Modifications

California’s mortgage crisis is out of control. The sub-prime lending didn’t end until late 2007 and into early 2008 when the economy collapsed. What further frustrates our sunshine state’s mortgage problems is that we were sold Jumbo loans due to our high property values. A Jumbo loan is a mortgage loan in an amount above […]

It was recently announced that the book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, written by Micheal Lewis will soon be made into a movie starring Brad Pitt. The book is essentially a Wall Street perspective about the housing and credit bubble of the 2,000s. It depicts the long bull market where a nation loses […]

As the year comes to a close, I get a little nostalgic and look back at articles I’ve written through the year.  This year, California homeowners faced the expiration of the Mortgage Debt Relief Act, which may still linger in Congressional uncertainty. Home values have stalled, leaving many with persistent negative equity, while many struggle […]

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 […]

Buying a house is the single most expensive purchase we make during our lives.  It’s stressful and time consuming to go through the escrow process to get those keys.  Then, there is the time and cost of maintaining that home while keeping up with those mortgage payments, which may or may not include taxes and […]

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 […]

From religion to politics; housing, transportation and food, the epic failures of the economic recession have delivered some real big lemons to the OC [Orange County]. No sector of the economy was left untouched and so many lives have been impacted in this recent wave of sour fruit. In July, the OC Metro Magazine’s (@OCMetro) […]

On Sunday mornings, I enjoy my coffee with the newspaper and June 8th was the usual.  I like to keep current on the housing market and all things debt, so it’s no surprise that the article entitled, Feuer targets big banks for L.A. by Michael Hiltzik (@hiltzikm) caught my attention. I am delighted to learn […]

This blog post is brought to you by the letter “M.” I read a post earlier this month that got me thinking about how homeowners are going to manage their changing budgets when their mortgages adjust.  This article, by Bill McBride (@calculatedrisk) explained that nearly 2 million mortgages that were modified are due to face […]