Yesterday, the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder, Phil Ting, released the results of a cursory review of foreclosure documents, finding widespread irregularities in the vast majority of them. The documents included foreclosures from 2011, after the point at which the banks allegedly “fixed” their foreclosure document problems. Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting in partnership with mortgage investigation firm, Aequitas, [...]

One thing we don’t have a great handle on is how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will play a role in the foreclosure fraud settlement, and more to the point the ongoing issues in the mortgage servicing industry. CFPB Director Richard Cordray goes some way to explaining their perspective in a Politico op-ed. The CFPB [...]

OK, let’s try to figure this one out. Illinois AG Lisa Madigan is on the executive committee putting together the foreclosure fraud settlement. She’s been supportive of the deal throughout the process. I have no reason to suspect she’s not STILL supportive of the deal. And yet she comes out today with a civil lawsuit [...]

So the President delivered his remarks on this collection of housing policy announcements today, or should I say stimulus policy. As expected, it included this mass refi proposal, along with the announcement of the beginning of GSE sales of foreclosed properties to investors for them to covert into rentals. There was also this other piece [...]

The reason I continue to believe the issue of foreclosure fraud and servicer abuse remains and shouldn’t be settled away is that it has such an impact on people’s lives. Reuters has a salient example of this, which is a far more common occurrence that you would ever believe. Servicing operations simply don’t work, and [...]

I have some additional reporting on the financial fraud unit that will be co-chaired by Eric Schneiderman, and how he will approach it. But before I get to that, I want to pick up on something that came up when I appeared on Sam Seder’s Majority Report radio program today. The thing is, and this [...]

I’ll pepper in my thoughts on the State of the Union Address throughout the day, but I would be remiss if I didn’t start with the announcement of a Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses (UMOSA) to investigate bank practices during the financial crisis. The unit will be co-chaired by Eric Schneiderman, the New [...]

Richard Cordray spoke at the Brookings Institution today, on his first day as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He laid out the mission of the agency as he sees it, and how it will use its expanded authorities over non-bank financial institutions. Cordray started by bearing witness to financial predators who have destroyed [...]

Kamala Harris, the Attorney General of California, sued government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over information on foreclosures in California. Rather than the endpoint of the investigation, this is the beginning of it; Harris wants information out of Fannie and Freddie that they have so far been unwilling to provide. Attorney General Kamala Harris, [...]

Martha Coakley’s lawsuit against big banks for foreclosure fraud has already had one dramatic consequence. GMAC Mortgage, the lender for Ally Bank, and one of the five banks named in the lawsuit, has pulled out of Massachusetts. And they’re being really whiny about it: The nation’s fifth-largest mortgage originator said it “has taken this action [...]

Earlier this month, the Center for Responsible Lending put out a study asserting that the foreclosure crisis is only half over. We got some more data confirming that today in the form of the Case-Shiller report: U.S. home prices are falling again in most major cities after posting small gains over the summer and spring. [...]