Avoid Liens

In today’s Los Angeles Times, Tom Petruno’s (@tpetruno) article entitled, Debt Threat Looms, again, he warns us of inevitable business cycles and where the economy is headed. You see, in order for the economy to move full steam ahead, we need to continue to spend money. The problem with that concept is that we’re so […]

Here’s a question posted recently over at AVVO.com.: “We had a Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharged two(2) years ago. We have a second mortgage that we haven’t paid on in 2.5 years that has a $95,000 balance. We have not had any communication with the lender. Would like to know what our options are and the […]

Observing an “emerging consensus in this Circuit” that lien stripping can be accomplished through Chapter 13 Plan Completion, the court in Litton Loan Servicing, et al v. Robert Blendheim, et. al, In re Blendheim, Nos. 13-35354, 13-35412, U.S. Court of Appeals For the Ninth Circuit, 2015. You can watch oral arguments here. So, what do […]

Negative equity, a term that means that the amount owed on all mortgages is more than the market value; also known as “underwater.” Home equity is the difference the current resale value of the home and the total mortgage debt owed. According to Zillow, 9.7 million Americans still have a problem with negative equity and […]

I’ve been wondering recently about how my clients are doing long after their bankruptcy case ends and the debt is gone.  Then, I happened upon Bryan Fears’  (@fearsnachawati) article, File Bankruptcy and Live Longer and read a few positively surprising results that began to answer my questions about life after bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the article did […]

What happens when you take a homeowner who defaults on their mortgage into bankruptcy to stop the foreclosure sale?  You get a situation that is disease ridden with errors.  Katie Porter (@MsKatiePorter) recently wrote about this over at Credit Slips (@CreditSlips) in her article, What do bankruptcy mortgage servicing and Ebola have in common? where […]

I network with a lot of business professionals from around the financial sector because rules and information changes so frequently that I can’t keep up with all of it.  Over a cup of coffee a few weeks ago, I was talking with experienced mortgage broker, Brigitte Archer of Oxford Capital in Lake Forrest, California and […]

Here is a great article from the California Lawyer entitled, “In MERS We Trust.”  Christopher Peterson, University of Utah College of Law is quoted as saying, “For the first time in the nation’s history there is no authoritative, public record of who owns land in each county.”  A history of our land transactions is steeped […]

We’re nearing election time and you would think that the economy is improving with the lower unemployment figures and other splashing news, except for our gas prices.  I, however, am sensing something brewing on the horizon and wanted to share my observations here with you. This Huffington Post article about the attorney general settlement is […]

On September 20, 2011 I was a speaker for Law Review CLE on the topic of Foreclosure Defense in Orange, California and again on November 10, 2011 in Riverside. My perspective is always from the bankruptcy side where we will file under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code to initially stop the foreclosure sale. The […]