Myrtle Beach Real Estate

If there was a question about whether we're headed for a second housing shock, that was settled last week with news that home prices have fallen a sixth consecutive month. Values are nearly back to levels of the Great Recession. One thing weighing on the economy is the huge number of foreclosed houses.

Many are stuck on the market for a reason you wouldn't expect: banks can't find the ownership documents.

Who really owns your mortgage?
Scott Pelley explains a bizarre aftershock of the U.S. financial collapse: An epidemic of forged and missing mortgage documents.

It's bizarre but, it turns out, Wall Street cut corners when it created those mortgage-backed investments that triggered the financial collapse. Now that banks want to evict people, they're unwinding these exotic investments to find, that often, the legal documents behind the mortgages aren't there. Caught in a jam of their own making, some companies appear to be resorting to forgery and phony paperwork to throw people - down on their luck - out of their homes.

In the 1930s we had breadlines; venture out before dawn in America today and you'll find mortgage lines. This past January in Los Angeles, 37,000 homeowners facing foreclosure showed up to an event to beg their bank for lower payments on their mortgage. Some people even slept on the sidewalk to get in line.

So many in the country are desperate now that they have to meet in convention centers coast to coast.

In February in Miami, 12,000 people showed up to a similar event. The line went down the block and doubled back twice.

Video: The next housing shock
Extra: Eviction reprieve
Extra: "Save the Dream" events

Dale DeFreitas lost her job and now fears her home is next. "It's very emotional because I just think about it. I don't wanna lose my home. I really don't," she told "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley.

"It's your American dream," he remarked.

"It was. And still is," she replied.

These convention center events are put on by the non-profit Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, which helps people figure what they can afford, and then walks them across the hall to bank representatives to ask for lower payments. More than half will get their mortgages adjusted, but the rest discover that they just can't keep their home.

For many that's when the real surprise comes in: these same banks have fouled up all of their own paperwork to a historic degree.

"In my mind this is an absolute, intentional fraud," Lynn Szymoniak, who is fighting foreclosure, told Pelley.

While trying to save her house, she discovered something we did not know: back when Wall Street was using algorithms and computers to engineer those disastrous mortgage-backed securities, it appears they didn't want old fashioned paperwork slowing down the profits.

"This was back when it was a white hot fevered pitch to move as many of these as possible," Pelley remarked.

"Exactly. When you could make a whole lotta money through securitization. And every other aspect of it could be done electronically, you know, key strokes. This was the only piece where somebody was supposed to actually go get documents, transfer the documents from one entity to the other. And it looks very much like they just eliminated that stuff all together," Szymoniak said.

Szymoniak's mortgage had been bundled with thousands of others into one of those Wall Street securities traded from investor to investor. When the bank took her to court, it first said it had lost her documents, including the critical assignment of mortgage which transfers ownership. But then, there was a courthouse surprise.

"They found all of your paperwork more than a year after they initially said that they had lost it?" Pelley asked.

"Yes," she replied.

Asked if that seemed suspicious to her, Szymoniak said, "Yes, absolutely. What do you imagine? It fell behind the file cabinet? Where was all of this? 'We had it, we own it, we lost it.' And then more recently, everyone is coming in saying, 'Hey we found it. Isn't that wonderful?'"

But what the bank may not have known is that Szymoniak is a lawyer and fraud investigator with a specialty in forged documents. She has trained FBI agents.

She told Pelley she asked for copies of those documents.

Asked what she found, Szymoniak told Pelley, "When I looked at the assignment of my mortgage, and this is the assignment: it looked that even the date they put in, which was 10/17/08, was several months after they sued me for foreclosure. So, what they were saying to the court was, 'We sued her in July of 2008 and we acquired this mortgage in October of 2008.' It made absolutely no sense."

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/01/60minutes/main20049646.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

Banks have a new remedy for America's ailing housing market: bulldozers.

There are nearly 1.7 million homes in the U.S. in some state of foreclosure. Banks already own some of these homes and will soon repossess many more. Many housing economists worry that a near constant stream of home sales by banks could keep housing prices down for years to come. But what if some of those homes never hit the market? 

Increasingly, it appears that banks are turning to demolition teams instead of realtors to rid themselves of their least-valuable repossessed homes. Last month, Bank of America announced plans to demolish 100 foreclosed homes in the Cleveland area. The land will then be donated to local government authorities. BofA says the donations in Cleveland are part of a larger plan to rid itself of its least-salable properties, many of which, according to a company spokesperson, are worth less than $10,000. BofA has already donated 100 homes in Detroit and 150 in Chicago, and may add as many as nine more cities by the end of the year.

And BofA is not alone. A number of banks are ramping up their efforts to not just rid themselves of their unwanted homes but also fully dispose of them. Fannie Mae has a program to sell houses to local municipalities for a few hundred dollars. Wells Fargo has donated 800 homes since 2009. While some of those homes have been demolished, a spokesperson for the bank says many of the homes have been given to not-for-profits with plans to renovate the homes, not tear them down. JPMorgan Chase says it was one of the first banks to donate houses it couldn't sell or didn't think were repairable. Since 2008, JPMorgan has donated or sold at a discount 1,900 houses to city or county officials.

Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/08/01/bulldoze-the-new-way-to-foreclose/#ixzz1UCMXteUM

Loan servicers will have 30 days to send a borrower a short-sale agreement that includes the list price or acceptable sales proceeds under recent changes made to the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program, aimed at distressed borrowers who don't qualify for other government loan modification programs.

Once a sales contract has been initiated, loan servicers then have 30 days to approve or reject the transaction.

The stricter timelines are believed to help speed up the short sale process, which has faced numerous complaints for how long it takes lenders to review and approve short sales often causing buyers to walk away.

The stricter timelines were apart of several revisions the Treasury Department recently announced to its HAFA program — the second major revision to the program since its launch in 2009.

Another big change: Loan servicers will no longer be restricted on paying second-lien holders, allowing them more freedom particularly when dealing with second-lien holders when borrowers owe less than $100,000. Loan servicers used to be restricted to paying second-lien holders no more than 6 percent of outstanding loan balance (with an overall limit of $6,000) in exchange for releasing subordinate liens. Second-lien holders have been another big obstacle to completing short sale transactions.

HAFA’s new directives also now forbid loan servicers from deducting vendor expenses from commissions paid to real estate brokers.

The rules are effective Feb. 1. It does not apply to mortgages owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or insured or guaranteed by a federal agency such as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

Source:  Inman News

Landmark Resort in Myrtle Beach - an Oceanfront Resort

Case Study – 1BR Condo Transactions – 6 year History – 2004 to 2010:

Year Nr. of transactions: Most Expensive/Least expensive

2004     273     $153,000            $89,900

2005     52       $254,800             $148,000

2006     23       $218,500             $140,000

2007     22        $178,000             $115,000

2008     10        $142,000             $85,000

2009     16        $122,000             $58,100

2010     16         $85,000              $59,900

Mirela Monte, Your Myrtle Beach Oceanfront Connection

Upon compiling my market statistics for 2009, I was shocked to discover that 62% of all the oceanfront condos sold in the Myrtle Beach area in 2009 had transacted for CASH. That year, for the first time in my career, I noticed a trend with my own clients paying cash for their oceanfront condo purchases. By then, we knew we had a lending issue and nowhere else was it more evident than in the Oceanfront condo inventory.

I anticipated a rise in that number when I compiled the statistics for 2010, but I didn’t expect what I actually found: Fully 76.15% of all Oceanfront Condos sold in the Myrtle Beach area were transacted for CASH in 2010! More than three quarters of all Oceanfront Condo sales were CASH transactions in 2010.

Only 22.83% of all oceanfront condo sales in the Myrtle Beach area were transacted via conventional financing. The 1.02% remainder of the transactions were effected by other means, such as owner financing.

The numbers tell the story of a tightening of the money, especially for oceanfront condos, which are increasingly difficult to finance. Examining the numbers also helped me see a few other trends, so stay tuned to my blog, for the rest of the Myrtle Beach Real Estate Story!

2010 has been a very busy year for us and for all the other Myrtle Beach Realtors specializing in short sales and foreclosures.  I've only had a handful of "Normal" transactions in 2010; the rest have all been Short Sales or Foreclosures (Bank Owned Properties).  I have a wonderful Short Sales Team, so my clients have been very fortunate to have their short sales approved.  We've done a whole lot of them this year.

I've been keeping a very active Facebook Fan Page at MyrtleBeachRealEstate

Join us there for an integrative way to keep on top of the Myrtle Beach Market.  You can post questions, suggestions, etc.

We also have a Twitter Presence at MyrtleBeachDigs 

Of course, many of you follow my Active Rain Blog 

I have been working on compiling 2010 Statistics and I will be posting them here this week.  Stay tuned; there are lots of surprises!

Mirela

I will call this week The Foreclosure Central, for we have had more movement in the Foreclosure Scandal Arena than we've ever had.  The end of the week brought with it a flurry of activities and front page news:

-Bank of America halted Foreclosures in all 50 states. 

-Meanwhile, President Obama vetoed a bill that tacitly moved through both houses last week.  The bill would have made it more difficult for homeowners to fight fraudulent foreclosures.

-National Civil Rights Groups are calling for an Immediate Moratorium on all Foreclosures

-Several states have taken their own actions: Texas has stopped all Foreclosures yesterday, while California is putting intense pressure on Lenders to halt all Foreclosures in their state.  Meanwhile, Ohio is suing Ally Financial and its subsidiary GMAC Mortgage for submitting fraudulent documents in hundreds of foreclosure cases across the state.  

Follow the original stories below by clicking on the Title:

Bank of America imposed a nationwide moratorium on foreclosure

Bank of America Corp. imposed a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures and the sale of foreclosed homes after it came under intense pressure from a government-run housing-finance giant worried about documentation problems.

National Civil Rights Groups Renew Call for Immediate Moratorium on All Home Foreclosures

RISMEDIA, October 8, 2010—National civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Fair Housing Alliance, National Council of La Raza, the NAACP, and the Center for Responsible Lending, are renewing their April 2007 call to institute an immediate national moratorium on foreclosures. The civil rights groups believe that until lenders demonstrate that they are adhering to all existing laws, regulations, and contractual guidelines related to loss mitigation and foreclosure legal process, lenders in all 50 states should not move forward with any foreclosures.

Obama Hits Brakes on a Bill That Could Speed Foreclosures

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday vetoed a bill that would've required courts to recognize out-of-state foreclosure documents as valid. Putting the brakes on the bill, which the House of Representatives passed in April and the Senate approved last month, signals caution at a time when allegations of flawed foreclosure documents are popping up around the country.

Lenders face pressure in California to stop foreclosures

Lenders are coming under increasing pressure in California to halt foreclosures.

Two advocacy groups -- the Los Angeles-based Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Greenlining Institute of Berkeley -- this week called for a California foreclosure moratorium.

The L.A. group said it was forming a separate organization to help homeowners fight foreclosures called the Home Defenders League.

Both groups also called on Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown to support a moratorium.

Ohio accuses Ally of 'fraudulent' foreclosures

  are being sued by the Ohio Attorney General for allegedly submitting fraudulent documents in hundreds of foreclosure cases across the state.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Lucas County, comes after Ally halted foreclosures last week in Ohio and the 22 other U.S. states that require judicial approval of the process. The move came after it was revealed that some bank employees had signed foreclosure affidavits without verifying that the documents were accurate, a process now known as "robo-signing."

Unemployed? Get a federal loan to pay your mortgage

Unemployed and can't pay your mortgage?

You can soon apply for a no-interest government loan for up to $50,000 to pay your mortgage and cover your arrears. The loan, which can offer assistance for up to two years, will be forgiven if the homeowner stays in the house for five years.

Troubled borrowers will be able to apply for the Emergency Homeowners Loan Program by the end of the year. They must be at least three months behind in their payments, but have a reasonable likelihood of being able to resume payments within two years. And they must have suffered at least a 15% drop in income, but have been able to afford their mortgage before their income loss.

Also, the property must be their principle residence and they cannot own a second home. And they must live in Puerto Rico or one of the 32 states not receiving federal assistance through the Hardest Hit Fund, which gave 18 states more than $4 billion to come up with programs to help the unemployed and underwater.

The emergency loan program is built on a similar initiative in Pennsylvania, which was created in 1983. That effort, which is funded by the state, provides loans of up to $60,000 for up to three years. It has distributed $470 million on behalf of more than 44,000 homeowners since inception and boasted an 80% success rate in preventing foreclosure.

The federal program, however, is relatively small. Congress gave the Housing Department $1 billion to spend, meaning it will help at least 20,000 people. But that's just a small fraction of those who need assistance.

Obama Will Not Sign Bill Seen As Cover For Bank Foreclosures

The White House announced Thursday afternoon that President Obama would not sign a bill that some consumer advocates worried would make it more difficult for homeowners to fight fraudulent foreclosures.

Top 10 Most Expensive Zip Codes

The top 10 most expensive Zip Codes are:

1. Duarte, California 91008
2. Atherton, California 94027
3. Rolling Hills, California 90274
4. Alpine, New Jersey 07620
5. New York, New York 10014
6. Beverly Hills, California 90210
7. New York, New York 10065
8. Belvedere, California 94920
9. New York, New York 10012
10. Santa Barbara, California 93108

In foreclosure controversy, problems run deeper than flawed paperwork

Now, as many of these loans have fallen into default and banks have sought to seize homes, judges around the country have increasingly ruled that lenders had no right to foreclose, because they lacked clear title.

These fundamental concerns over ownership extend beyond those that surfaced over the past two weeks amid reports of fraudulent loan documents and corporate "robo-signers."

The court decisions, should they continue to spread, could call into doubt the ownership of mortgages throughout the country, raising urgent challenges for both the real estate market and the wider financial system.

For struggling homeowners trying to avoid foreclosure, it could mean an opportunity to challenge the banks they argue have been unhelpful at best and deceptive at worst. But it also threatens to leave them in prolonged limbo, stuck in homes they still can't afford and waiting for the foreclosure process to begin anew.

Foreclosures lead to city budget shortfall from property tax revenues

The housing crisis is finally catching up with cities — and the impact isn’t going to be pretty.

Property tax revenues started to decline in 2010 after years of growth, according to a report released by the National League of Cities on Wednesday. Cities expect property tax revenues to fall by 1.8% in 2010, after rising by 4.2% in 2009.

This drop lagged the housing market collapse because property tax bills are based on assessments, which are slow to adjust to market value changes.

But the worst is yet to come, according to the league’s report. The full brunt of the housing bust won’t be felt until 2011 and 2012 as more property values are reassessed. And commercial real estate values may dive in 2012, exacerbating the problem.

“Cities are now in the eye of the storm,” said Christopher Hoene, the center’s director for research and innovation. “The pain is intensifying.”

Breaking Texas Real Estate News: Texas Attorney General Halts Foreclosures, Sales of FC Properties

The Texas Attorney General’s office has halted all foreclosures, all sales of properties previously foreclosed upon, and all evictions of persons residing in previously foreclosed upon properties, until mortgage companies can get their acts together in the state of Texas and prove they were filed correctly. So if you are in the process of buying a foreclosed home, take note: you could find yourself in the midst of a legal challenge by the property’s former owner or a huge time warp. Foreclosures will not be permitted to continue in Texas until mortgage companies have completed a review of their processes, including whether employees or agents “robosigned” foreclosure affidavits and other documents recorded in Texas.

U.S. Mortgage Rates Break All Time Lows, Again

According to Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey  (PMMS), the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate dropped yet again to break the survey's all-time low; the 15-year fixed-rate did the same. The 5-year ARM also set an all-time survey low.

Bank of America halts foreclosures in 23 states

Bank of America is the latest in a string of banks to freeze home foreclosures in 23 states as it investigates whether there were flaws in its process (this is a bit of old news - it came out on October 1st, but many did not know the states involved).

States under BofA review

Government Announces Short Sales Guidelines

The U.S. Treasury Department announced new guidelines this week designed to make short sales go more smoothly.

To qualify under these new guidelines:

• The property must be the home owner’s principal residence.
• The home owner must be delinquent on the mortgage or close to defaulting.
• The loan must have been made before Jan. 1, 2009, and be for less than $729,750.
• The borrowers’ total monthly mortgage payment must exceed 31 percent of their before-tax income.

Under the plan, borrowers will receive $1,500 from the government for selling homes for less than the amount of their mortgages. Mortgage-servicing companies will get $1,000 for each completed short sale. Second-mortgage holders can receive up to $3,000 of the sales proceeds in exchange for releasing their liens. Investors who hold the first mortgage can collect up to $1,000 from the government for allowing the payments.

Borrowers who complete a short sale under the program must be "fully released" from future liability for the debt, according to the guidelines.