Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyers Blog

After about a year of decreased foreclosure filings due to the "robo-signing" scandal, where banks allegedly took property without properly reviewing the loan documents, the number of foreclosure filings are reportedly set to increase after lenders have supposedly taken the time to ensure that all their paperwork is in order. During that time off the number of foreclosures to be filed have mounted.

Over the last year, housing prices have maintained a slight yet steady increase. House prices in 20 U.S. cities rose 0.9% in July, making 4 consecutive months of increases, according to the S&P Case-Shiller index of home values. Nonetheless, that is still 4.1% below where values were a year ago. If foreclosed properties flood the market again, housing prices will most likely decrease again because banks price foreclosed homes towards selling quickly.

An increase in foreclosure filings has already been reported in this year's third quarter. A 0.3% increase was seen which reverses the decrease experienced in the last 3 consecutive quarters. Foreclosure filings reported include default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.

Unfortunately, "increased foreclosure filings will continue to erode house prices....the questions is, at what point do you reach the bottom of the market?" said Ed Delgado, a former Wells Fargo senior vice president and CEO of the Five Star Institute, a mortgage-education provider. Delgado does not see any recovery in the foreseeable future and is concerned bottom may not be until the third quarter of 2012.

If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, you may need help navigating the foreclosure process and today's housing market. Contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today for a free review of your situation.

After about a year of decreased foreclosure filings due to the "robo-signing" scandal, where banks allegedly took property without properly reviewing the loan documents, the number of foreclosure filings are reportedly set to increase after lenders have supposedly taken the time to ensure that all their paperwork is in order. During that time off the number of foreclosures to be filed have mounted.

Over the last year, housing prices have maintained a slight yet steady increase. House prices in 20 U.S. cities rose 0.9% in July, making 4 consecutive months of increases, according to the S&P Case-Shiller index of home values. Nonetheless, that is still 4.1% below where values were a year ago. If foreclosed properties flood the market again, housing prices will most likely decrease again because banks price foreclosed homes towards selling quickly.

An increase in foreclosure filings has already been reported in this year's third quarter. A 0.3% increase was seen which reverses the decrease experienced in the last 3 consecutive quarters. Foreclosure filings reported include default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.

Unfortunately, "increased foreclosure filings will continue to erode house prices....the questions is, at what point do you reach the bottom of the market?" said Ed Delgado, a former Wells Fargo senior vice president and CEO of the Five Star Institute, a mortgage-education provider. Delgado does not see any recovery in the foreseeable future and is concerned bottom may not be until the third quarter of 2012.

If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, you may need help navigating the foreclosure process and today's housing market. Contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today for a free review of your situation.

What is going on in with all of the Foreclosure craziness? This has been the question for millions of homeowners dealing with the potential loss of a home right now. People have heard the horror stories of predatory lending, and the other stories of unqualified homeowners working with brokers to deceive lenders to get financed. But many mortgages fall somewhere in between, leaving big question marks in place of answers the housing market desperately needs.

As a greater number of questions are pouring in, however, searching for answers has become a daunting task. MIllions of homeowners are in a struggle to hold onto their loans while batting off multiple lenders. The problem is many of the original brokers and lending companies have since gone out of business or been the subject of criminal charges stemming from their faulty practices. Often times, the loans in question have been securitized into a mortgage-backed trust. The issue underlying this confusion is that no one knows whom the owner of the note and mortgage actually is. This is largely because of one four-letter acronym, MERS.

MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System), a service created to track mortgage transfers, was created in 1994. MERS replaced the old system of "walking" every important mortgage document to the County Clerk's office. With this shortcut in place, lenders were able to save millions of dollars in local recording fees and started transferring mortgages at a pace that, we would later learn, was far too much to handle. So grueling, in fact, MERS failed to properly follow state and local laws in documenting these transfers. Now when it comes time to foreclose instead of documenting each transfer, MERS allegedly signs the mortgage from the original lender to the most recent owner.Many courts are now deciding whether MERS has actual standing to foreclose.

There are things you can do to be prepared for or stave off a potential foreclosure. One of the most important is to communicate with your lender. If you are facing the prospect of foreclosure, contact a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today to determine what foreclosure defenses may be available in your specific case.

A Philadelphia man has taken one of the tools a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawyer uses in the foreclosure fight and used it to "foreclose" on his local Wells Fargo Mortgage Office. When the Philadelphia man got a notice in his monthly mortgage statement that his insurance premiums were increasing by $500 per month because Wells Fargo was forcing him to insure his home for $1 million, a home he purchased for $180,000 in 2002 and had been paying faithfully since, he used one of the legal tools available to all homeowners...he sent Wells Fargo a Qualified Written Request asking for a detailed explanation of the reasons behind his premium increase.

Under Federal Law, lenders must acknowledge a Qualified Written Request within 20 days and respond with an explanation or fix the issue within 60 days. If lenders do not respond within the allotted time, they can be sued for $1000 and all fees and costs by the homeowner. That is exactly what happened in this case. The homeowner got a $1173 judgment against Wells Fargo, who failed to even show up at the hearing, and then failed the pay the homeowner to satisfy the judgment. Eventually the homeowner decided to file for a sheriff's levy, which instructs the sheriff to seize and sell the debtors property to satisfy the judgment. The local sheriff took the levy to the local Wells Fargo Mortgage office in order to notify them of the levy and sale date, inventory all the contents of the office, and post a notice preventing anything from being removed from the office! Wells Fargo has since sent the homeowner a check for the judgment but has refused to talk to him about the insurance premiums or correct the situation.

This is one of the most humorous examples of homeowners fighting back against the large banks. If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today to learn about Qualified Written Requests and many other foreclosure tools that may be available to you.

NBC News exclusive: JPMorgan Chase also improperly foreclosed on homes

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

One of the nation's biggest banks -- JP Morgan Chase -- admits it has overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan. The bank also tells NBC News that it improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families.

The Florida Office of State Courts Administration just released the statewide stats from the first three months of rocket docket operations and the numbers are startling. From the period of July 1 through September 30, Florida courts disposed of 65,830 foreclosure cases with almost 71% of those cases being decided in "rocket docket" hearings where cases are decided in a matter of minutes. Palm Beach County was the most prolific at getting rid of foreclosure cases, ridding the county of 9.846 foreclosure cases. In that same time period only 23 foreclosure cases went to trial, less than 1% of the disposed of cases.

The "rocket docket" courts were created to stimulate the Florida housing market by ridding the state of the mass of foreclosure cases and getting homes back onto the housing market quickly. While the numbers of cases being cleared is astonishing, there are 396,509 foreclosure cases still active in Florida courts. Most of the cases being cleared by "rocket docket" courts are those where the homeowner doesn't respond to the foreclosure suit or where they are not represented by an attorney. In most cases, to defeat the "rocket docket" hearing all a homeowner needs is one issue of legal fact!

If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit in one of the "rocket docket" courts, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today to review your case and determine what defenses may be available to you.

A Qualified Written Request or QWR is a method of disputing errors you believe to be on your mortgage or requesting information from your mortgage lender about your mortgage. A QWR has to be in writing and was intended to force mortgage-lending companies to maintain some sense of transparency and to allow homeowners to get important information about their mortgage. A mortgage lender must comply with a QWR request made by a homeowner within 60 days of receiving the request and must provide written notice to the homeowner within 20 days acknowledging receipt of the request.

If a mortgage lender fails to comply with either the time limits imposed or does not provide the complete information requested from a QWR they are subject to damages for non-compliance. For non-compliance for individual requests a mortgage lender is liable for any actual damages incurred by the homeowner and statutory damages up to $1,000. Non-complying lenders are also liable for any court costs and attorney's fees incurred as a result of non-compliance. Some lenders attempt to claim that certain information is outside the scope of a QWR but there are no limits placed on what information can be requested from a QWR.

Sending a QWR to your mortgage lender is a powerful tool to get information necessary to defend your foreclosure case. While it is possible for homeowners to send a QWR to their lender without the help of a Florida Foreclosure Lawyer, a Florida Foreclosure Lawyer is trained in foreclosure defense and knows the specific documents that hold the most importance to defending your foreclosure case.