Courtesy of FHFA. For a copy of the full article please go to U.S. Monthly House Price Index Rises 0.5 Percent From April
to May
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Courtesy of FHFA. For a copy of the full article please go to U.S. Monthly House Price Index Rises 0.8 Percent from March to April
The pacific region is performing 4.7% better than the rest of the nation.
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If you are doing any kind of business with Bank of America you must be the kind that likes losing money. A lot of money. On the June 18th edition of the Boston Globe, the articled titled “Bank of America rethinks free checking” described the initiative of Bank of America of the new era of “maintenance fees”. Of course the timing of this announcement is nothing short of brilliant knowing that all eyes are on the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
On March 24th Bank of America had an earth shattering press release, “Bank of America Introduces Earned Principal Forgiveness Among Enhancements to Its National Home Ownership Retention Program“. I attended a conference on June 16, 2010, organized by NAHREP Vista named “REO Panel in Your Market Area”. The room was packed solid with real estate professionals to get some direction from some of the most experienced panelist in Southern California regarding the foreclosure crisis. After personally logging 17 calls to the Bank of America Home Retention Center myself, I too wanted get an update on how many homeowners have been helped. I decided to ask one of the most experienced panelists on the board who happens to be one of the asset managers for Bank of America’s distressed inventory . This gentleman explained to me what really goes on behind the scenes. The fact is that there is no principal reduction. Bank of America is reducing the principal but creating a balloon payment so in reality there is no mortgage forgiveness. Bank of America would have to take a loss on their books and that is bad for the stock holders. In other words, the number of principal reductions done to date by Bank of America is a big fat 0.
Bank of America, and the former Countrywide, have been know to have a circle of friends that started way back with “the friends of Mr. Anthony Mozillo”. A group of government cronies who got special treatment. The millions of dollars of contributions given to Mr. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd for the banks safekeeping are nothing short of disgusting. We, the tax payers, have allowed Bank of America to take hundreds of billion dollars in TARP money, B of A in turn takes our tax money, buys conservative bonds at an annual rate of 4% making 10′s of Billions of dollars. They can afford to include their friends in the taking and in return show their stock holders enormous earnings. B of A and friends win. The tax payer gets conned with the aforementioned link above and the struggling home owner has a broken HOME due to the lack of relief, the real estate market takes more “distressed inventory” and the economy remains weak.
It is time for Bank of America’s stock to get to the Fannie and Freddie levels and off the NYSE. Nationalize them, closed them, but STOP “HELPING THEM”.
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As a mortgage originator I am extremely disappointed with regards to the way Barney Frank and friends are handling the free fall in the Real Estate crisis. Since the approval of the new good faith estimate (GFE 2010) things have become confusing enough for the buyers that they are simply walking away from the transactions. Why? The answer is quite simple. It does not inform the buyer how much money they need to bring at closing. The Banking and Real Estate industry have gotten battered enough with lack of trust from the consumer that these new mandated forms do nothing but confuse all parties further.
It is no secret that big government is focusing on the most trivia and pointless details of compensation for lenders. The gridlock will continue to fall back on the lack of transparency that Mr. Frank has mandated to be included on disclosure documents that the consumer has to sign blindly. Blindly because nowhere in the documentation does it declare the check that the buyer needs to bring to the table.
To make matters even worse, consumers, buyers and sellers, are obligated to trust the most inexperienced appraisers in the business. These two week tenured new appraisers that under normal circumstances would have had to be mentored by experienced colleges are pressured to low ball reports to safeguard the future of the lenders. Mr. Andrew Cuomo is now running for Governor of New York so he has no interest in undoing the damage his nonsense rules did to tax the system.
Get involved as a consumer and as a professional and stop the bleeding of our fragile economy. Be vocal and write to your local representatives in this election year to make sure we are well represented in congress. We all know that construction jobs would revitalize our economy. Until the red tape is removed from Washington our country will continue to suffer.
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