Bounced checks add insult to injury of wrongful foreclosure
It’s a classic case of adding insult to injury. Big banks that engaged in wrongful foreclosure practices have finally gotten around to sending checks to compensate homeowners for at least some of the harm they suffered. But the checks bounced! In the San Antonio area and nationwide, foreclosure has affected an almost unimaginable number of […]
Foreclosure in Texas: how long does the process take?
It’s been a few months since we wrote about foreclosure. We last covered it in a discussion of the benefits of the automatic stay in bankruptcy. The points we made in our December 5 post about the benefits of bankruptcy as a form of genuine debt relief remain valid. Today, we will explain how foreclosure […]
Foreclosure defense: the benefits of the automatic stay
Few people or organizations want to seem Scrooge-like at Christmas. The enduring image of Charles Dickens’s fictional character is a cautionary tale of pushing people too hard at the holidays. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant, quasi-public mortgage lenders, have announced a moratorium on evictions from December […]
Foreclosure in San Antonio: an update on trends
In the long, sluggish slump that has followed the real estate crisis, many people turned to bankruptcy to help save their homes. In particular, the automatic stay on creditors’ collection efforts that comes with a bankruptcy filing can help forestall a home foreclosure action by a mortgage lender. The San Antonio area has been greatly […]
Preventing Foreclosure: How Banks Failed on Loan Modification
Big banks bear a lot of responsibility for the foreclosure crisis of recent years. In fact, they’ve admitted it. Five of the nation’s largest banks entered into a settlement with the federal governments and 49 states earlier this year. The banks agreed to pay $25 billion as compensation for foreclosures that often did not meet […]
Foreclosure Prevention: New Rules Proposed for Mortgage Servicers
A flood of foreclosures has many engulfed hundreds of thousands of people since the Great Recession hit in 2007. This includes hundreds of people in the San Antonio and many more throughout Texas. Federal efforts to stem the tide have been largely ineffective. And mortgage lenders and services have done little to work constructively with […]
Unlike a Short Sale, Bankruptcy Does Not Depend on Lender Approval
If you are behind on your mortgage payments, you are not alone. Many other people in the San Antonio area are too, as well as millions more nationally. Keep in mind, as you consider your choices, that filing for bankruptcy provides an automatic stay on home foreclosure proceedings. Of course, there are also other potential […]
San Antonio Foreclosure Data and the National Economy
The real estate meltdown has affected different parts of the country in very different ways. In over-built areas like Phoenix or Miami, the drop in values, and the high rate of foreclosure, remains acute. Yet there are other regions of the U.S. where prices and home ownership have remained more stable. Even in more stable […]
Feds Investigate ‘Robosigning’ in Credit Card Debt Collection
“Déjà vu all over again” is a phrase commonly attributed to the baseball great Yogi Berra. It can apply in many contexts – most recently in allegations of widespread improper conduct by credit card debt collectors at JP Morgan Chase. To a consumer bankruptcy attorney, this seems a lot like what Time magazine called “robosigner […]
Debt Collection Actions for Medical Bills Take Toll on Consumer Credit
In the wake of the Great Recession, the number of Americans being contacted by debt collection agencies has increased markedly. In 2005, before the recession, debt collectors contacted 22 million people about medical bills alone. By 2010, this had increased to 30 million, according to a When you talk to a consumer bankruptcy attorney, you […]