6.5 million Americans are over 30 days late on their mortgage payment

Lender Processing Services is reporting the total American loan delinquency rate of mortgage borrowers whose loans are 30 days or more past due but not yet in foreclosure, is now at 8.15%, thus, the total number of homes in delinquency is 4,285,000 and with foreclosures, the number is an astonishing 6,452,000.

The home loan delinquency rate is up 2.4% from May but down 14.7% from June 2011.

Florida, Nevada, Mississippi, New Jersey and Illinois currently have the highest rates of delinquencies while the lowest rates of delinquencies are in Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota and North Dakota.

Currently, the lending industry is in a very tight spot as recent reports reveal that not only is robo-signing still going on despite bank denial, thousands of loans that were packaged and sold to investors don’t even have promissory notes, and add to all that mess, courts across the nation are saying MERS doesn’t have the authority to issue foreclosure rights to a bank. (Read more on these topics here.)

All of these issues are potentially destructive to the foreclosure process and given that over six million homeowners are in danger of foreclosure are potentially looking at a different process altogether. Banks are questioning who has the authority to do what and homeowners are suing on technicalities and with no promissory note or proof that a bank even owns a loan, banks are losing foreclosure suits in rising numbers.

Although delinquencies are up a bit this month, they are down over the past year by a healthy margin, but will it matter if courts are not upholding foreclosures? How will banks respond? So far, the same problems plaguing the banks and have led to endless probes and even criminal charges and no changes have been made, so will courts denying foreclosures implement change? Time will tell.

This article published on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 12:06 am | Contact the editor Tags: featured, mortgage crisis, real estate economy, Real Estate News

Category: Economy

Tara Steele is the News Director at AgentGenius, covering real estate news, technology news and everything in between. If you’d like to reach Tara with a question, comment, press release or hot news tip, she frequently checks her email, simply click the link below.

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Wells Fargo fined $85 million for abusive practices of thousands

The Federal Reserve Board has alleged that Wells Fargo employed deceptive mortgage practices, fraud and unsafe banking practices against thousands of borrowers and is issuing an $85 million fine, their largest ever consumer protection fine in Fed history.

The Fed says that “possibly more than 10,000? mortgage borrowers between 2004 and 2008 were pushed into higher cost loans when they would have qualified for lower rates and less expensive loans.

The fine for each individual case looks to be upward of $20,000 each as the Fed demanded that Wells Fargo fully compensate all customers that were cheated.

At the root of this major fine is “Wells Fargo Financial,” the subprime loan arm of Wells Fargo that was closed last year, with the Fed pointing to salespeople in this division as overly aggressive and commission driven. The group “altered or falsified income documents and inflated prospective borrowers’ incomes to qualify those borrowers for loans that they would not otherwise have been qualified to receive,” according to the Federal Reserve.

The Wells Fargo Financial division sold high cost loans to those who easily qualified for lower cost loans.

Because Wells Fargo estimates that of the 300,000 loans they made during that period, only an estimated 4% were abusive, the bank claims it was a small number of people that committed these abuses and the group doesn’t represent what Wells Fargo stands for.

Nonetheless, they will now be forced to work with the Fed to determine who the borrowers that were wronged are and appropriate compensation given.

In a statement, the Fed said, “In addition to the monetary components of the settlement, Wells Fargo is required to improve oversight of its anti-fraud and compliance programs and incentive compensation and performance management policies for personnel who sell and underwrite home mortgage loans.”

The Fed noted that they have issued consent orders against 16 former Wells Fargo Financial sales personnel prohibiting them from becoming employed in the banking industry. The Fed said that they have “also issued a consent cease and desist order against another former Wells Fargo Financial sales person prohibiting future improper conduct.”

This article published on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 12:56 pm | Contact the editor Tags: featured, mortgage crisis, Real Estate News, wells fargo

Category: News

Tara Steele is the News Director at AgentGenius, covering real estate news, technology news and everything in between. If you’d like to reach Tara with a question, comment, press release or hot news tip, she frequently checks her email, simply click the link below.

Email Tara Steele

View the original article here

Checks going out to former Countrywide borrowers totaling $108 million

Over three years ago, it was found that Countrywide Financial overcharged more than 450,000 borrowers, all of whom have been waiting reimbursement ever since. The Federal Trade Commission said that as a result of a settlement reached with Countrywide over a year ago, checks will soon be cut and sent to nearly half a million borrowers totaling nearly $108 million.

The borrowers that were overcharged had borrowed from Countrywide Financial prior to its collapse and prior to being acquired to Bank of America three years ago.

The Federal Trade Commission sued Countrywide for unfair and deceptive practices in servicing the mortgages of homeowners in default or Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

According to the FTC, Countrywide used unlawful practices in servicing homeowners’ mortgages. Countrywide allegedly charged excessive fees for default-related services like property inspections, made claims about amounts owed by homeowners in bankruptcy that were false or couldn’t be backed up and didn’t tell people going through bankruptcy when new fees or charges were being added to their loans.

“It’s astonishing that a single company could be responsible for overcharging more than 450,000 homeowners,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. “Countrywide’s unconscionable behavior harmed American consumers on a massive scale and we are proud to be getting every single dollar back to hundreds of thousands of struggling consumers who can least afford to lose the money.”

There were two categories of overcharges, according to FTC spokesperson Frank Dorman that were tied to inspections, home maintenance, lawn mowing and other services that Countrywide provided to homes of borrowers in default.

The checks will begin going out to overcharged borrowers on July 21st with no word as to how long until all borrowers will be reimbursed. Gilardi & Co. is charged with this program and are administering the settlement for the FTC. Borrowers with questions can reach them at 888-230-3196 or ftcvcountrywide@classactmail.com.

This article published on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 12:01 am | Contact the editor Tags: featured, mortgage crisis, Real Estate News

Category: Economy

Tara Steele is the News Director at AgentGenius, covering real estate news, technology news and everything in between. If you’d like to reach Tara with a question, comment, press release or hot news tip, she frequently checks her email, simply click the link below.

Email Tara Steele

View the original article here

Google Plus at 18 million users, projected to hit 100 million soon

Paul Allen, the well known “unofficial Google Plus statistician” and founder of Ancestry.com is reporting that Google Plus has reached 18 million users making it the fastest growing social network in history. Although growth has subsided from its early boom, in a short time, Google Plus has as many people as the entire combined population of Chile.

Google critics point out that Google Plus’ size is still only 2.4% of the size of Facebook while supporters note that the current size of Google Plus is astronomical based on how long it has been around.

Further, Allen reports that Google Plus has been dominated by male users but that women are catching up rapidly, conflicting with reports that contradict Allen’s report, and he notes previous reports are “flawed.” Currently, Allen says that 66.4% of users are male and 33.6% female.

Google Plus has announced they will soon be making gender an optional choice in profile pages not only out of respect for modern gender issues, but for privacy. We believe, however, that based on user behavior, Google will still profile users and segment them based on demographics to feed their advertising platform.

If the current rate of growth continued at approximately 763,000 new users every day, Google Plus would only take four to five months to reach 100 million users, putting them squarely against Facebook and Twitter.

By default, Google has always undone the progress of companies that provide similar offerings and sometimes they run parallel (like Google Docs versus Microsoft Office) while others are supplanted by Google (for example, Google Plus is now believed to be capable of supplanting Skype).

Google is in growth mode and there is no question that their current moves are making waves and threatening companies in the technology sector, regardless of whether or not Google has set their sights on those companies.

This article published on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 12:11 am | Contact the editor Tags: featured, google, google plus

Category: New Media

Tara Steele is the News Director at AgentGenius, covering real estate news, technology news and everything in between. If you’d like to reach Tara with a question, comment, press release or hot news tip, she frequently checks her email, simply click the link below.

Email Tara Steele

View the original article here