Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyers Blog

Remember, there are almost always several options available to you to help defend against a foreclosure. One of the best options is to contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Attorney who can help you through the process.

However, you must be cautious. There are people out there who are trying to exploit the current economy, swindling people out of their hard-earned money. In Southern California, for example, a man recently plead guilty to bankruptcy fraud and identity theft after years of "helping" people stall a foreclosure.

The man, Frederic Gladle, operated a foreclosure company and told homeowners he would postpone their foreclosure for a monthly fee. It is evident Gladle knew what he was doing was wrong, as he used numerous aliases in his business. He would have the homeowners who hired him sell a very small fraction of their home to a debtor who was going through bankruptcy. Having the homeowner's name attached to the bankruptcy placed an automatic stay on the foreclosure, meaning the lenders were prohibited from foreclosing until receiving permission from the court.

Using this scheme netted nearly $1.6 million for Mr. Gladle over a 4-year period. Almost all of this money was from homeowners struggling to remain in their homes. Mr. Gladle's actions are abhorrent and it is unfortunate that he was able to swindle even one dollar from anyone. If you are facing foreclosure, do your homework before rushing to make decisions and call a Jacksonville Foreclosure Attorney for help.

"The foreclosure crisis is having a significant impact on mental health as well as on a wide range of preventable conditions that are susceptible to stress," said Princeton University economist Janet Currie. "Our findings prove yet again that economic well-being and physical well-being are connected."

The National Bureau of Economic Research recently published a study, co-authorized by Janet Currie, that analyzed the affect foreclosures are having on peoples health in the states who have the greatest number of foreclosures--Florida, California, Arizona, and New York. Foreclosure rates were linked to reports of emergency-room and hospital visits for stress-related issues. The study also included those who are stressed by making payments on a home that is worth significantly less than what they owe.

The report found that for every 100 foreclosed properties in an area, emergency-room and hospital admittances increased 7.2% for hypertension and 8.1% for diabetes for adults 20 to 49. Anxiety admissions saw a 12% increase, and malaise (stomach upset and nausea) increased by 7.5%. In addition, an increase in attempts of suicide was reported.

Being under financial anxiety causes changes in mood, hypertension, and diabetes that take a toll on your overall health. Families forced to move in together experience more friction.

If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Florida Foreclosure Lawyer or a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today. The initial consultation is complimentary.

A client came into our office today with an interesting issue. The client purchased a foreclosed property earlier this year and shortly thereafter leased out the property to a tenant to live in. Yesterday, the tenant came home to find the locks drilled and changed and a note on the door stating that the home had been secured by a property preservation company pursuant to an order by the lender. That is the interesting part, our client purchased the home outright with no mortgage!!!!

After doing some digging we were able to find that there was a small second mortgage on the home that had been recently been sold to a new company by the second mortgage holder. The new second mortgage holder was the party which hired the property preservation company to secure the home. The problem was when the bought the second mortgage they didn't realize that the mortgage had been foreclosed and they purchased a worthless mortgage. By hiring the property preservation company to secure the home they trespassed on our clients property.

While we were able to get this issue resolved with relative ease, many homeowners have not been so lucky. There have been numerous news reports over the past several years where banks have hired property preservation companies to secure homes and the companies go into homes, change the locks, remove all of the homeowners belongings and in some cases do damage to the home itself.

If you are a homeowner and have experienced a circumstance where your home or property has been damaged by a "property preservation" company by your lender, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Jacksonville Personal Injury Lawyer today for a complimentary review of your circumstances.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, whose members are protesting a variety of issues stemming from the current economic climate including foreclosures and high unemployment, tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, October 1, 2011, afternoon in protest. Over 700 protestors were arrested when they left the walkway and began using the roadway.

There is a lot of controversy regarding whether or not the arrests were legitimate. Protestors believe the police tricked them and caused the arrests. Protestors are blaming the police for the arrests by allowing protestors to enter the roadway and escorting them part of the way across the bridge before trapping them in orange netting. One protestor, Etan Ben-Ami was quoted as saying, "It seemed completely permitted....There wasn't a single policeman saying 'don't do this'...We thought they were escorting us because they wanted us to be safe."

However, police are saying it was the protestors' choice of action that led to the arrests. Those who used the walkway were not arrested while those who took to the roadway and hindered vehicle travel were arrested. Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, has said "This was not a trap...They were warned not to proceed."

In connected demonstrations in other parts of the country, 25 people were arrested in Boston for trespassing while protesting Bank of America's foreclosure practices, according to the spokesman for the Boston Police Department Eddy Chrispin. The protesters were on the property and obstructing the entrance to the building.

The Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be gathering steam and drawing more media coverage with each passing day. If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today to determine what foreclosure alternatives may be available to you.

A new report released by the Inspector General shows evidence of poor management of a $2.87 billion dollar mortgage sale from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to Bank of America. The focus of the report is the role of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulatory arm tasked with overseeing government mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Late last year, the agency's head decided to sell back a large number of bad mortgages and mortgage backed securities to Bank of America. In theory, forcing a lender to buy back the bad loans it originated seems like a great idea, but in this instance it may have been a sweetheart deal.

In the buyback agreement, Bank of America paid $1.35 million to Freddie Mac and $1.52 billion to Fannie Mae. While $2.87 billion seems like a lot of money, but when you do some simple math, it amounts to only $3,679 per mortgage! Critics of the deal state that both Fannie and Freddie could potentially face billions of dollars of losses from the sale of these loans. The Federal Housing Finance Agency called the buyback and the amounts of the buyback "appropriate and reasonable."

Instead of giving Bank of America the underperforming loans at an extremely cheap price, how about giving the homeowners associated with those loans the right of first refusal to buy their home for the amounts their loans were sold to Bank of America. How many homeowners would have jumped at that opportunity. If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today to explore what foreclosure options may be available to you.

In 2006, Fannie Mae hired an outside law firm to investigate allegations of misconduct by the firms it hired to file its foreclosure actions. The outside investigation revealed its foreclosure attorneys in Florida were sacrificing accuracy for speed by filing fraudulent court documents. Fannie Mae was put on notice in 2006 that its foreclosure attorneys working on their behalf were involved in "unlawful" practices, but sat by and did nothing.

Many Florida foreclosure defense attorneys are in agreement that further abuses by attorneys in the so-called foreclosure mills could have been detected and possibly prevented if Fannie Mae would have strengthened its oversight over its retained firms. Last fall's revelations of "robo-signed" documents and the chaos that followed could have been prevented.

The key players were the Plantation-based David J. Stern firm and Ben-Ezra & Katz in Fort Lauderdale. The Law Offices of David J. Stern was Fannie Mae's largest hired firm for Florida foreclosure cases. David J. Stern was fired by Fannie Mae in November 2010, after ex-employees divulged information state investigators that signatures on notarized documents were habitually forged, notary stamps were passed around to non-notaries, assignments of mortgages were created after foreclosure judgments were entered, and flawed files were hidden from federal auditors. David J. Stern, soon-there-after in March, laid off hundreds of employees and shut down its foreclosure practice. Around 100,000 foreclosure cases were left in a state of uncertainty as they waited to be reassigned to different law firms.

In February 2010, Fannie Mae fired Ben-Ezra & Katz. Ben-Ezra & Katz admitted they had found "technical paperwork issues" with is foreclosure files but maintained, "there is no issue of whether the information in the affected files is correct."

If Fannie Mae had practiced better oversight over their foreclosure cases in Florida and across the U.S., the broad reaching negative consequences we are experiencing today potentially could have been prevented. If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today to explore what foreclosure options may be available to you.

American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. (AHMSI) has lost millions of dollars due to the alleged robo-signing of thousands of mortgage documents, purportedly caused by Lender Processing Servicing Inc. (LPS) and its DocX affiliate. AHMSI filed a lawsuit against LPS on Tuesday, August 23, 2011.

The lawsuit was filed by AHMSI, a Coppell, Texas based company, in a Dallas, Texas district court against LPS, which is based in Jacksonville, Florida. The lawsuit alleges that 30,000 plus residential mortgages throughout the United States have been affected by LPS's robo-signing of assignments of mortgage. LPS allegedly improperly executed, notarized and recorded thousands of assignments of mortgage.

LPS and AHMSI have had numerous discussions regarding the affect these improperly created assignments of mortgage have had on AHMSI. LPS has offered to correct the problem by reimbursing AHMSI fees and costs for AHMSI having to evaluate and re-record these improper assignments. The lawsuit was filed following a year of discussions and LPS now claiming they have no duty to do anything due to the contracts involved having expired. However, AHSMI contends that LPS created these assignments and accepted payments "in accordance with the terms of a supposedly nonexistent contract."

The purpose of the lawsuit is to obtain a declaratory judgment that a contract existed between AHSMI and LPS and that the contract binds both parties. AHMSI also seeks an order compelling LPS to adjudicate AHSMI's claims of breach of contract and indemnification.

If you are facing foreclosure and think the assignment of mortgage in your case may have been improperly created, contact a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawyer today for a free consultation and to determine what foreclosure defenses may be available to you.

Kamala Harris, California's Attorney General, has sued three law firms, four lawyers and 14 other companies for what inducing struggling homeowners across the nation to pay thousands of dollars in fees to file mass lawsuits against mortgage lenders. Harris said the entities took advantage of homeowners' frustration with both lenders and mortgage servicers. Many states, including Florida, have laws banning the charging of advanced fees for loan modification services.

According to Attorney General officials, the defendants solicited homeowners in 17 states with fees of up to $10,000 from each of the 2,500 borrowers to participate in the "mass joinder" lawsuit. The defendants misled borrowers into believing hiring them would help avoid foreclosures or obtain loan modifications. Instead of getting good legal advice, once a homeowner paid the retainer, the defendants were uncommunicative and homeowners were unable to get answers to even the simplest questions.

Hopefully, other state AG's will take a page from Mrs. Harris' book and stand up to the predators trying to take advantage of the desperation of struggling homeowners. If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawyer today to determine what foreclosure avoidance options may be available to you.

In the age of 'robo-signing' and other witty phraseology, a new term has arisen and it may be central to a recent lawsuit filed against Lender Processing Services (LPS) by American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. (AHMSI). AHMSI alleges they've faced millions of dollars in losses that were incurred when DocX, an LPS affiliate, acted improperly in processing and recording nearly 30,000 mortgages. Central to the case is DocX's alleged use of "surrogate signers."

AHMSI hired DocX to process and record lien releases, mortgage assignments and other documents for AHMSI from 2008 until late 2009. It was at that time LPS informed AHMSI that the "surrogate signers" signed thousands of documents instead of the actual officers AHMSI originally scheduled to do the work. AHMSI immediately fired DocX upon learning of the problem.

Since the debacle, AHMSI has undertaken a large-scale remedial effort focused on correcting the assignments in question. These efforts include many legal issues and problems that span the Country, and of course substantial expense for AHMSI. LPS does not deny the surrogate signed documentation but instead insists they should not be penalized as they curbed the practice upon its discovery and offered AHMSI reimbursement for costs. AHMSI says such discussions have been unsuccessful, however.

The above situation outlines the importance of hiring well and what can happen when one does not. So remember, if you are facing the realities of foreclosure, contacting a or Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer can be in important first step in defending your home.

Apparently the office of the Florida Attorney General is becoming quite the place for attorneys to cut their teeth before moving on to more lucrative positions with many of the primary actors in the Florida foreclosure industry. In recent months, the director of the Economic Crimes Division for the Florida Attorney General's office has taken a position with "foreclosure mill" Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson, a former deputy Attorney General has been hired by Lender Processing Services and a former Broward County Judge announced he was leaving his judicial post also to work with the Watson firm.

All the moves prompted assistant state attorney general Andrew Bennett Spark, of the Tampa office of economic crimes, to write a 16-page memo he distributed to several Florida media outlets. The memo outlines several concerns Mr. Spark has with the overall AG's office while focussing on the firing of two former state foreclosure investigators and the flight of staff members to foreclosure companies. Mr. Spark wrote "the people of the State of Florida are entitled to fair and honest government, independent of personal connections and powerful interests."

The Law Offices of Marshall C Watson has responded saying their hirings are within the ethics code and having such experienced counsel overseeing the litigation and compliance departments will "further enhance our practices" and prevent the unethical practices that were rampant in previous years.

If you are one of the thousands of Floridians facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today for a free consultation to determine what foreclosure alternatives may be available to you.

When Chase Bank threatened to sell Mardee Jerde's home in foreclosure, Ms. Jerde's was determined to do all she could to save her home of 16 years. Sure, Ms. Jerde was having trouble making her mortgage payments, but there is a very personal and understandable account of how Jerde got to that point. An explanation Chase is unwilling to consider in granting Jerde a permanent loan modification.

In March of 2008, Marde was involved in a car accident that left her injured and unable to work. She could no longer afford her greater than $1,700 mortgage payment, so she immediately made contacted with her bank. Chase agreed to a trial loan modification, but it wasn't until July 2009 that she was able to make another payment. She made modified mortgage payments of nearly $900 until June of 2010, when Chase came knocking. They sent a letter seeking almost $50,000 in overdue payments and past due amounts.

The craziest part of all of it all is that Jerde upheld her responsibility, and sent Chase the money! She used the settlement money she received from being in the car accident to do make the payment. Chase ultimately denied her the permanent loan modification, leaving Ms. Jerde broke and with few options.

Stories like this make it appear that Chase and other banks will offer a helping hand and then immediately turn their back without upholding their end of the bargain. If you are in foreclosure talks with a bank, don't just send them money because they say it will increase the likelihood of getting a loan modification. If you are exploring the possibility of a mortgage modification with your bank, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Lawyer today to review the modification paperwork in order to ensure the deal is right for your individual circumstances.

After the lawsuit between investors and Bank of America ended in a media-frenzied settlement, some have stood up to protest the agreement that was reached. Today when American International Group (AIG) filed a lawsuit, the company also filed to intervene in the settlement claiming that Bank of New York Mellon did not negotiate fairly on behalf of the investors represented in the suit.

It now appears that there will be additional interveners in the suit. Attorney Generals in New York, Eric Schneiderman, and Delaware, Beau Biden, declared their intent to intervene to protect public pensions that may have invested in the trusts. These may help to stop foreclosures in some states. The two AG'S are calling into question the entire mortgage backed securities market, claiming robo-signing and document fabrication evidence a bigger issue: a fraud on the market of epic proportions.

As sparks re-ignite regarding the Bank of America settlement, more investors are likely to seek inclusion on their own behalf in order to protect their interest. This is just the latest shoe to drop in the tangled web in the creation of mortgage backed securities. If you are facing a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today.

Florida's Supreme Court suspended a lawyer in Boca Raton after the Florida Bar released findings that his mortgage modification and foreclosure defense firm caused the public great harm. The firm has been instructed not to accept any more cases and also cannot access any of the funds in company bank accounts. The reprimand was in response to complaints by nearly 20 of his former clients.

The issue appears to be the firm employed individuals who were not attorney's to work with customers on loan modifications. In Florida it is against the law to charge up front fees for an attempted loan modification if one is a non-attorney, which is exactly what the firm was doing. It would have been okay to collect the near $3,000 per modification fee if a licensed attorney had been involved.

Furthering the egregiousness of this conduct was the firms admission that its non-attorney employees controlled the cases from beginning to end. The Florida Bar has since warned attorneys that other attorney's in the state may be replicating the shady practice as a way to circumvent the rule against non-attorney's charging up front fees.

If you are working through a foreclosure it's important to hire competent representation. Be sure to know whom you are working with when you decide to hire a Florida Foreclosure Attorney to defend your home. If you are facing a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer today for a complimentary consultation.

Predatory lending is a term used to describe lending practices that are considered unfair or fraudulent. Predatory lenders often target consumers who can least afford to lose money. They incorporate high-pressure sale tactics, set inflated interest rates, and often demand unaffordable repayment terms. Many times, homeowners are tricked into taking out a loan that they cannot afford to repay and risk losing their home to foreclosure.

To combat predatory lending in Florida, lawmakers enacted the Florida Fair Lending Act to prohibit predatory tactics on high cost home loans, including:
• Charging prepayment penalties for longer than 3 years;
• Increased interest on loans going into default;
• Balloon payments on loans that mature in less than 10 years;
• Extending credit regardless of a borrower's ability to pay;
• Calling a loan due even though the borrower has complied with the terms of the
loan;
• Refinancing a loan during the first 18 months, unless there is a benefit to the
borrower;
• Charging late fees that exceed 5% of the payment;
• Making changes to the loan's terms without disclosing the changes

In recent years, the foreclosure rate in the United States has increased significantly. While many foreclosures arise from poor debt management, some can be attributed to predatory lending. Unfortunately, most borrowers will not become aware that they were victims until they are facing foreclosure.

If you are concerned you may have been the victim of predatory lending and are struggling with foreclosure, call a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Attorney today! Together, we will fight for you to keep your home!

Florida foreclosure activity is definitely at a low as courts and banks try to get on the same page (quite literally) with faulty documentation. As foreclosures begin to ramp up again, Florida real estate prices are projected to go down according to Roy Oppenheim.

Mr. Oppenheim cites many reasons for his belief that prices will begin to go down. Issues such as Government benefits ending, new foreclosures begin filed, past foreclosures that were dismissed being re-filed, and the continuation of fraud-closures that have plagued the court system for the last several years. Mr. Oppenheim has likened the lull in foreclosure activity with the "eye of a storm."

As foreclosure activity is expected to resume in the very near future it is a good idea to be prepared. If you are facing the prospect of a Florida Foreclosure Lawsuit, contact a Jacksonville Foreclosure Defense Lawyer or a Florida Foreclosure Defense Lawyer for a complimentary case review in order to determine what foreclosure defense options may be available to you.