05/01/2012 - PART 2 OF 3: Neighborhoods crumble as thousands of homes sit in legal limbo, Sun Sentinel finds - In an extensive investigation of foreclosed homes plaguing our neighborhoods, the Sun Sentinel found more than 10,300 property code violations lodged against banks in 10 South Florida cities since 2007. Banks pay little price for letting neighborhoods rot. - www.sun-sentinel.com

05/01/2012 - PART 3 OF 3: Cities target bad-neighbor banks with desperate tactics - Citizens and cities across South Florida are fighting back, using increasingly desperate methods against the banks they blame for letting foreclosed houses run down their neighborhoods. One Fort Lauderdale man got a federal judge to order a bank to take possession of a deteriorating property. Housing advocates dealing with the fallout from the foreclosure crisis say lenders will start taking better care of properties only when they face millions of dollars in liabilities that can't be erased so easily. - www.sun-sentinel.com

04/30/2012 - Americans Opt Out Of The Dream | U.S. Homeownership Rate Plunges To 15-Year Low (VIDEO) - Americans Opt Out Of The Dream | U.S. Homeownership Rate Plunges To 15-Year Low - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/30/2012 - Taxpayers Spending $40 Million Per Year To Mow Lawns Of Foreclosed Houses - That's because the government owns almost 200,000 vacant houses, and it needs to keep them looking presentable if they have any chance of selling the homes. That means painting, yard work and general upkeep -- all costs covered with tax dollars. - www.sun-sentinel.com

04/30/2012 - Big Banks Throw (Another) Tantrum: Seven And A Half Things To Know: - The Financial Times reports that ginormous banks in the U.S. are stomping mad about a feature of the recently signed JOBS Act that lets banks issue research reports on small companies they're helping take public. It was only about a decade ago, you may recall, these big banks were put in a permanent time-out from this sort of activity because they tended to abuse it, writing glowing research reports about CrapStock.com with one keyboard while telling their co-workers the same stock was a giant money-loser with another. - www.sun-sentinel.com

04/29/2012 - Interactive Map: South Florida - Does a bank own property near you? - At the end of March, banks and other financial entities owned thousands of properties in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. Click on the map for address, the owner's name and other details. For aerial photos, use the "Satellite" selection and zoom in. - www.sun-sentinel.com

Interactive Map: Does a bank own property near you? Tri-County

Information is as of late March, and ownership may have changed since then.
For more details about a property, visit the:
Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser's website.
Broward County Property Appraiser's website.
Palm Beach County Property Appraiser's website.

04/29/2012 - Bidding Wars Are Back | Housing Market's Lame Comeback: Seven And A Half Things To Know - Because your cards and letters demanded it, there's finally a video game that teaches you everything you need to know about Jay-Z's life. For the time being, here are seven and half other things you need to know, though perhaps slightly less: - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/27/2012 - Now You Can Get A Mortgage At Costco - Costco's partners have issued more than 10,000 mortgages to members under the program. But Lauren Kutschka, Costco's manager of financial services, expects that number to swell as the warehouse retailer markets the service more aggressively to millions of members in its stores and in its weekly publication Connection. - www.cnn.com

Costco's full-service mortgage lending program

04/26/2012 - 'You Can't Legislate Away Stupidity And Risk-Taking And Greed' - "Most financial crises are caused by a mix of stupidity and greed and recklessness and risk-taking and hope," said Geithner, who helped tackle the crisis for the Bush administration when he was the head of the New York Federal Reserve and has been urging Europe to act more aggressively to contain its debt problems. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/26/2012 - Venture Capitalist Forced To Defend Only Making 31,200% Return - Two years ago we invested $250,000 in Instagram. Thanks to the spectacular vision and effort of Kevin Systrom and the Instagram team, the investment will be worth $78,000,000 when the Faceboook acquisition closes. The work that Kevin and team did will go down as legend in the industry and we thank them immensely. We also thank our co-investors Steve Anderson of Baseline and Matt Cohler of Benchmark. - www.marketwatch.com

04/25/2012 - Housing Market Rebound Not Likely To Happen In Our Lifetimes: Shiller - April 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. housing market is likely to remain weak and may take a generation or more to rebound, Yale economics professor Robert Shiller told Reuters Insider on Tuesday. Shiller, the co-creator of the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index, said a weak labor market, high gas prices and a general sense of unease among consumers was outweighing low mortgage rates and would likely keep a lid on prices for the foreseeable future. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/25/2012 - In Widely Published Photo, A House That Illustrates The Foreclosure Crisis - Since then, one of Platt's photos of the forlorn little house -- a close-up, framed against a bright blue sky -- has been featured with more than a dozen reports on the deal and its aftermath. Within a day, the New York Post used the photo to accompany a column about the deal headlined "The 'Deadbeat' Bailout." A month later, NPR's "Marketplace" published the photo on its website to accompany a story about the filing of the settlement in federal court. USA Today used it a few weeks ago for an analysis of the deal's winners and losers. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/25/2012 - Money, Power and Wall Street | PBS Frontline Investigation Into Financial Crisis Suggests Another Disaster On Horizon - Frontline's new documentary about the financial crisis probably doesn't say much you didn't already know, at least if you've followed the story. But it's a story worth telling again anyway, because memories on Wall Street and in Washington are dangerously short. On Tuesday night PBS will air the first two parts of a four-part documentary on the crisis, called "Money, Power and Wall Street," with the second two parts to air next Tuesday, May 1. - www.huffingtonpost.com

Watch Money, Power and Wall Street: Part One on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

04/21/2012 - 'These Are Mistakes That Could Cost Someone Their Home' | Inside the foreclosure factory, they're working overtime - In a quiet office in downtown Charlotte, N.C., dozens of Wells Fargo's foreclosure foot soldiers sit in cubicles cranking out documents the bank relies on to seize its share of the thousands of homes lost to foreclosure every week. They stare at computer screens and prepare sworn affidavits that are used by lenders in courts across the country to seize homes. Paid $30,700 to start, these legal process specialists, the title that goes with the job, swear an oath under penalty of perjury that they're corporate vice presidents. They're peppered with e-mails from managers to meet daily quotas of at least 10 or 11 files day. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/21/2012 - Is this recovery? | Homeless Children Living On The Highway To Disney World - According to the U.S. Department of Education, at least 2,000 children live in the hotels of Central Florida, and that's not counting the untold numbers who are too young to go to school, or who have dropped out, or who have otherwise escaped notice, as many undoubtedly have. Families make up the fast-growing segment of America's homeless population. Thousands live in hotels. The Department of Education has identified 47,000 hotel kids in schools around the country, and says that the number of homeless kids in public schools has increased by 38 percent since 2007. In Central Florida, it isn't uncommon to hear of 19 or 20 hotel kids in a class of 22 at the local schools. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/21/2012 - 'THIS IS A FRONT LINE' Housing Market Recovery, Despite Wall Street Claims, Still A Dream On Main Street - There were 1,725 foreclosure notices issued in March, which means the county is on pace to reach about 20,000 for the year -- not much different from recent years, King said. Just 90 building permits were issued last month, down from about 9,000 a month at the peak of the housing bubble in 2006. The average home value has plunged from about $200,000 to about $100,000, he said. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/17/2012 - Town Basically Bans Fun | Weston, Florida Bans Nightclubs, Dance Halls, Skating Rinks - In a decision that's drawing comparisons all over the internet to that famed Kevin Bacon-vehicle Footloose, the city council of Weston, Florida voted to ban nightclubs, dance halls and skating rinks, ABC News reports. Officials in the family-friendly community said they made the decision in an aim to reduce crime and big crowds. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: # Holly Hill considers banning some stores from Ridgewood Avenue
# Jackson, Mississippi,, Tattoo and Nail Shops "Undesirable" in 'Burbs
# Plantation, Florida, Check-cashing Stores Banned

04/17/2012 - Foreclosures No Longer As Popular As This Strategy | Short Sales Bypass Foreclosures, Hinting At Hope For Housing Market - Don't look now, but there's a sign of hope in the foreclosure crisis. There were more short sales than foreclosure sales in January, according to data from the company Lender Processing Services, as reported by Bloomberg. That could mean lenders are making more of an effort to explore other ways of dealing with the collapsed housing market -- ways that don't involve foreclosing on everything in sight. In a short sale, the homeowner sells her house for less than what is owed on the mortgage -- and the lender who owns the mortgage agrees to waive the rest of the debt. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: Short Sales Surpass Foreclosures as Banks Agree to Deals

04/13/2012 - Eviction Leads To Deadly Standoff | Stanislaus County Deputy Killed While Trying To Serve Eviction Notice - The incident began when two Stanislaus County deputies went to the north Modesto home to deliver the notice, said Christianson, who called the incident "another dark day" for law enforcement in California. "One of my valued members of my team is dead," a distraught Christianson told reporters. "I am overwhelmingly frustrated that we don't have the sufficient resources to protect the community." Neighbors Yemen Zokari and Steven Gasterlum, who told the newspaper they live with their baby two doors down from the suspect gunman, said they looked out the window when they heard gunshots Thursday morning. They said they saw two men lying on the ground, one on his stomach and another on his back closer to the door of the house from where the shots came. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/12/2012 - Why More Homes May Be Taken Back | More Homes Entered Foreclosure Process In March, Setting Stage For Jump In Repossessed Properties - The number of homes that received first-time foreclosure notices rose 7 percent in March from the previous month, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. That marks the third consecutive monthly increase this year and reflects stepped-up efforts by banks to take action against homeowners who fail to keep up with mortgage payments. "We're not out of the woods yet with foreclosures," said Daren Blomquist, a vice president at RealtyTrac. "There are more batches of foreclosures coming through the pipeline." - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/12/2012 - FAILURE TO DELIVER | Report: Federal Fund Meant To Help Struggling Homeowners Falls Flat - TARP Bailout Money Fails To Reach Neediest Homeowners After Two Years: Report. The Hardest Hit Fund, a $7.6 billion initiative established by the federal government in February 2010 to help families in states most crippled by the collapsed housing market, has distributed just 3 percent of its money -- or $217.4 million -- to help homeowners, according to a report released Thursday by the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Fund, or SIGTARP. The 76-page report reads like the autopsy of a dead housing program, placing the blame for the program's paltry performance squarely on the Treasury Department, the government agency responsible for TARP and, in turn, the Hardest Hit program. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/07/2012 - US Housing Secretary Pushes Mortgage Write-Downs For Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac - Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan laid out the case for a program with such checks and balances to convince the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the companies, to provide more mortgage aid. "This isn't about force; this is about making the right decision for homeowners and for the taxpayers," Donovan said in an interview taped for C-SPAN's public affairs television that was set to air on Sunday - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/06/2012 - Federal Reserve Issues Guidelines For Turning Foreclosed Homes Into Rentals - The Federal Reserve has issued policy guidelines for banks turning foreclosed homes they own into rentals, a trend that could help boost falling home prices. The central bank said Thursday that banks making the conversions should preserve needed documents and meet all federal, state and local laws that apply to renting. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/06/2012 - Millions Pass Up Foreclosure Relief Program Due To Mistrust In Banks | Foreclosure Review: Just 3 Percent Of Eligible Borrowers Apply For Review - Hale is one of millions of borrowers who have not bothered to apply for relief through this program. So far, just 136,000, or 3 percent of qualifying borrowers, have mailed in forms requesting a loan audit, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of the regulators overseeing the program. Mailings to notify borrowers eligible to apply to program were first sent beginning Nov. 1, 2010. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/06/2012 - 'THIS IS NOT ABOUT INCOME' Banks Reportedly Take Much Better Care Of Foreclosures In White Areas - The investigation by the National Fair Housing Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that investigates, tracks and researches housing discrimination, studied the way banks market and maintain vacant foreclosed homes in nine metro areas and found "overwhelming" and "troubling" evidence that banks consistently market and maintain foreclosed homes in the nation's predominantly white neighborhoods differently. The findings constitute a violation of federal civil rights law and show that blacks and Latinos are unfairly burdened with one of the worst aspects of the nation's housing crisis, alliance officials said. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/03/2012 - Private Equity Firm Buys 5 Homes Per Day In Race For 'Awesome' Profits - It's a landlord's market and financial firms are taking advantage. One private equity firm, Waypoint Real Estate, is buying about five foreclosed homes per day and turning them into rentals in an aim to find a new way to make a buck off of foreclosed homes, the Washington Post reports. Other private investment firms are joining Waypoint, shifting from a years-old strategy that focused on flipping foreclosed homes instead of renting them. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/03/2012 - Housing Market Still A Drag: Seven And A Half Things To Know - That's the message of a research note on Monday by Frederick Cannon and other bank-stock analysts at the firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, after studying historical patterns of regulation and de-regulation. "We believe that the historical analysis suggests that investors should be prepared for the possible eventual break-up of the largest financials," the analysts write, "including" Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. - www.huffingtonpost.com

04/03/2012 - TOO DOOMED TO LIVE | Too Big To Fail Will Eventually Fall Apart: Study - That's the message of a research note on Monday by Frederick Cannon and other bank-stock analysts at the firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, after studying historical patterns of regulation and de-regulation. "We believe that the historical analysis suggests that investors should be prepared for the possible eventual break-up of the largest financials," the analysts write, "including" Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/28/2012 - Robert T. Nusser, 68-Year-Old Ohio Man Facing Eviction, Fatally Shoots Wife And Himself - Foreclosure Crisi! Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their homes to the foreclosure crisis, and sadly some would rather face death than eviction. Robert T. Nusser, 68, of Athens, Ohio reportedly shot his wife Paulette, 64, then turned the gun on himself the day after authorities ordered that he vacate his home, The Columbus Dispatch reports. Nusser made a 911 call early Monday morning to report a murder-suicide at his home, adding "I'm the one that caused it" before hanging up. Police arrived at the scene to find a fatal gunshot wound in each of the Nussers and a suicide note by Robert explaining that he didn't want to burden his family. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/28/2012 - How Do I Get Rid Of My Crap Mortgage? | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau To Homeowner's Side - Under the federal Truth in Lending Act, homebuyers who aren't properly informed of the terms of their mortgage have up to three years to cancel or "rescind" the loan. What's unclear now is whether borrowers, to ensure the debt is canceled, also have to file a lawsuit within that three-year window against whoever owns the loan. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/28/2012 - The $26 billion crapshoot | The foreclosure settlement looks like a hit-or-miss game that leaves millions of homeowners out in the cold. - Homeowners hoping the $26 billion foreclosure abuse settlement would mean big savings on their mortgages were mostly disappointed. Even though a million borrowers will have their principals slashed by as much as $100,000 or more, most are not eligible for a workout simply because the bank that issued their mortgages, didn't hold their mortgages. - www.cnn.com

03/26/2012 - Fannie, Freddie Punish Homeowners Who Fall Behind | Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Resistance To Principal Reduction Costs Taxpayers - After two years of bewildering futility, John and Linda DeCaro thought they had finally found a way to hang on to their home. They could no longer afford their mortgage payments and had slipped into delinquency. They could not refinance to take advantage of low-interest rates because they were among the nearly 11 million American homeowners who are "underwater," meaning that they owed the bank more than their house was worth. Bank of America had already initiated foreclosure proceedings. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/21/2012 - Wall Street Seeing Gold In Foreclosed Homes | Wall Street Sees Big Profits In Renting Out Foreclosed Homes -
* Hedge funds, private equity firms eye single-family homes
* Fannie's 2,500 pilot offering drawing out bidders
* Skeptics worry about transfer of wealth from poor to rich
Investors seeking higher yields are drawn to foreclosures because the rental market is red hot. But the heated competition for foreclosed homes is reminiscent of the frothy expectations that seem to accompany each new Wall Street investing craze. Even proponents of buying foreclosed homes are advising caution about the kind of returns that investors can expect to reap and the potential negative headlines that can come with being a landlord. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/16/2012 - Uh-Oh: Bad Sign For Foreclosures | Home Default Notices Rose Slightly In February - The number of Americans receiving delinquency notices on their homes rose in February from January, while the backlog of homes in the foreclosure pipeline showed signs of starting to ease, a report said on Thursday. Default notices were filed for the first time on 58,886 homes last month, up 1 percent from January, though still down 7 percent from February 2011, a report from RealtyTrac showed. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - 14-Year-Old Willow Tufano Buys Distressed Port Charlotte, Florida Home For $12,000 (PHOTOS) - Just a few miles north of the housing market's ground zero, a Lady Gaga fan with sweeping bangs, a bright smile, and homework on the docket is the latest symbol of how bad things have gotten in the Southwest Florida foreclosure landscape -- or how alive is the spirit of ingenuity. As first reported by NPR, 14-year-old Willow Tufano just bought her first house for $12,000. Well, make that technically half a house. Her real estate agent mom Shannon Moore owns the other 50 percent of the Port Charlotte 3-bedroom, but Willow plans to buy her out in about a year and a half with her share of the $700 monthly rental income. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - The Man Who Stands Between America And A Real Recovery | Ed DeMarco's Refusal on Principal Reductions Grounds for Firing - DeMarco steadfastly refuses to allow Fannie and Freddie to help distressed homeowners by writing off principal balances on their mortgages. This has ensured that tens of millions of borrowers remain "underwater," meaning they owe the banks more than their homes are worth -- a status that has an alarming tendency to portend foreclosure. His refusal is based on logic that is both elegantly simple and tragically flawed: He is responsible for cleaning up the books at Fannie and Freddie, so he is against spending money. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - National Mortgage Settlement Documents Lack Detail On Banks' Alleged Misdeeds - A previously announced $25 billion mortgage settlement will be closely policed to make sure banks follow through on promises to offer wide housing relief to Americans, federal officials said as they filed the long-awaited pact in court on Monday. The deal, announced last month and filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., requires five major U.S. banks to help struggling borrowers to settle accusations they pursued faulty foreclosures and misled borrowers who sought loan modifications. The banks did not admit to the allegations laid out in the complaint, but the government said its intention was to "remediate harms allegedly resulting from the alleged unlawful conduct." - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - Todd Talbot Auctioning His Arizona Home For One Penny (VIDEO) - Each bid rises by a penny, and as of Tuesday morning the highest bid for the home was $2.42. Though there are already penny auctions for electronic and other consumer goods, this appears to be the first penny auction for a house, according to ABC News. All that said, bidders do have to pay 60 cents every time they make a bid, which is how Todd Talbot, the owner of the home, is making money on the auction, according to ABC 15, a local ABC affiliate. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - Churches To Banks: We're Mad As Hell - About 25 churches have withdrawn $16 million from big banks such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase as part of a Lent-themed protest against the banks' foreclosure actions, The New York Times reports, citing PICO National Network, a social justice coalition of churches that's leading the charge. Individual members and organizational partners have also taken out an additional $15 million. The demonstration, which started on Ash Wednesday, aims to protest "the injustice that still dominates the banking industry in this country, unmasking corporate greed and dishonesty that is destroying our families," Ryan J. Bell, senior pastor Hollywood Seventh Day Adventist Church, wrote in a blog for The Huffington Post last month. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - PHOTOS: Underwater Homeowners Share Their Stories - Are you an underwater homeowner? If so, we'd like to hear from you. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - Mortgage Settlement That Divided Democrats May Have Burned Eric Schneiderman's Bridges | WAR WITH THEMSELVES Inside The Deal That Divided The Democrats - Top law enforcement officers from most of the 50 states gathered last week in Washington, D.C., for the annual spring meeting of state attorneys general, where the hot topic was the $25 billion foreclosure settlement finally filed in federal court on Monday. More than a dozen state and federal officials who crafted the deal, which resolves charges that banks wrongfully foreclosed on homeowners, say it is the most ambitious of its kind ever reached, far outstripping the complexity and political machinations of the decade-old case against the giant tobacco companies. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/13/2012 - Rage grows over mortgage deal - As more details emerge about the massive $26 billion foreclosure settlement between the five biggest mortgage lenders and the states' attorneys general, a growing number of borrowers are realizing that the deal will do little, if anything, to help them out. Proponents of the settlement deal tout that roughly 1 million homeowners who owe more on their homes than their homes are worth are expected to have their mortgage balances lowered through principal reductions and another 750,000 would be able to refinance into loans with lower interest rates. - www.cnn.com

03/10/2012 - Record Numbers Of Church Foreclosures - * 2011 a record year for church foreclosures * Churches hit by credit bubble, some devalued. * Churches faulting, struggling with "balloon" payouts * Banks say church foreclosure last resort The surge in church foreclosures represents a new wave of distressed property seizures triggered by the 2008 financial crash, analysts say, with many banks no longer willing to grant struggling religious organizations forbearance. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/09/2012 - Bank of America Will Make Deepest, Broadest Cuts Of Any Bank In Mortgage Settlement - Bank of America will make deeper and broader cuts than other banks, which will allow it to avoid as much as $850 million in penalties and give more than 200,000 financially strapped households the opportunity to sharply reduce their mortgage balances, the paper said. The side deal is unique to Bank of America, the Journal said, citing a senior administration official. It added that many of the write-downs will be made on loans originated by Countrywide Financial Corp, which Bank of America bought in 2008, and then packaged into securities. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/03/2012 - This Is Not A Misprint: Good News For Some With BofA Home Loans | Bank Of America To Offer Some Homeowners Extra Assistance Under Settlement - Under the $25 billion foreclosure settlement signed last month, Bank of America will offer to write down the loans of more than 200,000 underwater homeowners to market value, said Shaun Donovan, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in an interview Monday with The Huffington Post. Other banks will also make these principal reductions, but are not required to offer as much relief, Donovan said. "This is a universal program with deeper principal reduction than required [of other banks] under the settlement," Donovan said. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/03/2012 - Huge Mortgage Deal Will Help Almost None Of Those Hit Hardest | Only 5% of underwater loans might get settlement's principal reductions, report says - As it turns out, there are strict conditions on who can qualify for principal reductions: Homeowners have to be facing imminent default, they can't be backed by Fannie or Freddie, they must occupy their home, and their mortgages have to be serviced by one of the five firms that were part of the agreement. - www.washingtonpost.com

03/03/2012 - Foreclosure Crisis Hits Last Place You'd Expect | Fox Hill Senior Condominium Faces Foreclosure In Affluent D.C. Suburb - This time, the foreclosure crisis is hitting a bunch of retirees all at once. Fox Hill Senior Condominium, which, according to its website, offers "cosmopolitan living for ages 60+" in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Bethesda, is being threatened with foreclosure, the Washington Post reports. The retirement community was opened at the height of the housing boom in 2008, but with 240 units still unsold, a group of German banks who provided an estimated $100 million loan have had enough. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/03/2012 - Man Fined For Not Mowing The Lawn Of His Foreclosed Home (VIDEO) - David Englett of Crowley, Texas is being charged after he didn't pay a series of Arlington city fines for, among other things, not moving the lawn of a home he had already lost to foreclosure, local news CBS 11 reports (h/t The Consumerist). Englett had also been fined for owning an alarm without the necessary permit and for a fence in bad shape. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/03/2012 - Big Banks Get $160 Billion For Doing Nothing | HAMP: Obama Administration Lets Banks Out Of Doghouse For Bad Mortgage Servicing - Banks participating in the Home Affordable Modification Program receive incentive payments for lowering eligible borrowers' payments in order to prevent foreclosure. The program has fallen far short of expectations, and more borrowers have had their modifications canceled than remain in the program. The Treasury Department, which oversees the program, started withholding incentive payments from several banks last June. On Friday, the department said $81.7 million will be released to Bank of America and $89.1 million will be handed over to Chase. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/01/2012 - Largest U.S. City Bankruptcy Heading Toward Court | Stockton Bankruptcy Unlikely To Stop Public Service Cuts - Stockton, Calif., took a major step toward becoming the largest U.S. city ever to file for bankruptcy with a city council vote to begin a state-mandated mediation process with creditors and municipal unions after a contentious public meeting Tuesday night. City leaders described the vote as a last-ditch attempt to forestall further cuts in public services including policing, which have been slashed in recent years. "Our safety and the safety of our citizens depend on this process to move forward," Stockton Mayor Ann Johnston said at the meeting. - www.huffingtonpost.com

03/01/2012 - What Are Those Banks That Almost Crashed The Economy Up To Now? - What began in 2007 as a collapse of "sub-prime" real estate loans spread in 2008 to threaten Wall Street's most powerful banks--and, eventually, everything from small business lending to money market funds. The financial crisis dominated the first term of new President Barack Obama, spawned two different protest movements--the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street--and pulled everyone from bank CEOs to Warren Buffett's secretary into a debate over regulation and taxation. (Left, bank CEOs Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs [GS], Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase [JPM], John Mack of Morgan Stanley [MS], and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America [BAC] testify before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on January 13, 2010.) What follows is a look at some of the key characters in the financial crisis and where they are now. - www.businessweek.com

02/29/2012 - BofA Considers Charging You For Not Buying Enough Of Their Stuff - Bank of America Corp is planning to introduce a monthly fee for its customers holding checking accounts unless they agree to bank online, buy more products or maintain certain balances, the Wall Street Journal said. The report on the new fee initiative at the nation's second-largest bank comes after it had faced a major consumer backlash last year when it disclosed plans for a $5-per-month debit card fee, forcing the bank to drop the plan. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/21/2012 - Arturo De Los Santos, Foreclosure Crisis Victim, Faces Eviction From Re-Occupied Home (VIDEO) - Barring a last-minute miracle, the sheriff is set to evict them Tuesday morning. But De Los Santos and his family say they are not going anywhere. Chase's foreclosure department put the house, located at 3270 Layton Court, up for sale, even as the bank's own loan modification department was finalizing an agreement that would have allowed the family to stay put. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/19/2012 - Mortgage Foreclosure Settlement: Who Pays? - Based on currently available information about the settlement, there's no way to refute the government's claim that banks will bear the brunt of the settlement's costs. But the waters have been muddied by past government statements, and by the government's failure to make the terms of the settlement public even as it rushed to announce that a deal was done. Mortgage-bond investors such as Pimco have publicly worried that they will be forced to eat much of that $35 billion. Banks get credit under the settlement for cutting principal balances on mortgages that private investors own. It hurts a lot less to write down a loan that somebody else owns than your own investment, so private investors figure that banks will go after their loans first. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/19/2012 - Cleveland To Use National Mortgage Settlement Money To Demolish Homes, Sill Wants Banks To Pay - Funds meant to help struggling families in Cleveland are instead being used to knock down vacant and dilapidated homes left in the wake of the foreclosure crisis that ravaged this midwestern city. Over the past five years, Cleveland has spent $60 million coping with thousands of deteriorating, empty houses, and has had to divert funds meant to help poor families obtain affording housing, according to city officials. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/16/2012 - National Mortgage Settlement: Bank Forecloses Even As Carrie Haskamp Pursues Loan Modification - What Haskamp didn't know was that a month later the bank would foreclose, despite her loan modification. Turns out, one arm of her mortgage company was reviewing her loan for a modification at the same time that another division was planning to foreclose, in an industry practice called "dual tracking." While there's no firm data on the number of borrowers who go through this, housing experts agree that it's routine and problematic. People who possibly could have kept their home with their bank's help instead end up on the street. - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/16/2012 - CALIFORNIA STEALIN' | Foreclosure Audit Reveals Widespread Violations, Irregularities - The improprieties range from the basic — a failure to warn borrowers that they were in default on their loans as required by law — to the arcane. For example, transfers of many loans in the foreclosure files were made by entities that had no right to assign them and institutions took back properties in auctions even though they had not proved ownership. - www.nytimes.com
Read More: Foreclosures in California Report

02/10/2012 - Rents Fell Last Year, But In Many Cities Still 'Too Damn High' - Rents fell across the United States last year, but landlords got choosier. Overall average rent in the U.S. dropped to $820 in the fourth quarter of 2011 from $831 in the same time period in 2010, according to new data released Thursday from credit reporting company TransUnion. However, the average security deposit increased $284 from $269. - www.huffingtonpost.com

In Many Cities Rent's Still 'Too Damn High'

02/10/2012 - Massachusetts AG: Mortgage Settlement Is Only The Beginning - "We believe there is still much work to do," said Coakley, who was one of the more outspoken attorneys general during the settlement negotiations. "This is only five banks ... We have Fannie and Freddie. We have 19 other lenders." Coakley said that the settlement will not prevent her from pursuing further criminal probes against lenders, in order to help homeowners who have been "caught in the unlawful and unnecessary foreclosure machine." - www.huffingtonpost.com

02/10/2012 - Will The Mortgage Settlement Really Curb Bad Bank Behavior? - Promising to change bad behavior is easy. Making a convincing argument to those who have been burned by those promises is considerably more difficult. It's been three years since President Barack Obama announced his housing relief initiative, the awkwardly named Making Home Affordable Program. Though some borrowers have been helped, the loan modification program is widely viewed as a failure, in large part because of banks' unwillingness to play along. - www.huffingtonpost.com