully navigated over 500+ MN families to a soft landing through loan modifications, short sales, deed in lieu, financial education, and other cutting-edge management strategies.

They are LIVE on AM1280-The Patriot every Saturday from 8-9am CST, providing consumers with the best unbiased financial and real estate information available, empowering them to confidently make better decisions, understand their options, and overcome challenges related to these critical issues.

Banks are starting foreclosures and then walking away. It may sound like a gift, but you’ve got to know how to protect yourself from the legal fallout.

Across the country, banks are starting to foreclose on homeowners and then, often with no word or explanation, failing to take possession of the home. From Ohio to Indiana, from New York to Florida and Missouri, these abandoned foreclosures have become common enough that real-estate professionals have coined a name: “bank walkaways.”

For homeowners, this can sound like great news: The bank goes away, you get your house back without a mortgage and life goes happily on, you might think. But of course nothing is that simple.

“I know several people who are thrilled by their situation,” says Judith Fox, a consumer law expert at the Notre Dame Law School. “But I don’t think they should be that thrilled. I think they have inherited a legal nightmare.”

But Fox says her advice on when to move out has changed in recent years: “I used to tell people when they got the notice for the sheriff’s sale, ‘Move!’ But I am not telling people to do this now.”

She has several clients who moved out after getting foreclosure notices. Their banks, however, failed to finish the foreclosures. The homeowners, who thought they’d lost their homes, were sued by their cities for failing to maintain the abandoned properties, which were still in their names.

If you leave before your bank really owns your home, you face problems like these:

The foreclosure can be resurrected. The owner of your mortgage can return later and restart the foreclosure — if property values rise in a few years, for example.
Your mortgage can be sold. Just as credit-card companies sell deadbeat accounts to aggressive debt collectors for pennies on the dollar owed, some experts believe that mortgage investors might eventually sell their unproductive debts to a collector.
The city can throw you out. You may get to live in the house for free for a while, but if you don’t keep up with the property taxes, the city will eventually start a tax foreclosure to take the house.
You can’t sell. You may have the title (or deed) to the house, but the mortgage company keeps the unpaid mortgage and it’s a lien against the title, meaning that you can’t put the home on the market until you pay off the lien and clear the title.
You’re on the hook. State laws vary in the particulars, but if you abandon a house while your name is still on the deed, you’re still responsible, as Fox’s clients were, for taxes, fines, upkeep, code violations, repairs or demolition costs.

Lois and Danuel Stanley, retirees in Goshen, Ind., were shocked in June to get a notice from their mortgage company saying that it was giving up its efforts to foreclose on their home. They say they didn’t even know the bank was foreclosing, although they’d missed payments. The stress of not knowing what will happen next is awful, Lois Stanley says.

“I’ve never heard of them closing a foreclosure,” she says. “Am I supposed to move out? Am I supposed to sell the house? Are the police going to come to the door and say, ‘Go’? How many days will I have to go? Will I be able to get my things?” Fox and student lawyers at the Notre Dame Law School clinic are trying to help the Stanleys.

Lawyers like Fox are trying to unravel the complicated legal tangles created by bank walkaways. “Who’s got the mortgage? How do you get the lien cleared off your title? These are questions many lawyers have been asking each other back and forth. We don’t know,” Fox says. “This has never happened before.”

Reasons to rejoice and to stay put
There’s one definite advantage if your mortgage company abandons your foreclosure: You get to live in your home for free. “I have clients who have been living in their house free for a year and nobody is asking for any money,” Fox says.

Once foreclosure has begun — whether the bank continues it or stops — you not only have the right to stay, you should stay until the home is sold and legally belongs to someone else. You’ll know it’s truly time to move when you receive eviction papers from the sheriff or a court. That could take months — or longer. These days, overwhelmed mortgage companies can take up to nine months just to start a foreclosure.

Meanwhile, if the bank pulls a disappearing act, don’t go crazy and party, Fox says. If you can, put an amount equal to your mortgage payment in a bank account each month, and leave it there. (An escrow account is best. Ask your bank how to set one up.) If you suddenly need to leave your home, there’s your deposit and first and last months’ rent on a new apartment or rental house. Or, if your mortgage company reappears and wants to restart the foreclosure, the account shows your good faith and can help you in negotiations to modify the mortgage.

The bank’s logic
It’s impossible to predict if or when a lender will abandon a foreclosure, says Kermit J. Lind, a law professor at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and an expert in legal issues affecting communities. He says he’s seen it happen in the early stages, at the last minute before the house was to have been sold at auction, and at points in between.

Fox says she sees walkaways where there are concentrations of foreclosures, particularly in Cleveland, St. Louis and South Bend, Ind. The New York Times reports banks walking away in South Bend; Buffalo, N.Y.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Jacksonville, Fla.

But since no one collects statistics, it’s hard to know the number of cases. With about 844,000 foreclosures in progress in just the first half of this year — 22% of the 34 million loans outstanding — there could be a great many. Banks appear to abandon foreclosures when the homes are worth less than the cost of foreclosing. These days, good neighborhoods and bad are dotted (or filled) with empty, worthless homes stripped of fixtures, appliances, pipes and wiring, from which owners fled after foreclosure began.

The banks’ thinking makes sense. “It gets to the bottom line for the investor,” says Jeannine Bruin, spokeswoman for GMAC Mortgage. When a borrower defaults, the investor who owns the mortgage still must pay attorneys and loan servicers and keep up taxes, insurance and property maintenance. Bank representatives figure, “If I proceed through foreclosure sale, how likely am I going to be to be able to sell this house at value and make any kind of return on my investment?”

In Florida, with condominiums plummeting in price, banks have stopped foreclosures to avoid inheriting liability from a unit’s unpaid homeowners association dues, Lind says. He blames banks for pushing owners out of their homes early in foreclosure and then neglecting the properties rather than modifying mortgages.

“The decision-making takes place three states away from the collateral,” Lind says, “and they don’t have a clue about the condition of the property.” The result, he says, is “toxic homes and toxic titles.”

To illustrate, Lind describes a home next-door to friends of his in an upscale Cleveland suburb: It’s been vacant for a couple of years, and the basement has been underwater since a pipe burst. The house is so dangerous — the interior is black with mold and the supporting timbers are rotten — that “not even police officers will go inside,” Lind says. The potential liability is huge for those who, often unwittingly, own such homes. In Cleveland and other cities, fires in abandoned, foreclosed houses have spread, destroying both vacant properties and neighboring inhabited homes.

“Owners who stay in the house are really doing a public service for their neighbors,” Lind says. (Read “The run-down foreclosure next door: What you can do.”)

The mortgage war has begun. Are you prepared to fight to save your home? .”
The Banks and Wall Street declared war on the American Homeowner several years ago, and you can now see the fruits of their labor in the unprecedented amount of foreclosures throughout our nation.
They devised a clever Bernie Madoff-like ponzie scheme, with the intent to seduce you through mass media marketing, to dive into the new “Gold Rush,” the Red Hot real estate market, and prompted you to stake your claim to the American Dream Of Home Ownership.
They told you, don’t worry if you feel you can’t afford the home, we’ve got an exotic new negative amortization loan for you at 1 percent interest that will allow you to buy more home than you could ever afford before. Just sign right here! And so it began.
What Wall Street and the Bankers didn’t tell you is, they knew all along you couldn’t afford the home, and that after charging you for the loan you couldn’t afford, they would turn around and sell your loan to investors for obscene amounts of money before you defaulted, and by the time you finally realized you couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage, and had gone into default, Wall Street and the Bankers would then get the U.S. Government to pay them the now infamous “Bailout” money to buy your defaulted loan back. Yep, they got paid again!
Once Wall Street and the Bankers got bailed out by the U.S. Government, they were ready to implement the next phase of their plan. It was now time to foreclose on millions of American Homeowners, stripping them of their wealth, and re-selling their homes at a discount as ‘BULK REO’s’ to wealthy investors for yes, more obscene profits. And as they say, the rich get richer. (REO stands for real estate owned. This is what the property is referred to after the bank forecloses and takes the property back)
However, a scene from the Hollywood Movie, ‘Network’ aptly describes the mentality of the American Homeowner today. “WE’RE MAD AS HELL, AND WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE.”
All you ever wanted as a homeowner was the American Dream of homeownership to build your wealth, financial freedom, and provide for your family.
Now Wall Street and the wealthy Bankers have pulled their Bernie Madoff scheme on you, and are trying to dupe you out from under the very roof over your head by foreclosing on your home and kicking you out on the streets so they can get even richer. Don’ give in..It’s time to put on your marching boots and fight back!!

According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)’s Office of Inspector General (FHFA-OIG), FHFA received reports indicating robo-signing issues as early as August 2009 but failed to act on the information “until a full year later when allegations of abuse by law firms within Fannie Mae’s attorney network…surfaced in the media in August 2010”[1]. The FHFA-OIG report indicated that “FHFA had not previously considered risks associated with foreclosure processing to be significant,” but adds that “there were clear warning signs even before the consumer complains started coming…that should have prompted the GSE’s conservator to take action.”

Some sources are even reporting that Fannie Mae was aware of robo-signing issues as early as 2003, but took two more years to hire an outside law firm to investigate[2]. The firm submitted a report in 2006 indicating that “foreclosure attorneys in Florida are routinely filing false pleadings and affidavits” and that “the practice could be occurring elsewhere.” A report by Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, indicates that despite widespread awareness of the problem at this point in time, “attorneys are increasingly unprepared when they enter the courtroom (e.g. they don’t have the note, don’t know if the borrower has been offered… [a loan modification], service has been cancelled, etc.”

Yes, there is magic in positive thinking! In aviation, the word attitude means the angle at which the plane meets the wind, whether the wings are level with the horizon, and whether it is climbing or descending. The pilot who fails to take responsibility for the attitude of his aircraft is in serious trouble. And likewise, any person who has not taken charge of his or her own beliefs and attitudes runs a similar risk. The key to cultivating and maintaining a positive mental attitude is to take control of your thinking and avoid negative minded people. It’s a challenging task to develop a calm, focused mind, but well worth the effort.

Every setback and failure you experience also comes with a great opportunity. When one door closes, a window of possibility opens. The key is to look for the opportunity and avoid dwelling on failure. Think thoughts of defeat and you are bound to feel defeated. Your attitude is not determined by circumstances, but by how you respond to those circumstances. You determine your attitude; you always have the choice to respond either positively or negatively. What happens to a person is less important than what happens within them.

The great inventor, Thomas A. Edison, was known for his positive mental attitude. In December 1914, the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, was almost entirely destroyed by fire. Edison lost $2 million worth of equipment and the records of much of his life’s work. The morning after the fire, as the 67-year-old inventor walked among the ashes, he was anything but defeated. Looking around, he remarked, “There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.” Yes, there is magic in a positive attitude!

Jobless Pay Mortgages
Release Date:
September 19, 2011

Source: Julie Schmidt, USAToday

A $7.6 billion federal program to help homeowners avoid foreclosures had distributed about 1% of its money to distressed owners 16 months after its creation, government reports show.

The Obama administration awarded the funds last year to 18 states most affected by unemployment and fallen home prices. The states developed their own foreclosure-prevention programs targeting assistance to lower-income jobless and underemployed homeowners.

By June 30, 17 states had used the funds to help about 7,500 homeowners, show reports states filed to the Treasury Department. New Jersey, which began its program in May, started making loans only this month.

Funds are flowing more rapidly now, state officials say. All the states have launched their programs. The last was Illinois last week.

Overall, the Hardest Hit Fund is expected to help several hundred thousand homeowners. States have until 2017 to use their alloted funds.

“We are ramping up quickly now,” says Di Richardson, head of the California program. Its program began in January; by June 30, it had funded 1,022 homeowners. That’s now up to more than 2,000, and an additional 5,000 are close to getting aid, Richardson says.

Since President Obama announced the program in February 2010, banks have repossessed more than 1.5 million homes, says market researcher RealtyTrac. Millions more are at risk.

Officials in many states say it took longer than expected to develop systems for states to transfer funds and borrower data to mortgage servicers, who manage loans.

“That was more complicated than we thought it would be,” says Cynthia Flaherty, head of Ohio’s program, which includes 200 servicers. Ohio is now adding 500 borrowers to its program monthly, Flaherty says. Ten were added in December, its first month.

The program started with $1.5 billion for five states and was expanded to 18. Funds were most recently awarded in September 2010.

“You wish states could move quicker. But you also don’t want them to waste the money,” says Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. Andrea Risotto, Treasury spokeswoman, says the program required “considerable infrastructure.”

The programs generally include temporary mortgage assistance from for six to 24 months

Minnesota has emerged as a problem area for mortgage fraud and helped lift national activity from the first quarter. But a national improvement from a year earlier was attributable to another three states.

The Second-Quarter 2011 Mortgage Fraud Index from MortgageDaily.com came in at 1261, an increase of 27 percent from the first quarter.

The index is based on criminal and civil cases where defendants are accused of trying to deceive real estate lenders into making credit decisions using fraudulent documentation or property appraisals with false values. Case tracking is maintained by the mortgage fraud blog FraudBlogger.com.
Index by Quarter
Period Index Amount # Cases
Q2 2011 1261 $1,587,573,586 194
Q1 2011 990 $1,247,615,165 150
Q2 2010 1699 $2,248,657,052 266

Oregon, Utah, Iowa and Colorado saw the biggest quarter-over-quarter increases in their indices.

The U.S. index fell more than a quarter from a year earlier. Oregon had a 78 percent decline, the most significant, while Utah had the biggest jump from a year earlier.

The Minnesota Mortgage Fraud Index, which rose 15 percent from the same period last year, was at its highest level during any quarter based on more than five years of data.
Top States by Index
State Index
Florida 117
Minnesota 107
Ohio 103
California 93
Pennsylvania 87

The dollar volume of U.S. cases tracked worked out to $340 million more than what was tracked the first-three months of 2011. A big chunk of this growth came from Minnesota, which saw about $161 millionmore in cases.

Compared to the second quarter of last year, dollar volume was nationally down around $661 million.California saw a $300 million year-over-year improvement, while Michigan was down $218 andPennsylvania fell $198 million.

The annual improvement might have been better had it not been for states like North Carolina, where volume rose by $67 million, and New York, which had around $72 million more in cases.
Top States by Total Amount
State Amount
Minnesota $184,715,000
Florida $184,009,434
Arizona $162,588,400
New York $152,487,775
California $135,719,882

Facing foreclosure:
50.000 dollars to pay up your arrears and bring you current
Mortgage Payment only 31% of current house hold income
Call for more details 763 438 5490

In Foreclosure you may qualify for 3000.00 dollars moving expense
plus if you have a second you may qualify for 6000.00 more to satisfy the second

Call for more information 763 439 5490

Facing a Sheriff Sale It Can Be Stopped!!!

IT IS ILLEGAL FOR HOME OWNERS TO BE CHARGED A FEE FOR HELP WITH MAKING HOMES AFFORDABLE PROGRAMS, THAT IS A FREE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS TO HELP HOME OWNERS THAT ARE IN HARDSHIP AND IN FORECLOSURE.

The countries financial foundation is under attack, beleaguered by unprecedented numbers of foreclosures, delinquency’s, bankruptcies, walk aways, as well as historic levels of unsecured consumer debt.

Coupled with the erosion of home equity through plummeting home values, a recessionary job market, unparalleled numbers of adjusting mortgages, a sharp decline in the stock market and weakness in the dollar, you have a swift series of interrelated disturbances that cause lasting damage…

A Perfect Storm in which individual families are left unprotected and facing financial ruin

Suddenly, the mechanisms that have allowed consumers to keep themselves and the economy afloat – the ability to realize profits from selling homes, to refinance mortgages at lower rates and to borrow cheaply against home equity have been diminished to the point of futility.

In 2000, the number of exotic mortgages, (neg-am, interest only, low and no doc, stated income or assets and aggressive Arms) comprised 18% of all mortgages written in the market and Americas Debt to income ratio was 36%.

In 2006 a very aggressive financial services industry saturated the market place with 81% of all mortgage loans written nationwide were exotics, raising the cumulative DTI to over 70%.

The FDIC did a study of all loans written in the period 2000 to 2006 and found that 83% had significant compliance violations.

Americas Rescue Team was created to help families not only survive but thrive during these historic economic times.

Together we can create a stronger tomorrow.

A 2006, FDIC Office of Inspector General Report revealed:

*83% of the institutions examined were cited for “significant” compliance violations
*43% of those institutions were “repeat offenders”
*85% of those repeat offenders were highly rated by the FDIC for their in-place compliance process

83% of Mortgages Have Violations.

Find Out How to Receive Recourse from

Your Lender!

NEW YORK — In a sweeping move, the government on Friday sued 17 financial firms, including the largest U.S. banks, for selling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities that turned toxic when the housing market collapsed.

Among the 17 targeted by the lawsuits were Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs.

The lawsuits were filed Friday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency which oversees Fannie and Freddie, the two agencies that buy mortgages loans and mortgage securities issued by the lenders.

Economist Warns: 50% unemployment, 90% stock market drop, 100% inflation.

The total price tag for the securities bought by Fannie and Freddie affected by the lawsuits: $196 billion.

The government didn’t provide a dollar amount of how much it seeks in damages. It said that it wants to have the purchases of the securities canceled, be compensated for lost principal and interest payments as well as attorney fees and costs. The lawsuits allege the financial firms broke federal and state laws with the sales.

Home mortgage-backed securities were risky investments that collapsed after the real-estate bust and helped fuel the financial crisis in late 2008.

In the lawsuits that were filed in federal or state court in New York and the federal court in Connecticut, the government said the securities were sold with registration statements and prospectuses that “contained materially false or misleading statements and omissions.”

The Federal agency said the banks and mortgage lenders also falsely represented that the mortgage loans in the securities complied with underwriting guidelines and standards. They also included representations “that significantly overstated the ability of the borrower to repay their mortgage loans.”

The 17 institutions are Ally Financial Inc., formerly known GMAC LLC, Bank of America Corp., Barclays Bank PLC, Citigroup Inc., Countrywide Financial Corp., Credit Suisse Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, First Horizon National Corp., General Electric Co., Goldman Sachs & Co., HSBC North America Holdings Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co. and its unit First Franklin Financial Corp., Morgan Stanley, Nomura Holding America Inc., The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and Societe Generale.

© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.