Miami Foreclosure Lawyer Blog

A reduction in the number of Florida foreclosures this year is being credited to a recent Florida Supreme Court ruling that requires banks to prove they are the rightful owners of a home before seeking a foreclosure action, the Miami Herald reported.

Hiring an experienced Miami foreclosure defense attorney can help protect your rights when dealing with a foreclosure, short-sale or loan modification in South Florida. Anyone with any experience in dealing with foreclosures in Miami or elsewhere in South Florida knows it is quite common for a bank to file a notice that the original mortgage documents have been lost. The advent of mortgage-backed securities means most mortgage notes were packaged and sold as investments.

Law firms working for banks have routinely filed "lost note" claims with default notices, regardless of whether anyone attempted to find the note, according to Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Bailey.

"It was very confusing. How can you foreclose on the note if the note is lost?'' Bailey said. "The judges would be trying to track the note and they're saying they own it, but don't have it and don't know where it is."

The new rule was approved in February. It was meant to address the estimated backlog of 500,000 Florida foreclosures clogging the court system. It also permits judges to sanction plaintiffs who make false claims regarding missing notes. Hiring an experienced Miami real estate attorney can help ensure a homeowner is treated fairly.

While a bank is not required to produce the note to seek a foreclosure under the new rules, it must act in good faith with both the homeowner and the courts. Previously, such cases often sailed through the system when the homeowners did not contest the foreclosure.

Judges have even found multiple lenders filing on the same property because they didn't know who owned the note.

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Lenders dealing with foreclosures and short sales in South Florida and across the nation are expected to file a barrage of lawsuits seeking to recoup losses from homeowners, the Miami Herald reported.

An experienced Miami foreclosure defense attorney should assist buyers dealing with a short sale or foreclosure. Without a written agreement from your lender, you are exposing yourself to the possibility of being slapped with a huge judgment for outstanding mortgage debt -- the difference between what your house is worth now, and what you owe on the mortgage. Get an experienced Miami real estate attorney and make sure you protect your financial well-being by seeking a waiver of such deficiency judgments. Otherwise, a short sale may help the bank, but won't help you.

"It will be a dramatic problem because the borrowers will not know it's coming," Frank Alexander, a law professor at Emory University in Atlanta, told the Sun-Sentinel. Florida law gives banks five years from the date of a sale to file a deficiency judgment and up to 20 years to collect. Lenders can garnish wages, make claims against a borrower's assets and use other means of collection.

While such deficiency judgments were rare before the housing meltdown, so were foreclosures and short sales and borrowers frequently had few assets worth chasing in an attempt to collect. But, with the advent of strategic default, banks are finding borrowers often walked away with significant assets and the bill collectors are suiting up for action.

A recent survey found more than 4 in 10 homeowners said they would consider walking away from a property with an underwater mortgage -- meaning more is owed on the home than it is worth in the current real estate market.

Other homeowners at high risk of collection action include those who ransacked or damages properties in foreclosure, either out of spite or for a profit.

Mortgage companies typically won't pursue homeowners who negotiate in good faith, or those who default because of job loss, health problems or other unforeseen circumstances, according to the Herald's report. But don't take the lender's word for it; work with a qualified and experienced attorney to get it in writing.

Even if the mortgage companies don't pursue collection action, they can sell the debt to a collection agency at a steep discount, and the debt collectors will come calling with all of the aggressive and disruptive tactics that they employ.

Continue reading "An experienced Miami foreclosure attorney can help protect against deficiency judgments" »

Florida is one of several states that plan to use $1.4 billion in aid from the Obama Administration to help unemployed and underwater homeowners avoid foreclosure, CNN reported.

While this is another sign that help may be on the way for underwater homeowners or those facing foreclosure in South Florida, hiring an experienced Miami foreclosure defense attorney is your best chance at being one of the few who gain access to the assistance necessary to protect your financial well-being.

Consumer advocates argue direct payment to struggling homeowners is necessary to help stem the tide of the mortgage crisis, which has led to plummeting property values, more underwater homeowners and more foreclosures in a repeating downward spiral. But housing experts contend paying off loans for out of work and struggling homeowners could deter people from looking for work.

The Hardest Hit Fund was announced in February and is aimed at helping out-of-work and homeowners in the hardest hit areas avoid foreclosure. Despite past efforts, home prices continue to decline and foreclosure rates remain at record highs. As part of the effort, the federal government is giving $2.1 billion to 10 states. Other states include Michigan, Arizona, California, Nevada, North and South Carolina and Ohio.

Continue reading "Program to pay struggling South Florida homeowners facing foreclosure, unemployment, underwater mortgages" »

Skyrocketing foreclosures continue to push people to extremes. Recent cases include the suspect in the attempted bombing of Times Square and an Ohio man who refused to leave his home when the sheriff arrived with an eviction notice.

As South Florida homeowners continue to struggle with foreclosure, underwater mortgages and eviction, hiring an experienced Miami foreclosure defense attorney is the best course of action to protecting your rights and the financial well-being of you and your family. While the New York case is being linked to a possible terrorist attempt, cases of homeowners locking themselves in their homes, and even sheriffs who are refusing to serve foreclosure and eviction notices, continue to surface.

Such cases illustrate the need to be proactive early in the process and to seek the guidance of a qualified Miami real estate lawyer to protect your rights before the situation gets out of control.

The suspect in the attempted bombing of Times Square in New York City was dealing with a foreclosure action, MSNBC reported.

Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad, 30, and his wife, were facing foreclosure on their Shelton Connecticut home and had abandoned it months ago. The lawn was being mowed on behalf of J.P. Morgan Case & Co., which issued the mortgage when the home was purchased in 2004. Chase Home Financial filed the foreclosure action against the couple last September; court documents indicate neither Shahzad nor his wife showed up to defend themselves. The most recent documents in the case were dated April 23.

Meanwhile, the Miami Herald reports that an Ohio man facing eviction locked himself inside and vowed to stay until a moratorium has been declared on foreclosures.

The man began his crusade on Sunday, along with five members of a group calling themselves the Toledo Foreclosure Defense League. The homeowner said he has attempted to work with the bank and done everything possible to save his home. He said he fell behind on the mortgage last year, after having surgery and losing his job. He said he has lived in the home for 20 years. The sheriff said he'd given the man extra time but had no choice but to evict him.

Continue reading "Extreme foreclosure cases illustrate need for early intervention of a Miami foreclosure defense attorney" »

Make sure you have an experienced foreclosure defense attorney read your short sale approval letter before you agree to close. An alarming new trend is confronting underwater homeowners facing foreclosure in Miami and South Florida. Even if you do everything right to short sell your property, Bank of America may still want its deficiency judgment.

This week, Bank of America was foreclosing its a $1.2 million mortgage on a South Beach condo. The borrower got an approval letter for a shortsale at $750,000.00. However, there was a catch. The approval letter reserved the right for Bank of America to pursue a deficiency judgment. This result helps the bank a whole lot more than the borrower.

Don't be mistaken, the worst thing in a foreclosure is not losing your property. It is getting hit with a deficiency judgment after losing your property. A deficiency judgment is given when the amount you owed was more than the appraised value of your property at the foreclosure sale. In my situation, the borrower still faced a $450,000 deficiency judgment if the short sale closed under that approval letter.

A strong foreclosure defense is vital to ensuring the best possibility of avoiding a deficiency judgment from an underwater mortgage. By forcing the bank to mediation, they had to assign a bank officer with decision making authority to resolve the case. That officer realized it wasn't worth the money to fight through a hotly contested foreclosure. The decision actually came down an hour before mediation. The Bank agreed to amend its short sale approval letter and waived its right to a deficiency judgment.

If you are interested in a short sale or can't afford to keep up with your mortgage payments for long, negotiate from strength. Don't trust a lawyer who fights traffic tickets to fight your lender. Find an experienced trial attorney that knows how to negotiate with Banks.

The Congressional hearings involving banking and investment giant Goldman Sachs illustrate the complex nature of the mortgage market and offer a window into the collapse of the real estate market and foreclosure crisis in Miami and across the nation. If you are dealing with a South Florida foreclosure, a Miami foreclosure lawyer can best assist in making sure you are being treated fairly in a dispute involving the mortgage industry.

As the Goldman case illustrates, banks have often failed in their obligation to treat mortgage customers and homeowners in a fair and responsible manner. If a bank was involved in an elaborate scheme to defraud investors utilizing mortgage backed securities, a homeowner may have legal recourse during a foreclosure proceeding.

Central to the argument are the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), which are a collection of asset-backed securities (like mortgages) structured and sold on the investment market. The diffuse nature of CDOs has turned mortgage lenders into loan services, while the actual owner of your mortgage may be hundreds or thousands of CDO investors all over the world. The complexity is one of the reasons cited for the problem in negotiating and approving short sales. Hiring an experienced Miami foreclosure attorney can be your best course of action to sorting it all out and protecting your rights.

While underwater homeowners fight for their financial survival and record numbers of Miami borrowers seek short-sales, foreclosure defense and home-loan modifications, executives for Goldman Sachs defended themselves by insisting the did nothing illegal. The bankers say they provided a valuable service by allowing customers to manage investment risk, MSNBC reported. Congressional leaders accuse Goldman Sachs of being little more than a giant casino that packaged and sold mortgages to investors even as it made bets against the bonds it was selling to customers.

"There is something unseemly about Goldman betting against the housing market at the same time that it is selling to its clients mortgage-backed securities containing toxic loans," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. She cited "e-mails of Goldman executives celebrating the collapse of the housing market, when the reality for millions of Americans is lost homes and disappearing jobs."

Continue reading "Goldman Sachs testimony proves need for solid legal advice when facing foreclosure in the Miami area" »