After filing a bankruptcy petition, debtors should not be surprised if they are approached (through their attorney) about signing a reaffirmation agreement with one or more creditors. Simply put, a reaffirmation agreement is an agreement to pay an existing debt despite the bankruptcy. Most attorneys and quite a few bankruptcy judges are leery of encouraging […]
Category Archives: Foreclosure
Is there ever a good reason for reaffirming a debt?
Also posted in Practical tips, Secured loans
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A new government foreclosure plan
President Obama announced earlier this week yet another federal plan for dealing with the national surplus of foreclosures. This one could take effect as early as next week, and would allow the Federal Housing Administration to give refinanced loans backed by the government to strapped homeowners. For the lenders, the kicker is that they would […]
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Failure to modify mortgages spurs Massachusetts bankruptcies and foreclosures
The foreclosure rate in Massachusetts set another record in July, with 1243 homes lost, an 80% increase over the previous year, according to the Boston Globe. Reasons for the spike in foreclosures are many, housing specialists and economists say, including the failure of government programs to spur lenders to modify mortgage loans. “They are foreclosing […]
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Mortgage relief program falling short of goals
The New York Times is reporting that the federal “Making Homes Affordable Program” can only help one-sixth of the people it was intended to. The program, which encourages lenders to give trial loan modifications to embattled homeowners, flunked out 96,000 homeowners just in the month of July. Those numbers are leading some housing specialists to […]
Also posted in Bankruptcy News
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We are not on the short list for foreclosure relief
The Obama administration announced the second round of states that will be receiving foreclosure relief aid, and neither Massachusetts nor New Hampshire is on the list. Instead, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and South Carolina will divvy up $600M in aid. The first round of states receiving aid, which were announced in June, were […]
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Massachusetts extends foreclosure relief
A new Massachusetts law passed this week extends the state’s foreclosure relief for homeowners, attempts to protect renters from eviction, and mandates negotiations between mortgage lenders and debtors. The law extends the “right to cure” period from three months to almost five months if lenders do not attempt to negotiate a loan modification with the […]
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Walking away from a house: not a sure thing?
It’s no surprise that with the economy in the dumper and the housing market at a standstill, more and more people are trying to use bankruptcy as a means to get rid of their house, rather than trying to save it. From a green-eyeshade point of view, bailing out of a home that is seriously […]
Also posted in Bankruptcy News, Chapter 13
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Massachusetts foreclosure rate called “staggering”
This may be beginning to sound like a broken record, but the foreclosure rate in Massachusetts is way up again — enough so that the leader of the Warren Group that tracks banking news has called the situation “staggering.” Quoted in the Boston Globe, Timothy M. Warren, Jr. noted that more than 1000 Massachusetts homes […]
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Unemployment leads to foreclosure all across the country
Recently I posted on how unemployment is now the biggest reason for the surge in foreclosures in the Merrimack Valley (it used to be predatory lending, the so-called “liar loans.”). It turns out that the situation here on the Massachusetts – New Hampshire border is just a reflection of what’s going on all over the […]
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Merrimack Valley foreclosures blamed on high unemployment
More long-term homeowners with “good’’ fixed-rate mortgages are facing foreclosure, likely because of job losses, according to a University of Massachusetts Lowell researcher. The financial industry appears to have worked through much of the “bad’’ adjustable-rate mortgages from the housing bubble, many from predatory lenders, UMass Lowell researcher and writer Keith Vaillancourt told the Boston […]
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