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Most Homeowners Compensated for Bank Foreclosure Misdeeds will Receive just $300

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | April 12, 2013

Most homeowners wronged during the foreclosure fiasco will receive only a few hundred dollars in compensation from a settlement reached between the federal government and banks.

About 2.4 million borrowers of the almost 4 million eligible homeowners will receive $300 after lenders gave out misinformation, lost documents and committed other misdeeds.

Two years ago, the Independent Foreclosure Review proclaimed homeowners who suffered “financial injury” could get as much as $125,000.

It now turns out only 1,135 borrowers will see this amount. This small group mostly includes members of the U.S. military who had their homes taken away from them, as well as 53 non-military homeowners who endured foreclosure even though they didn’t default on their loans.

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April 13, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

Obama Administration Asks Banks to Regulate Their Own Foreclosure Abuses

By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky | AllGov | February 15, 2013

Having bungled the so-called independent review of foreclosure mistakes, the Obama administration has now decided that the best way to help homeowners is to have the banks—which were responsible for the foreclosure errors—examine the case files and decide how best to fix the situation.

In January, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) shut down the foreclosure review by independent consultants—which had already cost about $2 billion— after it was revealed that the banks had selected said consultants. The process also proved to be taking too long to resolve homeowner grievances, so the administration decided to reach a $3.6 billion settlement with the banks.

But before the money can be distributed to individuals wronged during the foreclosure crisis, more than four million cases need to be reviewed. Instead of federal regulators doing the work, they are trusting the financial institutions, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, to do it properly this time.

Housing advocates, not surprisingly, are worried the banks will shortchange homeowners while they scrutinize their earlier mistakes. “The whole process has been a slap in the face to homeowners and a slap on the wrist to banks,” Isaac Simon Hodes, an organizer with Massachusetts-based Lynn United for Change, told The New York Times. “The latest development shows how there has been no accountability.”

The OCC has promised to check the bank’s work to ensure things go right this time.

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February 15, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Big Banks Slither out of Mortgage Fraud Review with Minor Costs

BY Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | January 11, 2013

After a year and a half of bungled work and plenty of criticism, the Obama administration decided to close down its review of mortgage fraud this week and order banks to pay a sum that consumer advocates say falls short of what’s fair.

The Independent Foreclosure Review was established 18 months ago to vet how banks handled home foreclosures and to compensate Americans for any wrongdoing.

In the end, federal regulators decided on an $8.5 billion settlement that banks must pay. But of this total, only $3.3 billion is actual cash, while another $5.2 billion represents “credits” that financial institutions will receive for avoiding future foreclosure.

The $3.3 billion in funds will be distributed to about 3.8 million borrowers who were eligible to have their foreclosures reviewed. That amounts to approximately $870 per homeowner.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of the federal regulators that managed the review and negotiated the new settlement, would not reveal to the media how it decided on the $3.3 billion figure.

As for the review itself, the process was wrought with problems, starting with the fact that banks were allowed to hire “independent” consultants to review mortgage files—consultants who often turned out to have business relationships with the banks they were reviewing, thus creating potential conflicts of interest.

January 11, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment