BofA Halts All Foreclosures

[AlabamaLibrul]

Source: Wall Street Journal

Bank of America Corp. is placing a moratorium on all foreclosure proceedings and sales across the U.S. amid mounting political pressure on big U.S. banks to examine foreclosure-documentation problems.

The nation's largest bank by assets is the first financial institution to stop all foreclosure actions amid revelations that the banking industry had used "robo-signers," people who sign hundreds of documents a day without reviewing their contents, when foreclosing on homes. Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Ally Financial Inc. last week postponed foreclosures in 23 states where a court's approval is required to foreclosure on a home.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657304575539963605720860.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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The foreclosure documentation issue continues to grow as Bank of America has "voluntarily" halted foreclosures in all 50 states.

[Xipe Totec]

1. They volunteered to stop committing fraud? That's mighty noble of them nt

[redirish28]

2. The reason why this bank and other banks have made news by stoping

all foreclousers is because they where waiting for that rubber stamp bill to pass. Obama promised not to sign it into law BUT he has not promised to veto it. If it stays on his desk for 10 days without signing or veto it DOES become law.


Banks are biding their time.

[SnowCritter]

3. IIRC, it becomes law

if, and only if, Congress is in session and the bill is not vetoed within 10 days (Sundays excluded). If Congress is out of session and the bill is not returned or vetoed within proscribed time, then it is "pocked vetoed".

[AlabamaLibrul]

4. "So out of an abundance of caution[...] the President will send the bill back", says Gibbs

http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/07/news/economy/pocket_veto/

I am very much holding my breath on this one.

[Akoto]

6. No, it does not. It's a pocket veto.

What you say would be true if Congress were in session, but it isn't. The reason it's called a pocket veto is because you're basically "putting it in your pocket" while Congress is away, and if they're still gone when those ten days have passed, the legislation is dead and sent back.

[droidamus2]

5. Fingers crossed

Since B of A holds my mortgage and I am behind on the payments I can say one thing if Obama lets the bill pass whether by signing it (which he said he wouldn't do) or just letting it go into effect without his signature I would obviously never vote for him again and I would seriously consider not voting Democrat (at least I could still vote for Bernie Sanders).

[slackmaster]

8. Sorry about your situation. What would be the best outcome you can reasonably hope for?

Have you gotten a Notice of Default yet?

[droidamus2]

13. Thanks for the concern

Right now I have been able to send in enough money each month to stave of foreclosure but they have threatened a couple of times to as they say 'accelerate the process to foreclosure'. Obviously, best scenario is that I find a job in my chosen field Information Technology that should pay enough that I can make arrangements to start getting my bills up to date. Right now I am working as a temp worker and have at least been getting regular work (still not enough to catch up on all that I owe) but I am limited to 1000 hours of work for the company over 365 days so even this won't be available year around. Am in the process of trying to get the loan reworked through a 'home retention program' which I figure is probably some form of stretching out the loan to maybe 40 years in order to lower the monthly payments. That would help but without full employment it is sort of a day to day thing.

[lunatica]

10. You can file a demand for them to send you a copy of the Promissory Note

If they don't have it they can't make you leave and they probably have no idea where it is.

[droidamus2]

14. Thanks for the suggestion (nt)

[slackmaster]

7. They'll spend a week or so reviewing procedures and documents

They'll find some problems, take some token corrective action, and resume business as usual.

No foreclosures that are legally justified are going to be stopped, they'll just delayed by a few days.

[AlabamaLibrul]

9. I wouldn't be so sure.

Sure, in theory all foreclosures are legally justified, because at some point in time a mortgage was signed for the house. And if someone has no idea what to do (which they're not supposed to), it'll go through.

If you force the bank to prove they're the owner of the house, it becomes much harder for them to do so. Even harder for them to track it down, see if they have power of attorney with regards to the MBS's holdings (I'm not privy to whether this is a common part of MBS offerings although I can imagine it is), and if they don't, then it's up to someone who can act on behalf of the note holders to make the filing. Since people who buy MBS products usually didn't bother to read the prospectus, and even then the prospectus doesn't contain individual addresses, it can become quite a long process.

Assuming the homeowner decides to fight it.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. BOA has NOT halted all foreclosures.

As I noted in the same story I posted early this am:
BOA is halting SALE of homes which have been foreclosed.
They are STILL foreclosing in non-judicial states.

Or, as the WSJ headline said: BOA halted foreclosure SALES ( sales of foreclosed homes)

To make it crystal clear:
BOA is not selling foreclosed homes, in any state, until it reviews the paperwork.

BOA is still NOT FORCLOSING on homes in 23 "judicial" states :
Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin.

( which means in the other states, where they can foreclose without a judge looking at their paperwork, they are still foreclosing).

This was my summary, the story is here:
http://www.inman.com/news/2010/10/8/bofa-halts-foreclos...

[AlabamaLibrul]

12. Cool your jets, I copied and pasted the headline as it was at 9 this morning. They edited it.

As you can see by the article which I also copied and pasted, it stated "proceedings and sales".

I didn't change anything about the story.

[JackRiddler]

15. Check the New York Times today - BoA has halted all disclosures.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/business/09mortgage.html?sq=foreclosures&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=6&adxnnlx=1286655820-9eM9A/8cdUT0VfrFKW024w

Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank, said Friday that it was extending its suspension of foreclosures to all 50 states.


Brendan Hoffman/Bloomberg News

“We'll go back and check our work one more time,” Brian Moynihan, the chief of Bank of America, said Friday in Washington.


The plan swept states with some of the highest foreclosure levels, including California, Nevada and Arizona, into a swelling crisis over lenders’ flawed paperwork that had been mostly confined to 23 other states that require judicial review of foreclosures.

Bank of America instituted a partial freeze last week in those 23 states, and three other major mortgage lenders have done the same. The bank’s decision on Friday increased pressure on other lenders to extend their moratoriums nationwide as well.

An immediate effect of the action will be a temporary stay of execution for hundreds of thousands of borrowers in default. The bank said it would be brief, a mere pause while it made sure its methods were in order.

But as the furor grows over lenders’ attempts to bypass legal rules in their haste to reclaim houses from delinquent owners, there is a growing expectation that foreclosures will dwindle for months as the foreclosure system is reworked.

SNIP

[Luciferous]

16. I wonder how long this is going to take because I'm actually

interested in buying a foreclosed property in my area, and it's owned by Bank of America.