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

Arizona will receive $1.6 billion of the purported $25 billion joint federal-state settlement with the nation's five largest mortgage servicers for their role in wide-spread servicer and foreclosure abuses.  Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne's decision to join the broad settlement also means that his office has reached an agreement with Bank of America over allegations that it has violated an earlier consent agreement that was reached with Countrywide and allegations that Bank of America has systematically violated Arizona's Consumer Fraud Act. 

The agreement requires Bank of America to pay $10 million to the Arizona Attorney General to be used to: (1) avoid preventable foreclosure; (2) mitigate the effects of the mortgage and foreclosure crisis in Arizona; and (3) enhance law enforcement efforts to prevent and prosecute financial fraud or unfair or deceptive acts or practices, and/or provide compensation for harm resulting from conduct alleged in the lawsuit. The agreement also requires Bank of America to pay the Attorney General’s costs and attorneys’ fees incurred in the lawsuit.

Bank of America has also agreed to the following Arizona-specific provisions, which are not included in the broad federal-state settlement: (1) retain an unaffiliated third party to maximize the response rate for loss mitigation programs; (2) confirms that even borrowers who were previously denied for or defaulted on loss mitigation will not be prevented from applying again solely because of the previous denial or default; and (3) requires Bank of Ame to report Arizona-specific information about modifications and other assistance provided to Arizona borrowers.

Arizona’s estimated $1.6 billion share of the global settlement is broken down as follows: 

• $1.3 billion principally for principal reduction, but also including a menu of other relief to homeowners (how this will actually be implemented obviously remains to be seen).
• Arizona’s borrowers who lost their home to foreclosure from January 1, 2008 through December 31, 2011 and suffered servicing abuse will be eligible for an estimated $110.4 million in cash payments to borrowers, estimated at approximately$2,000 per borrower.
• The value of refinancing loans to Arizona’s current, underwater borrowers will be an estimated $85.8 million.
• The state will receive a direct payment of approximately $102.5 million (yet no mention of what this $102.5 million will be used for).

While the global settlement does not grant any immunity from criminal offenses and will not affect criminal prosecutions, as far as allegations of servicer abuse, including robo-sigining and dual-tracking go, the five largest banks have the green light to push through many of the foreclosures that have been stalled while this agreement was hammered out.  The agreement also does not prevent homeowners or investors from pursuing individual, institutional, or class action civil cases against the five servicers. The pact also enables state attorneys general and federal agencies to investigate and pursue other aspects of the mortgage crisis, including securities cases, which may be the next big fish to land.

The final agreement will be filed in the form of a consent judgment in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. and will have the authority of a court order. The consent judgment will require that Arizona’s share of the state’s direct payment be used by the Attorney General to carry out the purposes of the settlement, including to avoid preventable foreclosures, to remedy the effects of the mortgage and foreclosure crisis, and to enhance law enforcement efforts to prevent and prosecute financial fraud and unfair or deceptive acts or practices.

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Democrats on the House oversight committee have apparently been pushing to subpoena the Federal Housing Finance Agency ("FHFA") to obtain an analysis looking at what effects principal reductions would have on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 

As HousingWire has reported, FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco has long defended the agency's policy of keeping Fannie and Freddie mortgage servicers from writing down principal.  "We have been through the analytics of the underwater borrowers at Fannie and Freddie, and looked at the foreclosure alternative programs that are available, and we have concluded that the use of principal reduction within the context of a loan modification is not going to be the least-cost approach for the taxpayer."  It turns out that Mr. DeMarco's agency has yet to produce an analysis, which was requested last year by Democrats.

Several Democrats have cited a recent White Paper from the Fed allegedly acknowledging the need for principal reduction to coerce borrowers into staying in their home and provide a boost to the overall economy.  However, Fed researchers "admitted the potential benefits would be hard to quantify." 

Given that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already owe the Treasury roughly $151 billion in bailouts, it should come as no surprise that many are rightfully concerned about principal reductions, even if the pain of such reductions would be spread across the American populace.  DeMarco believes instead, Congressional action is required to force him to write down principal on loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Between the two government sponsored agencies, the total of underwater mortgages is currently about $303 Billion.  The estimated loss to both agencies for principal reductions would amount to $101.7 Billion.  The scope of such a principal write down would cause great havoc for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's accounting, which would require immediate accounting losses. 

Interesting though, in the third quarter of 2011, servicers cut principal on 10,722 modifications, roughly 7.8% of all workouts during the period, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.  That is not an insignificant number, given the general reluctance of any servicer to consider a principal reduction.  While this number is interesting, it does not say exactly who is doing the principal reductions.  Either way, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and many, many banks continue to face the specter of continued downward pressure on home prices, which will create additional underwater owners, which creates greater incentive to walk away (especially in non-recourse states).  We are no where close to getting out of the thicket on this one.   

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A new federal federal task force, dubbed the "Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group" led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sent subpoenas to the 11 largest financial institutions in the past few days as part of its investigation into possible residential mortgage-backed securities fraud. 

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who was cast off the central negotiation committee of Attorneys General trying to crack down on several securitization issues related to the major banks, seems to be gaining a foothold in his attempt to forge his own settlement with the major banks outside the realm of the federal regulators and AG Tom Miller's crew. 

Schneiderman will be joined by Delaware AG Beau Biden, Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley, Nevada AG Catherine Cortez Masto, California AG Kamala Harris and Illinois AG Lisa Madigan, several of whom refused to bow to continued pressure to try and settle legacy issues surrounding the robo-signing scandal and other securitization issues.

It is very interesting that President Obama allegedly formed this task group, which he announced during his State of the Union address Tuesday.  President Obama has come under increasing pressure to do something substantive about the ongoing foreclosure crisis, which has not been curtailed in the slightest by the introduction of yet another acronym. 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said 15 lawyers and investigators are working with the group. The FBI will add 10 agents, and another 30 lawyers and staff will join the group, along with the

The SEC will also participate. SEC Director of Enforcement Robert Khuzami said there "would be no stone unturned, no dark corner unexposed to the light."

Schneiderman, in a clear shot across the bow to the major banks commented: "We have jurisdiction to go after every aspect of the mortgage bubble and the crash of the financial market . . . We have jurisdiction over every MBS issued over the last decade with Delaware and New York joining the group."

Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, has also made clear the investigation and ongoing settlement negotiation between other state AGs and mortgage servicers over foreclosure problems would be separate and any charges would not release the banks from liability in the robo-signing scandal.

"It became clear very quickly that Eric [Schneiderman] and I shared a vision that it would be a grave injustice to hold these institutions accountable and potentially have hundreds of billions be paid to private investors and pension funds but not make sure homeowners who hold those loans who depend on being able to get those loans fixed to be able stay in those homes," Donovan said.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who has been heading up the mortgage servicer investigation, has said the resulting settlement would not release the banks from securitization or lending liabilities.

This is going to produce a very interesting political sideshow as AG Tom Miller tries to keep his band of AG's together, while Schneiderman forges ahead with the new found support of the Obama administration, which it seems only recently, was looking to help the major banks and servicers find a quick settlement to documented abuses that have been alleged by the AG's for some time now. 

The task force represents the Obama administration’s attempt to address complaints from the "Occupy" part of his constituency that it has simply failed to address the housing crisis or bring banks to account for causing it through subprime home loans that were repackaged and securitzed and sold to investors. Critics correctly point out that the Obama administration's attempts to solve the problem through government-sponsored refinancing programs and gentle begging to the banks, have been ineffective.  This is going to be a campaign issue and if the Obama administration is not going to try to spin, the Republicans certainly will.  It has been over three years since the credit crunch in earnest and the housing market had started its full-force downward spiral, and little has changed.  Not surprising to see yet another attempt by the administration to try and appease another part of the base. 

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Fourteen U.S. mortgage servicers and their affiliates are making available a free, "impartial" Independent Foreclosure Review process (website - Independent Foreclosure Review) to certain of their borrowers, as part of certain consent orders entered into with federal bank regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

The review process was put into place by the regulators to determine how many borrowers were harmed by faulty procedures including: robo-signing, dual-track foreclosures, and a shortage of qualified staff to work with delinquent borrowers.  The process has been set up to identify customers who were part of a foreclosure action on their primary residence during the period of January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2010. The reviews will span nearly 4.5 million loan files and could take up to a year to complete, according to Acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh.

If eligible borrowers believe that they were financially injured as a result of servicer errors, misrepresentations or other deficiencies in the foreclosure process on their primary residence, they can request a review of their foreclosure file to verify that their foreclosure process was handled properly.

An estimated 4.5 million borrowers will be notified by a letter explaining the review process and a Request for Review Form. The mailings will be staggered to better manage volumes in stages beginning Nov. 1, 2011, with an ad campaign to follow. A 1-800 number has been established as well.  A review administrator will allegedly send a confirmation one week after the borrower sends in a five-page request form.

Joe Evers, deputy comptroller for large banks at the OCC, said a remediation plan is still under development to determine how borrowers will be paid. He added that it could take months to figure out how to do that and it was difficult to estimate when a borrower would receive a check.  "It will be a lengthy process," Evers said.

The OCC said it would release the names of the independent consultants soon. The consent orders did leave room for a fine, but Evers said the fine will be determined after the reviews are completed.

So, another government led program aimed at addressing the fallout from the financial crisis brought on by the ramp up of securitization of home mortgages.  It appears that the Independent Foreclosure Review will be a time-consuming procedural morass that has no pre-defined mechansim for determining what remedies will be made available to eligilble homeowners.  Let's hope the various attorneys general are able to reach a substantive settlement with lenders and servicers that has some meat to it.

The list of participating servicers includes:

• America’s Servicing Co.
• Aurora Loan Services
• Bank of America
• Beneficial
• Chase
• Citibank
• CitiFinancial
• CitiMortgage
• Countrywide
• EMC
• EverBank/EverHome Mortgage Company
• GMAC Mortgage
• HFC
• HSBC
• IndyMac Mortgage Services
• MetLife Bank
• National City Mortgage
• PNC Mortgage
• Sovereign Bank
• SunTrust Mortgage
• U.S. Bank
• Wachovia Mortgage
• Washington Mutual (WaMu)
• Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

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The Mortgage Electronic Registration System ("MERS") is increasingly under attack from multiple angles.  MERS describes itself as "an innovative process that simplifies the way mortgage ownership and servicing rights are originated, sold and tracked."  Created by the real estate finance industry, including many of the largest lenders and Fannie Mae, MERS allegedly "eliminates the need to prepare and record assignments when trading residential and commercial mortgage loans."  This bypassing mechanism is what has garnered the attention of recording offices throughout the country.

Geauga County in Ohio just filed suit against MERS alleging that it bypassed the recording of mortgage assignments in local registry offices (as MERS was intentionally designed to do), thereby depriving numerous Ohio counties on revenue from filing fees.

The lawsuit comes only weeks after the Dallas County District Attorney sued MERS and its parent company, Merscorp. Inc., alleging the system acts as a shadow recording system that allows lenders to avoid local mortgage registration fees - this according to HousingWire.com.

HousingWire reports that the suit was filed by David Joyce, prosecuting attorney for Geauga County.

"The MERS business model and practices comply with the recording statutes and regulations of Ohio," a MERS statement of response reads. "This position has been upheld in numerous cases in Ohio courts and countless cases across the country on the state and Federal level. We are confident that MERS’ business practices will be upheld in court as complying with Ohio law."

The complaint also names various financial institutions as defendants – including Bank of American, Chase Home Mortgage, Citi, HSBC Bank, and others, all of whom used MERS to bypass the need to record transfers of the beneficial interest under deeds of trust on properties. 

In the suit, Geauga County claims "the defendants systematically broke chains of land title throughout Ohio counties' public land records by creating gaps due to missing mortgage assignments they failed to record, or by recording patently false or misleading mortgage assignments." The county claims MERS' failure to pay filing fees is a violation of Ohio state laws.

These suits may signal the opening of the floodgates by counties seeking to recoup lost revenue; though one must question the level of damages suffered, as each county also did not have to do the work necessary to receive the money they charge.  Makes me wonder how much it costs to record versus how much they charge for each recording. 

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