From the N.Y. Times:
By MICHAEL POWELL
PHOENIX — Bank of America and GMAC are firing up their formidable foreclosure machines again today, after a brief pause.
But hard-pressed homeowners like Lydia Sweetland are asking why lenders often balk at a less disruptive solution: short sales, which allow owners to sell deeply devalued homes for less than what remains on their mortgage.
Ms. Sweetland, 47, tried such a sale this summer out of desperation. She had lost her high-paying job and drained her once-flush retirement savings, and her bank, GMAC, wouldn’t modify her mortgage. After seven months of being unable to pay her mortgage, she decided that a short sale would give her more time to move out of her Phoenix home and damage her credit rating less than a foreclosure.
She owes $206,000 and found a buyer who would pay $200,000. Last Friday, GMAC rejected that offer and said it would foreclose in seven days, even though, according to Ms. Sweetland’s broker, the bank estimates it will make $19,000 less on a foreclosure than on a short sale.
“I guess I could salute and say, ‘O.K., I’m walking, here’s the keys,’ ” says Ms. Sweetland, as she sits in a plastic Adirondack chair on her patio. “But I need a little time, and I don’t want to just leave the house vacant. I loved this neighborhood.”
GMAC declined to be interviewed about Ms. Sweetland’s case.
The halt in most foreclosures the last few weeks gave a hint of hope to homeowners like Ms. Sweetland, who found breathing room to pursue alternatives. Consumer advocates took the view that this might pressure banks to offer mortgage modifications on better terms and perhaps drive interest in short sales, which are rising sharply in many corners of the nation.
But some major lenders took a quick inventory of their foreclosure practices and insisted their processes were sound. They now seem intent on resuming foreclosures. And that could have a profound effect on many homeowners.
In Arizona, thousands of homeowners have turned to short sales to avoid foreclosures, and many end up running a daunting procedural gantlet. Several of the largest lenders have set up complicated and balky application systems.
Concerns about fraud are one of the reasons lenders are so careful about short sales. Sometimes well-off homeowners want to portray their finances as dire and cut their losses on a property. In other instances, distressed homeowners try to make a short sale to a relative, who would then sell it back to them (a practice that is illegal). A recent industry report estimates that short sale fraud occurs in at least 2 percent of sales and costs banks about $300 million annually.
Short sales are also hindered when homeowners fail to forward the proper papers, have tax liens or cannot find a buyer.
Because of such concerns, homeowners often are instructed that they must be delinquent and they must apply for a modification first, even if chances of approval are slim. The aversion to short sales also leads banks to take many months to process applications, and some lenders set unrealistically high sales prices — known as broker price opinions — and hire workers who say they are poorly trained.
As a result, quite a few homeowners seeking short sales — banks will not provide precise numbers — topple into foreclosure, sometimes, critics say, for reasons that are hard to understand. Ms. Sweetland and her broker say they are confounded by her foreclosure, because in Arizona’s depressed real estate market, foreclosed homes often sit vacant for many months before banks are able to resell them.
“Banks are historically reluctant to do short sales, fearing that somehow the homeowner is getting an advantage on them,” said Diane E. Thompson, of counsel to the National Consumer Law Center. “There’s this irrational belief that if you foreclose and hold on to the property for six months, somehow prices will rebound.”
Homeowners, advocates and realty agents offer particularly pointed criticism of Bank of America, the nation’s largest servicer of mortgages, and a recipient of billions of dollars in federal bailout aid. Its holdings account for 31 percent of the pending foreclosures in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and Scottsdale, according to an analysis for The Arizona Republic.
The bank instructs real estate agents to use its computer program to evaluate short sales. But in three cases observed by The New York Times in collaboration with two real estate agents, the bank’s system repeatedly asked for and lost the same information and generated inaccurate responses.
In half a dozen more cases examined by The New York Times, Bank of America rejected short sale offers, foreclosed and auctioned off houses at lower prices.
“When I hear that a client’s mortgage is held by Bank of America, I just sigh. Our chances of getting an approval for them just went from 90 percent to 50-50,” said Benjamin Toma, who has a family-run real estate agency in Phoenix.
Bank of America officials also declined interview requests. A Bank of America spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the bank had processed 61,000 short sales nationwide this year; she declined to provide numbers for Arizona or to discuss criticisms of the company’s processing.
Fannie Mae, the mortgage finance company with federal backing, gives cash incentives to encourage servicers, who are affiliated with banks and who oversee great bundles of delinquent mortgages, to approve short sales.
But less obvious financial incentives can push toward a foreclosure rather than a short sale. Servicers can reap high fees from foreclosures. And lenders can try to collect on private mortgage insurance.
Some advocates and real estate agents also point to an April 2009 regulatory change in an obscure federal accounting law. The change, in effect, allowed banks to foreclose on a home without having to write down a loss until that home was sold. By contrast, if a bank agrees to a short sale, it must mark the loss immediately.
Short sales, to be sure, are no free ride for homeowners. They take a hit to their credit ratings, although for three to five years rather than seven after a foreclosure. An owner seeking a short sale must satisfy a laundry list of conditions, including making a detailed disclosure of income, tax and credit liens. And owners must prove that they have no connection to the buyer.
Still, bank decision-making, at least from a homeowner’s perspective, often appears arbitrary. That is certainly the view of Nicholas Yannuzzi, who after 30 years in Arizona still talks with a Philadelphia rasp. Mr. Yannuzzi has owned five houses over time, without any financial problems. When his wife was diagnosed with bone cancer, he put 20 percent down and bought a ranch house in North Scottsdale so that she would not have to climb stairs.
In the last few years, his wife died, he lost his job and he used his retirement fund to pay his mortgage for five months. His bank, Wells Fargo, denied his mortgage modification request and then his request for a short sale.
The bank officer told him that Fannie Mae, which held the mortgage, would not take a discount. At the end of last week, he was waiting to be locked out of his home.
“I’m a proud man. I’ve worked since I was 20 years old,” he said. “But I’ve run out of my 79 weeks of unemployment, so that’s it.”
He shrugged. “I try to keep in the frame of mind that a lot of people have it worse than me.”
Back in Phoenix, Ms. Sweetland’s real estate agent, Sherry Rampy, appeared to receive good news last week. GMAC re-examined her client’s application and suggested it might be approved.
But the bank attached a condition: Ms. Sweetland must come up with $2,000 in closing costs or pay $100 a month for 50 months to the bank. Ms. Sweetland, however, is flat broke.
A late afternoon desert sun angles across her Pasadena neighborhood.
“After this, I’ll never buy again,” Ms. Sweetland says. “This is not the American dream. This is not my American dream.”
Lawyers got it right on the foreclosure mess
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, October 22, 2010; A25
Don't blame the lawyers. The crisis over faulty or fraudulent paperwork in mortgage foreclosures -- which is either a big deal or a humongous deal, depending on which experts you believe -- is the fault of arrogant, greedy lenders who played fast and loose with the basic property rights of homeowners.
Banks and other lenders, it seems, made statements in courts of law that turned out not to be true. Because judges have such an underdeveloped sense of humor when it comes to prevarication, this mess may be with us for a while.
The mortgage industry would love to blame the whole thing on predatory, opportunistic lawyers who are seizing on mere technicalities to forestall untold numbers of foreclosures that should legitimately proceed. The bankers are right when they complain that the delays are gumming up the housing market, as potential buyers for soon-to-be-foreclosed properties are forced to bide their time until all the questions about documentation and proper title are answered.
But it's the bankers' fault that there are so many instances of foreclosure documentation with legal loopholes big enough to drive a moving van through. During the years of the real estate boom, lenders cut corners with paperwork to make as many loans -- and sell them to other lenders, which often sliced and diced them into securities that were then sold to investors -- as quickly as possible. This haste and inattention to detail, now coming to light, are partly responsible for the current crisis.
Laws vary from state to state, but all accept the principle that borrowers who fail to meet the contractual obligation to pay their mortgages can be subject to foreclosure and eviction. The process is devastating for families and for neighborhoods. In many cases, I believe, all parties would be better off if some way could be found to avoid foreclosure -- modifying the terms of the loan, say, by lowering the interest rate or even reducing the principal to reflect the fall in housing prices. I recognize, however, that there are many other cases in which foreclosure is the preferable option or perhaps the only option.
But it's also necessary that the mortgage holder have the legal right to foreclose. Anyone who has ever bought a house is familiar with the inches-thick stack of documents that have to be signed, sealed, initialed and notarized. It turns out that financial institutions often didn't dot every "i" or cross every "t" -- meaning that in some cases, it may not be clear that the nominal mortgage holder has the clear and undisputed right to take possession of the property.
These may be technicalities, but there's nothing mere about them. For one thing, if borrowers are expected to play by the rules, lenders should be expected to do the same. For another, there can't be a functioning real estate market without the ability to establish clear title. Lawyers probing this aspect of the foreclosure crisis are doing the system a favor.
The other big problem is that lenders have been processing foreclosures with assembly-line speed, eliminating delay wherever possible -- sometimes substituting electronic signatures for the ink-on-paper kind, for example. In the information age, some of this qualifies as sensible streamlining. But what doesn't make sense is moving the foreclosure documents along so quickly, and in such overwhelming volume, that the people signing them -- whether by computer or quill pen -- couldn't possibly have time to read them. We now know that some individuals, working as processors, have been signing off on up to 10,000 foreclosure documents a month.
In 23 states, every foreclosure must involve a court hearing. Sharp-eyed attorneys, representing delinquent homeowners, have unearthed cases in which high-volume "robo-signers" submitted affidavits attesting that they reviewed all the loan files personally -- when, in fact, they had not. This is just the sort of thing that puts judges in a really bad mood.
The Obama administration has declined to call for an official moratorium on foreclosures. This is understandable: In most cases a moratorium would just delay the inevitable, while impeding any momentum the housing market might otherwise be able to build.
But maybe the crisis will make the banks realize that they ought to be doing fewer foreclosures and more loan modifications -- sensible adjustments that allow deserving families to stay in their homes. And if this happens, we'll have the lawyers to thank.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
Friday, October 22, 2010; A25
Don't blame the lawyers. The crisis over faulty or fraudulent paperwork in mortgage foreclosures -- which is either a big deal or a humongous deal, depending on which experts you believe -- is the fault of arrogant, greedy lenders who played fast and loose with the basic property rights of homeowners.
Banks and other lenders, it seems, made statements in courts of law that turned out not to be true. Because judges have such an underdeveloped sense of humor when it comes to prevarication, this mess may be with us for a while.
The mortgage industry would love to blame the whole thing on predatory, opportunistic lawyers who are seizing on mere technicalities to forestall untold numbers of foreclosures that should legitimately proceed. The bankers are right when they complain that the delays are gumming up the housing market, as potential buyers for soon-to-be-foreclosed properties are forced to bide their time until all the questions about documentation and proper title are answered.
But it's the bankers' fault that there are so many instances of foreclosure documentation with legal loopholes big enough to drive a moving van through. During the years of the real estate boom, lenders cut corners with paperwork to make as many loans -- and sell them to other lenders, which often sliced and diced them into securities that were then sold to investors -- as quickly as possible. This haste and inattention to detail, now coming to light, are partly responsible for the current crisis.
Laws vary from state to state, but all accept the principle that borrowers who fail to meet the contractual obligation to pay their mortgages can be subject to foreclosure and eviction. The process is devastating for families and for neighborhoods. In many cases, I believe, all parties would be better off if some way could be found to avoid foreclosure -- modifying the terms of the loan, say, by lowering the interest rate or even reducing the principal to reflect the fall in housing prices. I recognize, however, that there are many other cases in which foreclosure is the preferable option or perhaps the only option.
But it's also necessary that the mortgage holder have the legal right to foreclose. Anyone who has ever bought a house is familiar with the inches-thick stack of documents that have to be signed, sealed, initialed and notarized. It turns out that financial institutions often didn't dot every "i" or cross every "t" -- meaning that in some cases, it may not be clear that the nominal mortgage holder has the clear and undisputed right to take possession of the property.
These may be technicalities, but there's nothing mere about them. For one thing, if borrowers are expected to play by the rules, lenders should be expected to do the same. For another, there can't be a functioning real estate market without the ability to establish clear title. Lawyers probing this aspect of the foreclosure crisis are doing the system a favor.
The other big problem is that lenders have been processing foreclosures with assembly-line speed, eliminating delay wherever possible -- sometimes substituting electronic signatures for the ink-on-paper kind, for example. In the information age, some of this qualifies as sensible streamlining. But what doesn't make sense is moving the foreclosure documents along so quickly, and in such overwhelming volume, that the people signing them -- whether by computer or quill pen -- couldn't possibly have time to read them. We now know that some individuals, working as processors, have been signing off on up to 10,000 foreclosure documents a month.
In 23 states, every foreclosure must involve a court hearing. Sharp-eyed attorneys, representing delinquent homeowners, have unearthed cases in which high-volume "robo-signers" submitted affidavits attesting that they reviewed all the loan files personally -- when, in fact, they had not. This is just the sort of thing that puts judges in a really bad mood.
The Obama administration has declined to call for an official moratorium on foreclosures. This is understandable: In most cases a moratorium would just delay the inevitable, while impeding any momentum the housing market might otherwise be able to build.
But maybe the crisis will make the banks realize that they ought to be doing fewer foreclosures and more loan modifications -- sensible adjustments that allow deserving families to stay in their homes. And if this happens, we'll have the lawyers to thank.
eugenerobinson@washpost.com
Foreclosure Furor Rises - Many Call for a Freeze - NYTimes.com
By DAVID STREITFELD and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
The uproar over bad conduct by mortgage lenders intensified Tuesday, as lawmakers in Washington requested a federal investigation and the attorney general in Texas joined a chorus of state law enforcement figures calling for freezes on all foreclosures.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and 30 other Democratic representatives from California told the Justice Department, the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency that “it is time that banks are held accountable for their practices.”
In a request for an investigation into questionable foreclosure practices by lenders, the lawmakers said that “the excuses we have heard from financial institutions are simply not credible."
Officials from the federal agencies declined to comment.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, sent letters to 30 lenders demanding they stop foreclosures, evictions and the sale of foreclosed properties until they could provide assurances that they were proceeding legally.
Both developments indicated that scarcely two weeks after the country’s fourth-biggest lender, GMAC Mortgage, revealed that it was suspending all foreclosures in the 23 states where the process requires judicial approval, concerns about flawed foreclosures had mushroomed into a nationwide problem.
Some of the finger-pointing was also being directed back at Congress. The Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, suggested in a telephone interview on Tuesday that a bill passed by Congress last week about notarizations could facilitate foreclosure fraud.
Dubious notary practices used by banks to justify foreclosures have come under scrutiny in recent weeks as GMAC and other top lenders suspended homeowner evictions over possible improper procedures.
Ms. Brunner, who has recently referred possible cases of notary fraud in her state to federal authorities, worries that the legislation would allow the lowest standard for notaries to become a nationwide practice. She said she also worried that the changes were coming in the middle of a foreclosure storm where people could lose their homes improperly.
“A notary’s signature is that of a trusted, impartial third party, whose notarization bolsters the integrity of the document,” Ms. Brunner said. “To take away the safeguards of notarization means foreclosure procedures could be more susceptible to fraud.”
As banks’ foreclosure practices have come under the microscope, problems with notarizations on mortgage assignments have emerged. These documents transfer the ownership of the underlying note from one institution to another and are required for foreclosures to proceed.
In some cases, the notarizations predated the preparation of the legal documents, suggesting that signatures were not reviewed by a notary. Other notarizations took place in offices far away from where the documents were signed, indicating that the notaries might not have witnessed the signings as the law required.
Notary practices vary from state to state and the bill, sponsored by Representative Robert B. Aderholt, a Republican from Alabama, would essentially require that one state’s rules be accepted by others. If one state allows its notaries to sign off on electronic signatures, for example, documents carrying such signatures and notarized by officials in that state would have to be recognized and accepted in any state or federal court.
Ms. Brunner pointed out that some states had adopted “electronic notarization” laws that ignored the requirement of a signer’s personal appearance before a notary. “Many of these policies for electronic notarization are driven by technology rather than by principle, and they are dangerous to consumers,” she said.
Mr. Aderholt had introduced the bill twice before and both times it passed the House of Representatives but not the Senate. Mr. Aderholt reintroduced the bill last October and it passed the Senate on Sept. 29. It is awaiting President Obama’s signature.
Mr. Aderholt’s press secretary, Darrell Jordan, said there was no connection between the timing of the bill and the current notarization problems with foreclosures. In a statement announcing the bill’s passage, Mr. Aderholt said: “This legislation will help businesses around the nation by eliminating the confusion which arises when states refuse to acknowledge the integrity of documents notarized out of state.”
Last week, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America joined GMAC in suspending foreclosures in the states where they must be approved by a judge. The judicial states do not include California or Texas. But Mr. Abbott, the Texas attorney general, told lenders in letters dated Oct. 4 that if they used so-called robo-signers — employees who signed thousands of foreclosure affidavits a month, falsely attesting that they had reviewed the material — it would be a violation of Texas law.
As a result, he wrote, “the document and therefore the foreclosure sale would have been invalid.”
The three lenders who are at the center of the controversy, GMAC Mortgage, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, declined to comment. Other lenders singled out by Mr. Abbott include Wells Fargo, CitiMortgage, HSBC and National City.
Meanwhile, shares of a major foreclosure outsourcing company, Lender Processing Services of Jacksonville, Fla., fell 5 percent on Tuesday, adding to a slide that began last week.
The company’s documentation practices are stirring questions, including how the same employee can have wildly varying signatures on mortgage documents. L.P.S. blamed a midlevel manager’s decision to allow employees to sign forms in the name of an authorized employee. It says it has stopped the practice.
The United States Attorney’s Office in Tampa began investigating L.P.S. in February. An L.P.S. representative could not be reached Tuesday for comment.
Other calls for investigations came from Senators Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, and Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey.
Foreclosure Furor Rises - Many Call for a Freeze - NYTimes.com
The uproar over bad conduct by mortgage lenders intensified Tuesday, as lawmakers in Washington requested a federal investigation and the attorney general in Texas joined a chorus of state law enforcement figures calling for freezes on all foreclosures.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and 30 other Democratic representatives from California told the Justice Department, the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency that “it is time that banks are held accountable for their practices.”
In a request for an investigation into questionable foreclosure practices by lenders, the lawmakers said that “the excuses we have heard from financial institutions are simply not credible."
Officials from the federal agencies declined to comment.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, sent letters to 30 lenders demanding they stop foreclosures, evictions and the sale of foreclosed properties until they could provide assurances that they were proceeding legally.
Both developments indicated that scarcely two weeks after the country’s fourth-biggest lender, GMAC Mortgage, revealed that it was suspending all foreclosures in the 23 states where the process requires judicial approval, concerns about flawed foreclosures had mushroomed into a nationwide problem.
Some of the finger-pointing was also being directed back at Congress. The Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, suggested in a telephone interview on Tuesday that a bill passed by Congress last week about notarizations could facilitate foreclosure fraud.
Dubious notary practices used by banks to justify foreclosures have come under scrutiny in recent weeks as GMAC and other top lenders suspended homeowner evictions over possible improper procedures.
Ms. Brunner, who has recently referred possible cases of notary fraud in her state to federal authorities, worries that the legislation would allow the lowest standard for notaries to become a nationwide practice. She said she also worried that the changes were coming in the middle of a foreclosure storm where people could lose their homes improperly.
“A notary’s signature is that of a trusted, impartial third party, whose notarization bolsters the integrity of the document,” Ms. Brunner said. “To take away the safeguards of notarization means foreclosure procedures could be more susceptible to fraud.”
As banks’ foreclosure practices have come under the microscope, problems with notarizations on mortgage assignments have emerged. These documents transfer the ownership of the underlying note from one institution to another and are required for foreclosures to proceed.
In some cases, the notarizations predated the preparation of the legal documents, suggesting that signatures were not reviewed by a notary. Other notarizations took place in offices far away from where the documents were signed, indicating that the notaries might not have witnessed the signings as the law required.
Notary practices vary from state to state and the bill, sponsored by Representative Robert B. Aderholt, a Republican from Alabama, would essentially require that one state’s rules be accepted by others. If one state allows its notaries to sign off on electronic signatures, for example, documents carrying such signatures and notarized by officials in that state would have to be recognized and accepted in any state or federal court.
Ms. Brunner pointed out that some states had adopted “electronic notarization” laws that ignored the requirement of a signer’s personal appearance before a notary. “Many of these policies for electronic notarization are driven by technology rather than by principle, and they are dangerous to consumers,” she said.
Mr. Aderholt had introduced the bill twice before and both times it passed the House of Representatives but not the Senate. Mr. Aderholt reintroduced the bill last October and it passed the Senate on Sept. 29. It is awaiting President Obama’s signature.
Mr. Aderholt’s press secretary, Darrell Jordan, said there was no connection between the timing of the bill and the current notarization problems with foreclosures. In a statement announcing the bill’s passage, Mr. Aderholt said: “This legislation will help businesses around the nation by eliminating the confusion which arises when states refuse to acknowledge the integrity of documents notarized out of state.”
Last week, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America joined GMAC in suspending foreclosures in the states where they must be approved by a judge. The judicial states do not include California or Texas. But Mr. Abbott, the Texas attorney general, told lenders in letters dated Oct. 4 that if they used so-called robo-signers — employees who signed thousands of foreclosure affidavits a month, falsely attesting that they had reviewed the material — it would be a violation of Texas law.
As a result, he wrote, “the document and therefore the foreclosure sale would have been invalid.”
The three lenders who are at the center of the controversy, GMAC Mortgage, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, declined to comment. Other lenders singled out by Mr. Abbott include Wells Fargo, CitiMortgage, HSBC and National City.
Meanwhile, shares of a major foreclosure outsourcing company, Lender Processing Services of Jacksonville, Fla., fell 5 percent on Tuesday, adding to a slide that began last week.
The company’s documentation practices are stirring questions, including how the same employee can have wildly varying signatures on mortgage documents. L.P.S. blamed a midlevel manager’s decision to allow employees to sign forms in the name of an authorized employee. It says it has stopped the practice.
The United States Attorney’s Office in Tampa began investigating L.P.S. in February. An L.P.S. representative could not be reached Tuesday for comment.
Other calls for investigations came from Senators Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, and Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey.
Foreclosure Furor Rises - Many Call for a Freeze - NYTimes.com
Consumer bankruptcy filings climb 11% - MarketWatch
By Alistair Barr
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings rose 11% in the first nine months of this year, versus the same period in 2009, the American Bankruptcy Institute said Monday, citing data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center. Filings totaled 1,165,172 nationwide during the first nine months of 2010, compared to 1,046,449 total consumer filings during the same period a year ago. The bankruptcy filings so far in 2010 represent the highest total since 2005. "We expect that there will be nearly 1.6 million new bankruptcy filings by year end," ABI Executive Director Samuel Gerdano said in a statement. Consumer bankruptcies totalled 130,329 in September. That was 3.3% up from August 2010.
Consumer bankruptcy filings climb 11% - MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- U.S. consumer bankruptcy filings rose 11% in the first nine months of this year, versus the same period in 2009, the American Bankruptcy Institute said Monday, citing data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center. Filings totaled 1,165,172 nationwide during the first nine months of 2010, compared to 1,046,449 total consumer filings during the same period a year ago. The bankruptcy filings so far in 2010 represent the highest total since 2005. "We expect that there will be nearly 1.6 million new bankruptcy filings by year end," ABI Executive Director Samuel Gerdano said in a statement. Consumer bankruptcies totalled 130,329 in September. That was 3.3% up from August 2010.
Consumer bankruptcy filings climb 11% - MarketWatch
7 major lenders ordered to review foreclosure procedures
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 30, 2010; 10:39 PM
A top federal bank regulator said Thursday that he has directed seven of the nation's largest lenders to review their foreclosure processes after learning about the widespread mishandling of homeowner evictions by the industry.
John Walsh, acting director of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, told lawmakers during a hearing on the financial regulatory overhaul enacted this summer that some lenders "clearly had deficiencies" in their system for foreclosures.
The banks contacted by regulators include J.P. Morgan Chase, which announced Wednesday that it was freezing 56,000 foreclosures after finding errors in its preparation of documents, according to OCC spokesman Kevin Mukri. Other lenders contacted include Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.
"We both want to see that they fix the processing problems but also to look to see whether there is specific harm [that has been caused] in individual cases," Walsh said.
Revelations about widespread paperwork problems with foreclosures led Ally Financial, another major lender, to suspend evictions last week in 23 states where a court order is required to seize a property. Since then, the industry's handling of foreclosures has come under close scrutiny from regulators, with attorneys general in several other states calling for Ally to halt foreclosures.
The paperwork problems range from potentially forged documents to bank employees who never read borrowers' files before signing off on an eviction.
In J.P. Morgan's case, Mukri said the bank "determined that its affidavit procedures were non-compliant with foreclosure processing requirements in some states." He added that although J.P. Morgan has fixed internal procedures, the "negative impact or harm to customers has not been determined at this point."
"While we don't expect our review to find that consumers were harmed, we will take appropriate action if we find any impact," JP Morgan spokesman Tom Kelly said.
Mukri would not comment about other banks but said that the OCC has teams permanently stationed at each one and that those teams have been in close contact with senior management at the banks to ensure the reviews are completed in a timely manner.
Citibank declined to comment on the OCC's request but said it has strong training to ensure that employees in its foreclosure group are aware that they should have personal knowledge of the information in documents that require this before signing them and that staffing levels are adequate to allow them to review them properly.
There was no immediate comment from the other banks on Thursday.
Walsh made the remarks in response to questions from Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate banking committee, about the spreading problem with foreclosure processing.
Referring to a front-page article in The Washington Post, Dodd called the news about lenders initiating improper foreclosures "very troubling." He asked senior bank regulators at Thursday's hearing - including Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila C. Bair and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke - to comment on the matter.
Bair, whose agency insures deposits at thousands of U.S. banks, called the issue of document processing errors "troubling" and said "it's just a further indication of how wrong we went with the mortgage origination process and securitization process."
Bernanke said that "it's been a managerial challenge to the banks to deal with these foreclosure modifications." And, he added, "they haven't always met that challenge.
7 major lenders ordered to review foreclosure procedures
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 30, 2010; 10:39 PM
A top federal bank regulator said Thursday that he has directed seven of the nation's largest lenders to review their foreclosure processes after learning about the widespread mishandling of homeowner evictions by the industry.
John Walsh, acting director of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, told lawmakers during a hearing on the financial regulatory overhaul enacted this summer that some lenders "clearly had deficiencies" in their system for foreclosures.
The banks contacted by regulators include J.P. Morgan Chase, which announced Wednesday that it was freezing 56,000 foreclosures after finding errors in its preparation of documents, according to OCC spokesman Kevin Mukri. Other lenders contacted include Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.
"We both want to see that they fix the processing problems but also to look to see whether there is specific harm [that has been caused] in individual cases," Walsh said.
Revelations about widespread paperwork problems with foreclosures led Ally Financial, another major lender, to suspend evictions last week in 23 states where a court order is required to seize a property. Since then, the industry's handling of foreclosures has come under close scrutiny from regulators, with attorneys general in several other states calling for Ally to halt foreclosures.
The paperwork problems range from potentially forged documents to bank employees who never read borrowers' files before signing off on an eviction.
In J.P. Morgan's case, Mukri said the bank "determined that its affidavit procedures were non-compliant with foreclosure processing requirements in some states." He added that although J.P. Morgan has fixed internal procedures, the "negative impact or harm to customers has not been determined at this point."
"While we don't expect our review to find that consumers were harmed, we will take appropriate action if we find any impact," JP Morgan spokesman Tom Kelly said.
Mukri would not comment about other banks but said that the OCC has teams permanently stationed at each one and that those teams have been in close contact with senior management at the banks to ensure the reviews are completed in a timely manner.
Citibank declined to comment on the OCC's request but said it has strong training to ensure that employees in its foreclosure group are aware that they should have personal knowledge of the information in documents that require this before signing them and that staffing levels are adequate to allow them to review them properly.
There was no immediate comment from the other banks on Thursday.
Walsh made the remarks in response to questions from Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate banking committee, about the spreading problem with foreclosure processing.
Referring to a front-page article in The Washington Post, Dodd called the news about lenders initiating improper foreclosures "very troubling." He asked senior bank regulators at Thursday's hearing - including Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila C. Bair and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke - to comment on the matter.
Bair, whose agency insures deposits at thousands of U.S. banks, called the issue of document processing errors "troubling" and said "it's just a further indication of how wrong we went with the mortgage origination process and securitization process."
Bernanke said that "it's been a managerial challenge to the banks to deal with these foreclosure modifications." And, he added, "they haven't always met that challenge.
7 major lenders ordered to review foreclosure procedures
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