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Homeowners who’ve stopped making their mortgage payments can expect the foreclosure process to be a long, slow grind, and some new stats from LPS Applied Analytics in Jacksonville, Fla., suggest the timeline is stretching out to be even longer as the foreclosure crisis persists.
A few observations from the latest LPS data:
• Loans in the foreclosure pipeline
Fake checks are nothing new, but too many consumers are still faked out, i.e., victimized, by these scams.
That’s why the Consumer Federation of America, or CFA, and a lengthy list of government agencies and financial institutions in Tennessee recently announced plans to offer a consumer brochure to any customer who deposits or withdraws more than
143
That’s the total number of U.S. banks that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has sold off, wound up or closed so far this year.
The most recent additions to the list of failed banks, announced Nov. 5, were:
• K Bank (assets: $538 million) in Randallstown, Md.
• Pierce Commercial Bank ($221 million) Tacoma, Wash.
• Western Commercial Bank
Would you pay $2.50 to borrow $20 for one day? A week? A month?
Perhaps if you were desperate enough, you would.
But do the math and you’ll figure out that a $2.50 fee on a $20 loan for 30 days works out to an annual percentage rate, or APR, of about 150 percent. Cut the term to a
Few things in life are really fair.
But one of the most overlooked stories in the U.S. foreclosure crisis may be the strikingly large, and at times grossly unfair, disparities in how homeowners are treated depending on where they live.
Consider:
Some states handle foreclosures mainly though the courts. Others use a nonjudicial process. Still others allow both
Halloween 2010 may be over, but financial institutions might still be scared if they’ve been reading the recent remarks of Elizabeth Warren, the former Harvard University law professor who is helping to “stand up,” to use her term, the new federal consumer protection bureau.
Warren has unfolded a picture of an agency that’s little like the
Do banking customers opt in to overdraft protection on debit card charges because they want this high-priced service or because they’ve been tricked into saying yes by aggressive or deceptive marketing?
The Center for Responsible Lending, or CRL, a nonprofit organization that seeks to protect homeownership and family wealth by working to eliminate abusive financial practices,
Say goodbye to five more banks, closed so far this month by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.:
Premier Bank, $1.2 billion in assets, in Missouri.
Security Savings Bank, $508 million, in Kansas.
Wakulla Bank, $424 million, in Florida.
Shoreline Bank, $104 million, in Washington State.
Westbridge Bank and Trust Co., $91.5 million, also in Missouri.
Bank failures certainly seem like bad
Savings accounts, long a mainstay of many people’s financial lives, may no longer be a good deal.
That’s according to a recent Bankrate.com report, “The hidden cost of savings accounts,” by Christina Couch, who writes that “savings accounts can burden consumers with low return rates, hidden fees and surprise penalties.” The story suggests that consumers might want
Properties in some stage of foreclosure (loan default, scheduled for action or lender-owned), accounted for 24 percent of all U.S. home sales in the second quarter of 2010, according to the RealtyTrac online foreclosure information service. And that percentage might well have been higher had the homebuyer tax credit not goosed the sales volume.
The national
