Tax authorities in several states with high state and property taxes are looking for residents who claim to qualify for the homestead exemption in some lower-tax state.
New York is particularly aggressive. It particularly challenges people who split their time between New York and Florida, which has a much more favorable tax structure. Typically, they target people who claim their Florida home as their principal residence, but actually spend more than half their time in New York.
Other states that have been cracking down on people they consider cheats and collecting money include Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, and the District of Columbia.
Recently, LexisNexis, the information services company, began offering the Homestead Exemption Fraud Detection Solution, which allows tax officials to cross-reference homestead registrations with multiple public records databases to find inconsistencies such as a driver’s license or voting record in another state.
Source: The New York Times, Kate Murphy (09/01/2010)
Rockland Rogues Rugby Football Club came in second in a round robin tournament held today in New Rochelle, NY. Leading the Forwards with a try was Will Castillo. Rockland won clean ball in rucks and scrums; though losing some ground in line-outs and penalty plays. The other teams had an average player age of 20 while Rockland had an average player age of 28 with Carl Mariuz and John Schwarz tilting the average (way up).
Rockland kicks off its first season after reforming, September 11th at Tallman Mountain State Park, Tallman, NY.
Mortgage rates have hit a new record low for the 10th time in 11 weeks as investors continue to turn to Treasury bonds as a safe haven; the shift in money is cutting yields, which mortgage rates tend to follow.
Freddie Mac reports that 30-year fixed loans averaged 4.32 percent, down from 4.36 percent a week ago; and the 15-year fixed rate fell to a new low of 3.83 percent, down from 3.86 percent.
Federal Reserve officials attending a Fed conference reviewed the housing crisis and called for more programs to address broader issues.
Eric Rosengren, president of the Fed’s Bank of Boston, said he is in favor of a more “holistic” approach.
“My own view is that too little focus has been on community problems because the focus has been more targeted to housing and foreclosures,” Rosengren said. “Rather than treating the symptom — the high REO problem — we need to better understand how to resolve the more general problems in communities that lead to higher concentrations of REOs and exacerbate the effects of high REOs.”
Sandra Pianalto, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, told attendees of the conference that the Fed feels a “great sense of urgency” to get housing back on its feet.
“A healthy housing sector is critical both to the overall economy and to a sustainable economic recovery,” Pianalto said.
Source: Reuters News (09/02/2010)
Fannie Mae says it will begin fining loan servicers who take too long to complete foreclosures once it’s been determined that delinquent borrowers don’t qualify for a loan modification or other alternatives like short sales.
The fines — or “compensatory fees” — will be assessed when loan servicers can’t provide a reasonable explanation for failing to meet timelines for completing routine foreclosures that vary from state to state, Fannie Mae said in a bulletin to servicers.
The time allotted to complete a foreclosure, starting from the referral of a loan file to an attorney or trustee until the date of a foreclosure sale, varies from as little as 60 days in Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia, to 90 days or more in Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Will the government revive tax credits to encourage home sales? Housing experts are dubious. Even suggesting that the tax credit might be revived could have a negative effect on the market, says housing economist Tom Lawler, because it could “lead many a prospective home buyer to hold off on buying a home.” Earlier this month Richard Dugas, CEO of PulteGroup Inc., said earlier in August on an earnings call: “Almost regardless of how future demand plays out, we still believe that the tax credit had to end. We need to know the true level of demand without government stimulus distorting the market so that we can continue to properly position our business for ongoing improvement.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Nick Timiraos (08/30/2010)
Fannie Mae will now review the compensatory fees due to servicers in cases where the government sponsored entity feel servicers are unnecessarily delaying foreclosure.
In a letter sent to servicers, Fannie Mae said it plans to review compensation when it deems applicable, stating that loans “must not be put on hold on a blanket basis.”
Fannie Mae is clear that servicers must not jump the gun either, but rather must follow the letter of the law as it pertains to HAMP/HAFA guidelines.
In a July speech, Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, told loss mitigation servicers that, “if you have an abandoned property or a borrower not willing to discuss or work with anything, then get going [and foreclose],” he advised.
Fannie Mae allows several exceptions in the case where the property is occupied, unless “the borrower has displayed an obvious lack of concern for the mortgage obligation.”
In cases where the property is vacant or the borrower is not going to pay any of the mortgage, “servicers must expedite foreclosure proceedings under the greatest extent allowable by law.”
Read the original article here: www.housingwire.com/2010/09/02/excessively-delaying-fannie-mae-foreclosures-will-now-cost-servicers
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York may seek to require banks to buy back its holdings of faulty mortgages and other assets acquired through the rescues of Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc., a spokesman said.
“We are involved in multiple efforts related to exercising our rights as investors in non-agency RMBS or CDO securities,” New York Fed spokesman Jack Gutt wrote in an e-mail, referring to residential mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.
Steps include “those that require originators to repurchase ineligible loans,” Gutt wrote, referring to ones that aren’t backed by federal entities and violate bond contracts. “These efforts support our primary goal of maximizing the value of these portfolios on behalf of the American taxpayer.”
The Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other mortgage investors are seeking to force buybacks to rid their books of bad assets amid persistent losses from soured housing loans. Debt buyers and insurers, who can rescind their coverage, are combing through loan documents for faulty appraisals, inflated borrower incomes and missing documentation that can trigger contractual agreements to repurchase ineligible assets as insurers seek ways to void coverage or recoup costs.
“Of course the Fed should pursue ‘efforts to exercise our rights as investors,’” said Chris Kotowski, a bank analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. “The only real question is, what took them so long?”
Maiden Lane
Regulators of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae last month issued 64 subpoenas to loan servicers and mortgage-bond trustees. Investigators are seeking loan files that may prove the two government-supported companies bought securities backed by loans that sellers should buy back because they misrepresented their quality.
The New York Fed holds $69.1 billion of assets that were placed in three holding companies that it established to bail out AIG and Bear Stearns in 2008. Maiden Lane LLC, named for the street bordering the New York Fed’s Manhattan headquarters, acquired about $30 billion of Bear Stearns assets that JPMorgan Chase & Co. didn’t want when it bought the company. Maiden Lane II and III, which were involved in AIG’s rescue, hold the remaining assets.
Issuers of so-called non-agency mortgage securities held by the three Maiden Lane companies include Countrywide Financial Corp., which was bought by Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and UBS AG, as well as defunct lenders such as New Century Financial Corp., according to Fed disclosures.
$5 Billion
Any potential losses won’t hit bank earnings for some time to come, said Scott Buchta, a mortgage-bond strategist at Braver Stern Securities in Chicago.
“As far as making actual recoveries goes, this process just begins with the Fed receiving loan files,” Buchta said. “They then need to comb through all of the files and try to find the breaches.”
Many of the assets in the Fed’s portfolio are distressed. About 78 percent of the assets backing Maiden Lane II, valued at $16.2 billion on the Fed’s balance sheet as of July 28, were considered junk bonds at the end of the first quarter, compared with 65 percent a year earlier, according to the Fed.
Violations of so-called representations and warrantees of loans sold directly to or insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cost the four biggest U.S. lenders about $5 billion last year.
The statement by the New York Fed, which is being advised by BlackRock Inc. on the portfolios, comes as investors in the almost $1.5 trillion non-agency mortgage bond market, which doesn’t have government backing, escalate efforts to minimize their losses.
More Efforts
A group of investors holding more than $500 billion of the debt last month sent letters to trustees seeking their help in getting more bad loans bought back, according to Dallas lawyer Talcott Franklin. Franklin wouldn’t name the investors, and declined to comment today on whether they included the Fed.
Investors suspect that loan servicers — who are responsible for pursuing repurchases and handling billing, collections and loan modifications — may not be seeking as many as possible, in part because other units of their companies would be the ones required to take back the debt, according to the letters.
Investors who are sharing information and coordinating through Talcott Franklin PC collectively own bonds giving them 25 percent of “voting rights” in about 2,300 deals, and more in a smaller number, the lawyer said in a July 22 interview. Those levels exceed thresholds that allow them to force actions such as declaring loan servicers in default of their contracts, requiring them to share loan files, and replacing trustees, with details varying by the deal, he said.
Read the original article:
Why seek loan modification?
There are several reasons for any debtor to seek loan modification with help of an attorney. Some of these reasons are as follows.
The reasons for seeking home loan modification may vary from person to person depending upon the financial situation of the debtor.
Ways to get seek loan modification:
There are two ways of seeking home affordable modification program, one is seeking it personally and the other is seeking it through an attorney.
Benefits of getting the services of an Attorney
Home prices in New York and elsewhere scream bargain, and mortgage rates haven’t been this low for decades. Yet houses are sitting on the market. Sales of previously occupied homes in the metropolitan area 14 percent in July. Potential buyers are hesitating because they think home prices still have further to fall. – support for the theory that we are in a deflationary cycle. Most sellers are reluctant to lower their prices. The problem is – if all buyers perceive that home prices are coming down, then they will stop making offers — and home prices will come down.
While the standoff plays out, home sales are plummeting.
The Spring 2010, government tax credits helped drive sales, especially among first-time buyers of less expensive homes. But those tax credits have expired now, and many people rushed to lock in sales before they did.