Tucson Land Use Law Blog : Tucson Land Use Lawyer & Attorney : Fleishman Law Firm : Tax Liens, Foreclosures, Zoning

RealtyTrac estimates that 1 in every 171 United States households were in the process of losing their home - up 121% on last year. To give some perspective on that number, RealtyTrac estimates that almost 740,000 United States homes entered the foreclosure process in the second quarter of 2008. That number includes receiving a default or bank repossession notice or warning of an impending auction. That is an incredible number for three months.

Not surprisingly, the worst hit areas were Nevada, California, Florida and Arizona, which had seen the biggest house price rises during the boom years, and the largest volume of sub-prime lending. Indeed, California had the most filings - 202,599 - which was up 198% from the same period a year ago.

CONGRESSIONAL RESPONSE

In response to the worsening foreclosure crisis and credit crunch, both the House and the Senante approved a housing bill - The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 - that will provide mortgage relief for 400,000 struggling homeowners. The housing plan is aimed in large part at calming the financial markets, which have been riding a roller coaster of late, due in no small part to concerns over the financial stability of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the banking industry as a whole.

THREATENED VETO

Despite an early veto threat, President Bush said he will sign the bill promptly. President Bush opposed the bill because he claimed that $3.9 billion in proposed neighborhood grants did nothing to help homeowners. President Bush had objected to the neighborhood grants, which would be for buying and fixing up foreclosed properties, saying that they were aimed at helping bankers and lenders, not homeowners who are in trouble.

OVERHAULING FHA

The bill headed for the President's signature aims to spare an estimated 400,000 debt-strapped homeowners from foreclosure by allowing them to get more affordable mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Authority ("FHA"). The FHA could insure $300 billion in such mortgages. However, banks would first have to agree to take a large loss on the existing loans in exchange for avoiding costly foreclosures.

The bill also seeks to overhaul FHA by requiring lenders to show how high a borrower's payment could get under the terms of his mortgage. The bill also provides $180 million in pre-foreclosure counseling for struggling homeowners.

EASING THE CREDIT CRUNCH

The bill also is designed to relieve a broader credit crunch that has taken hold because of rising defaults and falling home values. To free up safer and more affordable mortgage credit, the bill permanently would increase to $625,000 the size of home loans that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy and the FHA can insure. They also could buy and back mortgages 15 percent higher than the median home price in certain areas.

The Treasury Department will also gain unlimited power, until the end of 2009, to lend money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or buy their stock should they need it. The Federal Reserve will also more actively oversee the two mortgage giants.

OTHER PROVISIONS

The bill also includes $15 billion in tax cuts, including a significant expansion of the low-income housing tax credit and a credit of up to $7,500 for first-time home buyers for houses purchased between April 9, 2008, and July 1, 2009. The bill also allows people who don't itemize their taxes to claim a $500-$1,000 deduction on their 2008 property taxes. That chiefly benefits homeowners who have paid off their homes and can't claim a deduction for mortgage interest.

Democratic leaders also tacked on an $800 billion increase, to $10.6 trillion, in the statutory limit on the national debt, which clearly irked many conservative Republicans. Those same Republicans were vehemently opposed to the bill, particularly the help for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Many argue that the companies enjoy lavish profits in good times and wield their outsized political clout to resist regulation while depending on the government to bail them out should they falter.

The Congressional Budget Office ("CBO") announced that the bailout plan could cost the government $25 billion over two years. Hard to argue that US taxpayers are not once again on the hook for a significant bailout. The difficult part in all this is to identify what the alternative is. All this "propping up" lenders and "calming" the markets gives one the feel that this is all a delicate house of cards just waiting to fall. We shall see.

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Looks like Freddie and Fannie needs Daddy's credit card. With $5.3 TRILLION in combined mortgage debt (about 1/2 of the total mortgage debt in the United States), when Wall Street and the Feds begin to worry about Freddie and Fannie's financial health, there is good reason to be concerned.

Freddie and Fannie are the MAJOR players in buying and guaranteeing loans in the secondary mortgage market. Well, last night the federal government moved on two fronts to shore up Freddie and Fannie and try an allay the markets before they open on Monday. First, the Treasury said it would provide additional liquidity as needed (Remember Bear Stearns?). Unlike the Bear Stearns melt-down however, Freddie and Fannie generally have not faced liquidity problems. But as their problems proliferate, there is always a danger that they might face funding difficulties, thus, the need for daddy's credit card, just in case.

The feds also moved on another front - recapitalization. Freddie and Fannie are seriously undercapitalized. Freddie and Fannie are known as government sponsored enterprises ("GSE's"). As GSE's, Freddie and Fannie do not have to follow the same rules as others. Freddie Mac, for example, had about $16 billion in shareholder capital at the end of the last quarter, supporting $2.1 trillion in assets. Any real private financial sector institution operating with than kind of capitalization would be required to raise more money. But it seems that Freddie and Fannie don't have to play by real rules because the government has their back. That is why Freddie and Fannie can exist in a world where all their assets are invested in the mortgage market - not the place to be right now, right?

Nonetheless, it is interesting to not that last week Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, appearing before the House Financial Services Committee stated that the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (Freddie and Fannie's regulator), found both companies adequately capitalized. Indeed, Democrat Chris Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee Chairman also said that "Fannie and Freddie are in sound situation. They have more than adequate capital -- in fact, more than the law requires. They have access to capital markets. They're in good shape. The chairman of the Federal Reserve has said as much. The secretary of the Treasury as said as much."

The only thing stopping Daddy (Treasury/Henry Paulson) from extending credit is Congress. While this situation reeks of a potential bailout, the silver lining in all this is that Fannie and Freddie not only have a rich daddy, they happen to be backed by pretty decent mortgages, not the subprimes that tanked many mortgage lenders. Still, their shares have been battered, down nearly 45% last week. The real purpose in all this is to assuage market fear. The feds don't want market turmoil, otherwise, the house of cards comes tumbling down.

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A recent Reader's Digest article highlighted Clint Medford, referred to by some as "Mr. Foreclosure." While the foreclosure epidemic certainly has hit many homeowners and would-be investors hard, it has created a host of interesting opportunities for savvy investors and thieves alike.

Often a foreclosed home will sit empty for a time, which has invited a brand of looters who strip a home of its valuable materials. Indeed, as copper prices have sky-rocketed in recent years, desperate looters are stealing copper wires and pipes from foreclosed homes. Indeed, it has been reported that some owners of very expensive homes have stripped their own homes before foreclosure. This phenomenon is happening most prevalently in the Rust Belt states. Some estimate that the average home has over $1,000 in copper in it. Despite some recent legislative attempts to control the scrap metal market, thieves have successfully been able to find buyers for the stolen metal.

In those instances where a lender is sitting on a home that has sat for several months and no longer is inhabitable because of the destruction to the home, Medford steps in. He has created a network of banks that look to him to unload their rising stock of these uninhabitable homes. Medford has picked up houses for as little as a few thousand dollars. Rather than touch the hyper-inflated California markets, Medford focuses his purchases in the tough hit areas in the Rust Belt and places like Detroit, that has been especially hard hit.

Medford puts a little money into the house and turns around and sells it to investors looking for rental properties. Medford has a list of about 600 to 700 investors ready to purchase the homes he has picked up on the cheap from the banks. While selling to investors proved to be good business, Mr. Foreclosure has stepped into a completely new realm - mortgage lender.

For many in the foreclosure belt, many people may be able to afford some of the houses now for sale, but they can not get a mortgage. That is where Medford is stepping in. Rather than make the mistakes that many lenders were making during the rah-rah days of the hysterical real estate boom, Medford works with people by doing something unheard of - verifying their income. Hard to believe there was a time when people could get loans with NO income, just a credit score. The same buyers that obtained sub-prime loans and later faced foreclosure are the same people coming back to buy some of the homes that Medford has to offer. In other words, Medford is stepping in where the banks are all afraid to go right now.

Many question whether someone like Medford is a "foreclosure vulture" or someone willing to stop the forthcoming blight of neighborhoods hard hit by the foreclosure crisis. Sure Medford is charging 11 percent for a mortgage on a house he may have bought for a couple thousand dollars, but he is providing people an opportunity to get back into a house for less than they would be paying in rent in many places. That is a whole lot less shady than the other vultures who swoop in before a foreclosure only to grab someone's title and equity because they can think of no other options. It sure is interesting out there though.

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