Archive for the ‘Foreclosure’ Category

I spend a lot of time tracking the ill deeds of all sorts of slimeballs, like bank execs who think it’s fine to charge eighty percent interest on a pre-approved credit card. But out of the murky depths of the gene pool (or Florida, as it’s sometimes called) comes a new contender for lowlife of the year.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Arnim Ramdass.

What makes this guy so bad? Ramdass is a real deadbeat, running off and allowing his wife Donna Campbell to get  evicted from their home despite the fact that in June of 2007 he shared a lump sum of $10.2 million won in a lottery pool.

Campbell knew something was wrong when Ramdass (who we’ll call simply “the ass” for short) quickly had some of their utilities cut off.  She eventually found out he was hiding his lottery winnings and took him to court for a share. She lost and he split, leaving her with mortgage payments she could not afford.

Campbell’s name was never on the title and the house went into foreclosure and was auctioned off. Kind strangers, hearing her plight, are chipping in to help. A moving company offered to help move her out of the home.

Police and private investigators haven’t been able to located the husband, but Campbell believes he’s still in the area.

The ass may be looking to trade up, but his wife was no slouch. Campbell is a former runner-up in the 1979 Miss Trinidad and Tobago beauty pageant.

It’s amazing how quickly a life can unravel. “I thought winning the lotto was supposed to bring together a family, a husband and his wife,” Campbell told the Miami Herald . “But all I got was deception and lies.”

*** Update – Just got this video from CNN. Enjoy. ***

In its continuing effort to stem the tide of foreclosures, the federal government is taking a hard look at banks who are moving too slowly to modify troubled loans and holding their feet to the fire. The Treasury department is working to get more loans into permanent modifications that will provide long-term relief for struggling borrowers.

To accomplish that, government teams will go into mortgage firms to determine why so many loans are in trial adjustments, and banks will have to submit progress reports twice a day during December.

These “SWAT” teams will be able to levy additional penalties and sanctions on banks that aren’t meeting the requirements of the government’s program.

The government is currently in the midst of a massive $75 billion effort to help banks and loan servicers rework loans in default before they go into foreclosure (and further depress the housing market) but only a tiny percentage of troubled homeowners have received permanent modifications.

One would think that with one in four American homeowners underwater on their mortgage, unemployment still in the double digits and economic experts even advocating that owners walk away from their mortgages (and giving tips on how to minimize the damage to their credit), banks would be eager to help their customers stay in their homes until the housing market and economy as a whole rebound.

But just the opposite is happening.

Banks are looking to move troubled loans off their books now by not prolonging foreclosures for customers who don’t have a realistic chance of working their way back to full payments. They also want to recoup any losses before home values sink further. On the flipside, the banks don’t want to offer favorable terms to clients who would be able to pay on time without extra help.

This is the second time this year the government has called banks to the carpet over loan mods. This summer, Treasury and HUD officials called bank executives to Washington and told them to ramp up their trial modification efforts.

With high unemployment showing little sign of abating, foreclosures are now spreading throughout the country and hitting areas that didn’t benefit from a scorching hot real estate market in the earlier part of the decade. The new story of foreclosures is even more frightening.

It’s not speculators and investors losing the multiple properties they were hoping to flip, or people with exotic mortgages who shouldn’t have bought the pricey homes they did having to move. Now the jobless around the country are being forced from their modest homes after exhausting every option to make on more payment.

While homes are still being padlocked at a high rate in traditional foreclosure hot spots like Las Vegas and Orange County, unlikely candidates like Burlington, Vermont and Lincoln, Nebraska are on the list of areas with the fastest growing foreclosure rates.

In addition to employment woes, adjustable rate mortgages are also contributing to the trend hitting places like Boise and Salt Lake City, according to RealtyTrac.  In a recent press release their CEO, James J. Saccacio, is quoted as saying “Rising unemployment and a new variety of mortgage resets continued to gradually shift the nation’s foreclosure epicenters in the third quarter away from the hot spots of the last two years and toward some metro areas that had avoided the brunt of the first foreclosure wave.”

The Mortgage Bankers Association predicts that unemployment and foreclosures won’t peak until next year. So things will continue to get worse before they get better.