Ending your abusive relationship … WITH YOUR BANK!

Chase faces more pressure to stop all foreclosures

Chase has so far announced that it is temporarily halting 56,000 foreclosures in 23 states due to incorrect documentation procedures, but new developments are putting pressure on Chase to extend their foreclosure moratorium further.

In particular, Bank of America has announced it is halting all foreclosures in all states to investigate documentation irregularities and at least one title company has singled out Chase and announced it won’t be insuring the title for any purchases of homes foreclosed upon by Chase until the issues have been resolved.

Additionally, California is the latest of at least 9 states that have announced they are investigating the matter.

Update:  While Chase has not said it will widen its foreclosure moratorium past the current 23 states, it has stated (WSJ 10/9/10) but it claims to be “widening” its document review beyond those 23 states.

For people facing foreclosure, it may be a good time to request a review of all documentation related to the foreclosure.  In other words, make them show what they have and specifically challenge whether the people who claim to have reviewed the documents actually did.

Mysterious Chase ATM outage

One customer’s deposits were never recorded because of what a Chase employee called an ATM outage.  Gee, is this kind of thing common with Chase?

My iPhone: DING! DING! DING!!!

Half awake, I pick up the phone to find out my account is several hundred dollars in the negative via text message!! Odd as I had just deposited several hundred dollars THE DAY BEFORE!!And what little funds remained in my account, where had those gone? Lost in space!! I go to being half awake to full blown panic as I wipe the sleep from my eyes!! How can this be!?!?!

My iPhone: DING! DING! DING!!

Another text message indicating that my account is even further into the red! What the hell ladies and gents, what the hell!?!?!

I call Chase to find out that they have no record of my deposit. I say I have a receipt and pictures on the receipt of my checks to prove it!!! The Chase representative sees something that are, in fact, my deposits!!! As I am on the phone trying to get this sorted, I see that Chase not only lost my money but had the gall to blast me with THREE INSUFFICIENT FUNDS CHARGES TOTALING MORE THAN 100 DOLLARS!!! It’s as if Chaseknocked me to the ground, pissed on me, then held me down for a few moments more to defecate on me!!!

I’m sent to the claims department and told that there was an ATM outage that caused anyone who deposited their money via ATM to lose it. They assured me over the next several days, they will reimburse me for everything including the insufficient funds fees.

The companies motto on ads that I see on TV are “Chase what matters.” Chase I did; MY MONEY LOST AT YOUR BANK!!!!

WaMu sale to JPMorgan Chase still not closed

We reported a couple of months ago that the sale of Washington Mutual to JPMorgan Chase had not actually officially closed, leaving some speculation that the FDIC might have an opportunity to force JPMorgan Chase to pay more, given how the value of the assets has been proven more valuable than originally estimated.

Since then, JPMorgan Chase has actually turned the tables and asked the FDIC for money back, more than they actually paid for WaMu.

Well, the deal was supposed to be closed by September 30, and the close has been extended another 30 days.

Perhaps JPMorgan Chase requested money from the FDIC to cover lawsuits related to WaMu as a counter offensive against the FDIC asking for more money for the WaMu deal, hoping for a wash.

I realize none of the favorable outcomes we are speculating on are likely, but we can at least hope for justice, can’t we?

CA Democrats ask US Attorney General to investigage loan modifications

This is our 900’th post!

It looks like the big banks are starting to take some heat for making the loan modification process so (intentionally?) difficult.

California Democrats call for investigation into loan modification and foreclosure practices

October 5, 2010 |  3:42 pm

California’s Democratic congressional delegation has joined the call for investigations into delays and possible irregularities in the loan modification and foreclosure process.

In a letter Wednesday signed by the California representatives and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the delegation said that constituents who have requested loan modifications or a forbearance of foreclosure have reported lenders “routinely fail to respond in a timely manner, misplace requested documents, and send mixed signals about the requirements that need to be met to avoid foreclosures.”

The letter — which was addressed to U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and John Walsh, acting comptroller for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency at the Treasury Department — asks the agencies to “investigate possible violations of law.”

The action follows several recent announcements by some of the nation’s biggest lenders that they were halting evictions and some foreclosure proceedings due to possible mistakes in their processes. But these freezes are taking place outside of California in so-called judicial foreclosure states, where courts have jurisdiction over the process.

Nevertheless, the California delegation cited the recent foreclosure pauses in their letter, saying the moves by the lenders “amplify our concerns that systematic problems exist in the ways many financial institutions have dealt with homeowners who are seeking to avoid foreclosures.”

Is Chase down AGAIN?

We are receiving reports, as of 12:30 ET, that people are unable to log into their Chase accounts and one person sent us this link to an outage message (shown below).

A New Way to Cut a Mortgage (Wall Street Journal)

Some homeowners who already have refinanced into low-interest-rate mortgages are using a little-known strategy to make their monthly payments even smaller.

Called “recasting” or “re-amortizing,” the strategy allows a borrower to lower the monthly payment on an existing fixed-rate home loan for a small fee without having to apply for a new loan and without having to pay reappraisal and other fees.

Recasting also may enable homeowners to save on interest paid over the life of the loan, merely by putting a large sum of cash against the principal, whether or not they have refinanced already.

The bad news? Banks don’t advertise the strategy, perhaps because it is less lucrative than refinancing a mortgage. And not all loans are eligible. To find out more, you will have to ask your lender directly.

At J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s Chase Home Finance unit, less than 200 mortgages a month are recast out of 10 million home loans outstanding, a spokesman says. At Bank of America Corp., about 200 to 300 a month recasting requests are received out of about 14 million home loans serviced by the company, a spokesman says. Neither bank has seen increased demand.

Here is how it works: A homeowner asks his loan servicer if he can put a large sum of money against the outstanding principal on the mortgage. Ordinarily, doing so would enable him to pay off the loan early, but he would still have to pay the same monthly note. But if the lender agrees to recast the mortgage, he may be able to reduce the monthly payment over the remaining term of the loan.

For example, a person with a 30-year $300,000 fixed-rate mortgage and an interest rate of 4.75% who recasted one year into the loan by putting in $60,000 toward the principal would trim his balance to $235,371. Assuming there were 29 years left on the loan, that would result in a monthly payment of $1,247 instead of the original $1,565.

Recasting can be a good choice for borrowers who have cash and want to reduce monthly payments but who can’t refinance, such as those with no-documentation loans, most of whom can’t get the same types of mortgages today due to tighter regulations, even if they have high income and good credit. (Self-employed professionals often find themselves in this boat.) And at a time of low interest rates on certificates of deposit and U.S. Treasury bills, paying off a mortgage early is a relatively safe investment that brings a return at least equivalent to the interest rate on the mortgage itself.

Read the rest of the article here.

New roadmap for fighting foreclosure and getting your loan balance reduced

An excellent article in today’s Wall Street Journal spells out some of the growing tools that homeowners have to fight foreclosure and apply pressure to the people who actually own their sliced-and-diced loan to reduce their loan balance.

LOXAHATCHEE, Fla.—Israel Machado’s foreclosure started out as a routine affair. In the summer of 2008, as the economy began to soften, Mr. Machado’s pool-cleaning business suffered and like millions of other Americans, he fell behind on his $400,000 mortgage.

But Mr. Machado’s response was unlike most other Americans’. Instead of handing his home over to the lender, IndyMac Bank FSB, he hired Ice Legal LP in nearby Royal Palm Beach to fight the foreclosure. The law firm researched the history of Mr. Machado’s loan and found two interesting facts.

First, the affidavits IndyMac used to file the foreclosure were signed by a so-called robo-signer named Erica A. Johnson-Seck, who routinely signed 6,000 documents a week related to foreclosures and bankruptcy. That volume, the court decided, meant Ms. Johnson-Seck couldn’t possibly have thoroughly reviewed the facts of Mr. Machado’s case, as required by law.

Secondly, IndyMac (now called OneWest Bank) no longer owned the loan—a group of investors in a securitized trust managed by Deutsche Bank did. Determining that IndyMac didn’t really have standing to foreclose, a judge threw out the case and ordered IndyMac to pay Mr. Machado’s $30,000 legal bill.

First, if banks are no longer allowed to use robo-signers and actually have to review documents, they may avoid foreclosure as an option.  Second, they may not actually have the authority to foreclose, as evidenced by this story.  In any event, it is worth pursuing actually making the bank prove that it has done the proper research and has the right to foreclose.

Mr. Machado and his lawyer, Tom Ice, say they now want to convince the owners of the mortgage to cut Mr. Machado’s loan balance to between $150,000 and $200,000—the current selling price for comparable homes in his community near West Palm Beach. “The whole intent was to get them to come to the negotiating table, to get me in a fixed-rate mortgage that worked,” Mr. Machado said.

If it proves difficult for the bank to foreclose, reducing the loan balance so they at least get some payment may be their best choice, and having proved you aren’t going to let them foreclose without having done everything precisely right, they may simply give in.

Good luck!