This past Saturday, my husband and I attended the Help for Homeowners Community Event that I referred to in this post. The event took place at the Minneapolis Hilton. We got there at around 10 a.m., and a lot of people were there already. When I saw how many people were there, I couldn’t help [...]

The blog, Credit Slips, recently featured a post by Adam Levitin about whether mortgages should ever be non-recourse.
I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Levitin’s post. I’d also like to add that the current mess that we have found ourselves in is an anomaly. It wasn’t normal for housing prices to increase at such a high [...]

If you are unable to afford your mortgage and would like to see if you can save your home, this Minneapolis event is being advertised on the Making Home Affordable website. It will be taking place on Saturday, July 24, from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the Minneapolis Hilton. Click here for more details. [...]

Fannie Mae recently announced that it plans to punish people who strategically default on their mortgages.  This announcement was met with skepticism by some housing and lending experts.
It’s difficult to blame Fannie Mae for being nervous about people walking away from their mortgages when strategic default is being regularly reported on in the news:
Owners [...]

Last night, on 60 Minutes, there was a segment about people strategically defaulting on their mortgages. Watch the video to gain some insight into why people are doing it, and how they struggled with deciding whether they should do it.

The Minnesota Home Ownership Center recently blogged about how the “next wave of foreclosures is rapidly approaching Minnesota.” It predicted that this wave of foreclosures will have a large impact on the outer-ring suburbs of the Twin Cities.
Mortgage delinquencies are currently at historic highs. According to a recent report from Lender Processing Services more [...]

The Dakota County Community Development Agency runs the Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Program for Dakota County residents. If you are a homeowner in Dakota County who may be facing foreclosure, or if you are already in foreclosure, click here for more information about the Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Program.
Minnesota homeowners living outside of Dakota County can contact [...]

The New York Times recently posted this article about CitiMortgage testing out a deed in lieu of foreclosure program in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. According to the article, this new program “is similar to one announced last fall by Fannie Mae, the government-controlled mortgage company. Fannie is allowing homeowners to return [...]

On the Credit Slips blog, Katie Porter recently posted a follow-up blog entry to an article that she wrote in 2007 about the failure of lenders to produce proper paperwork in bankruptcy mortgage claims.  The blog entry and the cases that she links to are worth reading.

When a homeowner is worried that they might lose their house to foreclosure, they are usually also worried about whether their state is a “recourse” or “non-recourse” state. In a non-recourse state, if the funds from the sale of the mortgaged property (the house) are  not enough to cover the outstanding debt (the amount the [...]