Sep232015
How sleazy attorneys help irresponsible homeowners game the system
When sleazy attorneys help deadbeat homeowners obtain free housing, everyone else pays a price through low housing inventory and higher home prices.
Human interest stories need heroes. We are supposed to feel empathy for the aggrieved party that overcomes tough obstacles or intransigent people to achieve a victory for themselves and justice for us all. But have you noticed that the human interest stories from the housing bubble have no heroes?
The housing bust brought out the worst in mankind. Everyone involved sought to avoid any financial responsibility and looked for ways to game the system to their advantage. Banks lobbied for (and obtained) massive bailouts. Homeowners begged for principal forgiveness and loan modifications, and when they didn’t get what they wanted, many quit paying their mortgages and squatted for years paying nothing for housing.
The cast of despicable characters includes lenders, realtors, delinquent mortgage squatters, holdover tenants, mortgage brokers, Wall Street financiers, basically anyone involved with real estate. Today’s featured article profiles some of the nefarious characters, looks at their motivations and sense of entitlement, and illustrates what happens when everyone is wrong, greedy, and stupid.
Sue Your Bank, Keep Your Home, Repeat
Inside a deeply suspect mortgage-relief operation in L.A.
Anna Scott, September 10, 2015
Four years ago, Robert and Joan Potter were facing a crisis. The monthly payments on their two-bedroom home in the coastal suburb of Laguna Niguel, Calif., had ballooned from $2,000 to $5,000 in the decade since they bought it for about $360,000. Now the retirees were rapidly falling behind.
Why did they enter into such a bad deal? The article fails to mention the $300,000 or more they extracted in mortgage equity withdrawal. Nor does it mention the sleazy mortgage broker that put retirees in an Option ARM to generate an easy commission — and those are just the boots on the ground.
What about the Wall Street tycoons that created the machinery? Thieves like Anthony Mozilo who peddled the Option ARM to obtain great wealth. He sold his company in 2005 and walked away with millions while simultaneously destroying the lives of millions of people. Infamy is not punishment enough.
Everyone was bad. Everyone.
“It was my parents’ dream home,” said their son, Derrick, 43. Derrick, who works as a mortgage consultant, said Robert and Joan got suckered into the kind of inflationary deal known as a negative amortization loan, since outlawed by state legislators. “They had some sleazy mortgage broker who said my mom, who hasn’t worked in 25 years, made $10,000 a month.”
And why did mortgage consultant Derrick fail to educate his parents on the perils of this loan?
Why did his mother knowingly sign a document claiming she made $10,000 a month when she was retired? It strains credulity to believe she was ignorantly duped into committing mortgage fraud, particularly when a very large cash-out check was involved.
It’s far more likely that she knew it was wrong but went along for the free money, don’t you think? Is this the behavior of an innocent victim you want to emerge victorious?
Still, there was hope. The Potters heard about a firm called Brookstone Law, which was pioneering a novel strategy for challenging allegedly predatory banks. The best part: As long as Brookstone was representing Robert and Joan, the bank would hold off on collecting mortgage payments or foreclosing.
So after extracting hundreds of thousands in mortgage equity withdrawal (stealing from a compliant bank), they found a way to avoid repayment (and responsibility).
Is this the behavior of a hero? Is this the American Way?
While you were working and paying your rent, this family was borrowing on false pretenses and spending $300,000+ — and not paying their mortgage. How do feel about that?
In 2011, Robert and Joan paid Brookstone $6,000 to become the lead plaintiffs in a “mass joinder” lawsuit against their lender, JPMorgan Chase Bank.
“I think, generally speaking, these mass joinder cases are a new twist on an old scene,” said California Assemblyman Mike Gatto, a Democrat and former lawyer who chairs the state’s privacy and consumer protection committee and sits on its banking committee. After the financial crisis, a cottage industry cropped up offering relief to people with subprime loans. In many cases, however, these companies only subjected borrowers to a second round of abuse. “Somebody is in trouble, they get a call, and say ‘you’ll get relief if you sign onto our lawsuit.’ It’s a small price to pay to keep my biggest asset. But these are all just variations of fraud.”
One of the houses I bought at auction in Las Vegas was occupied by the former owners. They filed bankruptcy after the foreclosure twice before I was able to evict them. When we finally took possession, we found a check on the counter written to their attorney for $150: they were late with their monthly “rent” check to continue gaming the system.
If they provided their attorney this check on a timely basis, I might still be trying to take possession of the house, and the young family I sold it to would be living in a rental, wondering why there is no inventory on the market.
Do you see the hidden cost in this behavior?
Does it feel “right” or “just” for people to use attorneys to obtain free housing? Why pay the rightful owner rent when you can pay an attorney much less instead?
When these former owners came back to my house (a house that took me a full year to obtain) they were greeted by Sheriff’s deputies and a moving van filled with their stuff. We also presented them with a bill for a year’s back rent (which they didn’t pay).
I was told the owners had a complete meltdown in the front yard — crying, yelling, threatening. Sheriff’s deputies kept the process going without interruption.
Although it’s not spiritually uplifting, I took pleasure in that.
Assholes.
Is Brookstone the con that banks and former clients allege? Or is Torchia, already halted from practicing law by the California state bar, outmatched and getting smeared as he wages what he claims is a lonely, David-vs.-Goliath fight for homeowner rights?
These guys don’t care the slightest about homeowner rights. It was a convenient method for obtaining a monthly stipend, nothing more.
It didn’t take long for the partnership among Brookstone, Kramer, and Stein to sour. As Torchia tells it, he did things the right way, while everyone else around him was willing to bend the rules. In August 2011, California Attorney General Kamala Harris sued Kramer and Stein for false advertising of mortgage mass joinders, among other allegations, and won court orders allowing the state bar to take over their law practices. In a press release, Harris said the move was based on “false and misleading representations” the lawyers used to lure clients, not “the legal merits of any claims asserted in the mass joinder lawsuits filed by defendants.”
Stein sued back. In a lawsuit filed against Harris in September 2011, he denied the attorney general’s allegations and accused her of being “the pawn of America’s most powerful banks.” His suit was dismissed a year later. Stein was ultimately suspended from practicing law in California in 2013 after a conviction in an unrelated fraud case. He’s currently serving a 17-year prison sentence in Florida.
A real man of the people, right?
Back in 2010, Golden was appointed by the court to oversee United Law Group’s liquidation, scour its finances, figure out what assets were still there, and make a plan for paying back creditors. After going through the company’s accounts and interviewing employees and ex-employees, Golden reached a conclusion. He is reluctant to elaborate, but it is all laid out in a lawsuit he filed against Torchia and Brookstone about six months after the raid.
In it, Golden claimed that Damian Kutzner, of Serious Pimp, masterminded Brookstone as a vehicle to funnel more than $200,000 and future income out of the reach of United Law’s creditors. Golden asked the court to let him take over administering United Law’s remaining debt clients from Torchia. The court eventually did.
“Jeff Golden is a piece of shit,” said Torchia. “He ruined my life.”
Pot, see Kettle.
Banks’ responses to Brookstone suits have varied. Some voluntarily halted foreclosures and even mortgage demands as long as the cases were active, as JPMorgan Chase did with the Potters. As the cases dragged on or got dismissed, however, banks again started demanding payments. … Increasingly, Torchia is dealing with angry clients who say they’re no better off than when they started.
Retired radiology technician Jose Velasco, 69, borrowed money from his sister a few years ago to pay Brookstone a $6,000 fee to join a case against OneWest and IndyMac banks, filed in November 2013. He and his wife, Beatrice, had already been foreclosed on when they heard about the firm. “They told us we could get some money,” Velasco said through a thick Salvadorian accent. “The value of the home and some punitive charges … you know, stress caused by it.” Until I told him, Velasco had no idea that the court had dismissed all the plaintiffs in the case (except for the lead one) last year.
Do you feel any sympathy for this guy? He undoubtedly extracted a ton of cash, gamed the system for free rent for years, and now he bitches that it’s not enough. His greed blinds him to the evil that he does. 
For some Brookstone clients, the outcomes of the cases hardly matter.
Aaron Sebagh, 63, is one of the plaintiffs in the Wright case. He lives in a two-story, beige stucco house on a hilly street in the wealthy suburb of Thousand Oaks, Calif. “I’m like everybody else with this economy,” said the Paris native, through a thick French accent. “Everybody got hurt.”
Sebagh said he got the same type of negative amortization loan the Potters did when he bought his place in 2005. He managed to stay current with his payments and eventually worked out a modification he’s pleased with. Yet he’s happy to be attached to Brookstone’s lawsuit, not because he particularly needs relief but for the priceless satisfaction of sticking it to the bank.
So the bank unilaterally changed a contract in favor of the borrower so he can keep his house, and he feels the need to stick it to them?
He should be thanking them.
“They don’t care less about you,” said Sebagh, whose black eyebrows arch dramatically above the matching black frames of his glasses. “There’s no sympathy, no nothing. That’s the reason I did it. They need to be punished for everything.”
While I agree that lenders are more culpable than borrowers, and I would love to see them ground into pulp, he has nothing to complain about. He kept a house he couldn’t afford and doesn’t deserve. He’s merely being a curmudgeon.
The Potters aren’t as pleased as Sebagh. Their case officially died when it was dismissed in January. … Chase again started demanding payments after the case was thrown out. The Potters sold their home in March for $700,000. Despite fetching nearly twice what they bought it for, the Potters’s debt on the property had grown so large that the deal was a short sale, said Bob Gottuso, the agent who handled the deal.
Gottuso doesn’t know how that happened …
Let me clue him in: THEY BORROWED AND SPENT THEIR HOUSE! How else does something like that happen?
Torchia admits he could’ve been more communicative with the Potters and the others who joined their suit. “They didn’t get as timely updates as we’d like to,” he said. Still, on the bright side, “None of them had made payments on their homes for years.”
And that’s exactly why none of them should complain. And what about the families waiting for this house? Everyone in the industry is complaining about a lack of inventory, but much of it is tied up with losers gaming the system for free housing. Who advocates for the displaced families waiting for these deadbeats to get pushed out?
What do you do with a story that has no sympathetic characters?
Perhaps William Shakespeare said it best:
I am hurt.
A plague a’ both your houses! I am sped.
Is he gone and hath nothing?
Romeo And Juliet Act 3, scene 1, 90–92
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8fpT4RRZyQ
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Bill Gross talking his fixed income book, pressuring the Fed to raise rates:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-23/gross-tells-fed-to-get-off-zero-now-as-economies-run-on-empty
I will go watch this:
The Big Short
These folk are so bad with money, few understand the great benefit they received by paying zero rent for months/years. They lack the basic math ability to calculate how much they saved by paying a bottom-feeder attorney rather than their mortgage.
I’m one of the “entitled borrowers” though, I’ll admit. I repeatedly tried to get BofA to modify my second purchase loan (piggyback), with no success. They didn’t have to, but they could have easily because they serviced and owned the second. A reasonable rate reduction would have created a loyal lifetime customer, in a demographic they covet and spend millions trying to attract. Instead, I am now a proselytizing anti-BofA advocate who will never do any business with BofA nor its affiliates. One reason I didn’t want to use a correspondent lender for my new mortgage, is because I didn’t want the remote possibility that BofA could own or service the mortgage.
That’s too bad, because their Jumbo’s are currently the best deal around with the lowest rate plus 0.625 points in credit back on closing.
LOL!! Negative real rates leads to misallocation of capital which ALWAYS ends in asset deflation; thus, wishing it (“the best deal around”) was true doesn’t make it true… it makes you a chump who fell for the con.
Have a nice day.
$6K in cash plus $200K in asset inflation
Was it me or you who was conned? Welcome to the shell game.
That’s the million dollar question that will be the two million dollar question 10 years from now
Alternatively, you have a fixed dollar amount (20% down) investment that will yield a fixed monthly income when it matures in 30 years.
Probably the most best retirement account someone in the 20’s or 30’s can invest in.
The effective rate paid on the debt, considering tax adjustments and inflation, might even be negative when averaged over the next three decades.
Not to mention the likely horrible alternative outcome on a 30 year bond.
I am a big fan of mortgage debt on cashflow assets for the reason you described. At some point, my effective interest rate will be near zero, and rent inflation will continue to improve the cashflow.
The higher rates go… The better the investment will likely be.
When I owned my house in Florida, my loan was sold to Huntington Bank: https://www.huntington.com/. The improperly applied a payment of mine, so for the last seven months I owned the property, they took each payment as late — and charged me $25. When I got the preliminary HUD, I spent about two hours on the phone with their incompetent servicing staff. I thought I had the problem resolved, but when I reviewed the documents at closing, they were still charging me the $175 in inappropriate late fees. Since I was sitting at a closing table, it was either sign or create a huge mess, so I went ahead and signed the deal.
To this day, I hate Huntington Bank. I tell this story to anyone who will listen so they will never use Huntington Bank. It’s my goal in life to cost them more than the $175 they took from me.
Mortgage apps skyrocket on lower interest rates
Mello Roos Called This
Mortgage applications increased 13.9% from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending Sep. 18, 2015.
The previous week’s results included an adjustment for the Labor Day holiday.
The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 13.9% on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 26% compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index increased 18% from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 9% from one week earlier to its highest level since June 2015. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 20% compared with the previous week and was 27% higher than the same week one year ago.
“We saw significant rate volatility last week surrounding the FOMC meeting, and rate declines toward the end of the week likely drove applications from both prospective home buyers and borrowers looking to refinance. The 30-year fixed rate remained unchanged over the week even though there was substantial intra-week fluctuation, but we saw rate decreases in other loan products like the 15-year fixed, 5/1 ARM, and 30-year jumbo,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Chief Economist.
Terwilliger: Housing is in “such desperate shape”
Ronald Terwilliger, the chairman emeritus and retired CEO of Trammell Crow Residential, said that in his four decades of working in housing, he has never seen housing in such desperate shape.
In a blog on the Bipartisan Policy Center’s website, Terwilliger explained that despite the awful housing conditions, the majority of Americans who today live in safe and affordable homes and communities, concerns about housing may seem abstract and distant.
The deplorable conditions in housing today should concern all of us, regardless of whether we are satisfied with our own personal housing situations. To me, three words summarize why this is so: Family. Community. Country.
Millions of well-housed parents with children of college age and older know all too well what their sons and daughters are up against. Skyrocketing rents, particularly in our major cities, are causing severe cases of sticker shock. When combined with student loan debt, these costs make the idea of saving enough for a mortgage down payment seem far-fetched. For parents of these young adults, housing is a very serious family concern
[How does this fit with the industry spin about how great housing is doing?]
Housing is doing great!!! With year after year improvements in price, there has never been a better time to buy!
It is always a great time to buy and sell real estate.If you dont trust me, ask any agent.
You guys will get a kick out of tomorrow’s post. I make the case that now is a good time to buy.
Number of homes losing value monthly triples in past year
The number of homes nationwide losing value on a monthly basis has more than tripled over the past year while the number of appreciating homes has fallen more than 12%, according to Allan Weiss, CEO of Weiss Residential Research.
Depreciating homes increased from 7.6% to 23.4% while the number of appreciating homes has fallen from 65.2% to 56.8%, according to an analysis of July data from “canary homes” that are indicators of price trends in Weiss Residential Research’s databases of nearly 100 million homes.
“While a majority of homes nationwide is still gaining value, the national trend is clearly downward. With the decline in year over year prices in the existing home sales report released today by the National Association of Realtors, even the national median price reports are picking up on the trend, reflecting the growing of numbers homes that are changing from appreciation to depreciation,” Weiss said.
“In this environment buyers and investors should be careful to avoid buying properties that are losing value by reviewing metro and Zip code maps on Owners.com that show hyper-local trends in changing value,” he said.
CFPB Complaint Report Cites Problems With Loan Mod Process
The CFPB began accepting complaints from consumers about financial products shortly after opening its doors in July 2011. As of September 1, 2015, the Bureau had received 702,900 complaints in slightly more than four years, and about 192,500 (27.3 percent) of those complaints have been about mortgages, making it overall the most complained-about category. The mortgage market is the largest consumer financial marketplace in the country with more than $10 trillion in total value. The CFPB enacted new mortgage rules in 2014 to ensure strong consumer protections and also ensure that lenders offered affordable mortgages to consumers.
“Despite strong protections that have been put in place to protect homeowners, this month’s complaint report shows consumers are still having problems when dealing with their mortgages,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said. “The Bureau will continue to work to make sure that consumers are being treated fairly on their mortgage issues.”
About 30 percent of consumers’ mortgage complaints expressed confusion and frustration with regards to the payment process when loans are transferred, citing unexpected payment increases, difficulty determining who should be paid, or that the borrower was not informed that the loan was being transferred. Some borrowers said the transfer was even more problematic when it occurred when the borrower had a loan modification pending or foreclosure proceedings were in the works; some consumers stated that had they would not have lost their homes if the loan transfer had not occurred.
In the ten years I’ve had loans on my investment property, the loans have been transferred four or five times. It was worse before we refinanced and had a first and a second.
Paying the loan hasn’t been an issue. The problem is with the escrow account. The new servicer screws up paying the taxes and homeowner’s insurance and then sends us a notice that unless we provide them proof of insurance they will start charging us 3x the normal rate. Our insurance company then sends us a letter that we are going to be cancelled for non-payment! It take a few weeks to straighten it out every time. The bank should be paying me for my time to fix their screw-ups.
I wish there was a law that required homeowner approval before the loan could be sold. Maybe the CFPB could take this up?
This is why when I owned a home I never had an escrow account. When I had first purchased a home they failed to pay the property taxes out of the escrow account and I kept get notices from the county. After that experience I just opted to never have an escrow account and paid the taxes/insurance myself.
There is a federal law on this issue, but it solely requires disclosure to the borrower if the creditor has any intent to transfer servicing.
Informing a borrower that the lender is unilaterally changing a key part of the contract is hardly sufficient. I understand that the borrower has “agreed” to this as part of the T&C’s in the contract. But, since all mortgage agreements have this transferability clause, borrowers have no choice in the matter if they want a loan – which is required to buy a house.
I wonder how the banks would feel about borrowers transferring their obligation to pay, unilaterally? Part of the consideration in choosing a bank, in addition to the rate and origination costs, is the quality of the servicing. Does the bank have online payment? Are they easy to contact? Do they have a local branch? Is it easy to make principal payments? Can I set up automatic payments? Do they continually mishandle my payment?
You enter into a contract with a bank you are happy with and six months later they sell the loan to some German pension fund. You are stuck trying to deal with a situation you never contemplated when you got the loan. I’ve had servicers that I seriously considered refinancing just to get away from. As rates rise, people will be stuck with their servicers, and servicer “service” will decline rapidly.
Home Prices Increased in July as Job Market Improves & Demand Rises
.
Notice how they spin a good month’s results
“Home sales continued their brisk rebound in July and home prices reflected that, up 6.9 percent from a year ago,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at CoreLogic. “Over the same period, the National Association of Realtors reported existing sales up 10 percent and the Census Bureau reported new home sales up 26 percent in July.”
“Low mortgage rates and stronger consumer confidence are supporting a resurgence in home sales of late,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “Adding to overall housing demand is the benefit of a better labor market which has provided millennials the financial independence to form new households and escape ever-risings rental costs.”
[If the housing market were on solid ground with improving fundamentals, why did sales unexpectedly decline in August, typically the strongest month of the year?]
Existing-Home Sales Dropped in August
Home sales in the United States slid in August at the steepest pace since January.
Sales of existing homes fell 4.8 percent from the previous month, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.31 million, the lowest level since April, the National Association of Realtors said on Monday. That’s down from 5.58 million in July.
“[If the housing market were on solid ground with improving fundamentals, why did sales unexpectedly decline in August, typically the strongest month of the year?]”
El Nino?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html
“During August, sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies were near or greater than +2.0oC across the eastern half of the tropical Pacific (Fig. 1). SST anomalies increased in the Niño-3.4 and Niño 3-regions, were approximately unchanged in the Niño-4 region, and decreased in the Niño-1+2 region (Fig. 2). Large positive subsurface temperature anomalies persisted in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific during the month (Fig. 3), with the largest departures exceeding 6oC (Fig. 4).”
You are thinking like an economist now.
When in doubt, blame the weather.
The extreme humidity kept people indoors because going to open houses would have made the sweat too much.
But don’t worry, all of this pent up demand will cause both volumes and prices soaring once La Nina is here again.
Precisely my point. Look for more weather citations in the coming months as precipitation has a plausible impact on housing traffic.
Weather does have a real impact on sales, just not as much as rates and prices. Housing sector economists can’t say that prices are too high, or that rates are impacting affordability, so weather is a convenient excuse.
This Fall will be brutal!
-el ORACLE
Opening of new-homes community Esencia, east of San Juan Capistrano, draws 10,000 people
Orange County’s second big new-home opening this year drew more than 10,000 viewers Sunday, land developer Rancho Mission Viejo reported.
The first 840 homes in the 2,800-unit Esencia development, located off Ortega Highway east of San Juan Capistrano, went on sale last weekend, offering 42 model homes representing 12 product types by seven builders.
Esencia is the second phase of the final 14,000 homes planned for the historic 312-square-mile South County cattle ranch on which such communities as Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and Ladera Ranch were built. The first project, Sendero, has just a few homes that have yet to close escrow.
Last month, about 25,000 people turned out for the opening of the 1,029-home Beacon Park project, the second development to debut on former El Toro Marine base land surrounding the Orange County Great Park in north Irvine.
Together, the two projects may help boost new home sales numbers that had been sagging since November, even as overall home sales have been climbing.
New home sales are down nearly 22 percent in Orange County year-to-date, CoreLogic figures show. Building executives and housing consultants believe that this year’s sales decline may be due to a lack of product to meet demand.
Starting prices for Esencia homes run from just under $500,000 to $1.1 million. By comparison, starting prices at the more centrally located Beacon Park range from just over $600,000 to $1.4 million.
Dodd-Frank is not killing mortgage access for home buyers
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dodd-frank-is-not-killing-mortgage-access-for-home-buyers-2015-09-22
Thanks for sharing. Do you get the impression and you and I are the only ones that appreciate Dodd-Frank?
Feels that way. I was burned buying in 2007, not because I bought a house I couldn’t afford, but because everyone around me was doing so. How could you not celebrate a federal law that eliminates this behavior? I know everyone buying in my development today has the income and/or wealth to reasonably afford the house they’re buying. This is very comforting.
Low rates are the new affordability product. It’s doubtful that many of them could afford the house without the highly subsidized environment we are currently in.
I don’t think it’s fair to describe low rates as “affordability products.” Affordability products (negative amortization, interest-only, teaser rates, NINJA loans, etc.) deviate from 30-year fixed rate/fixed payment loans creating risk within the product itself, that the borrower is ill-prepared to manage.
This isn’t the case with low rates. The risk does not lie in the borrower’s ability to repay the loan, but rather in the home’s value declining as rates rise. That’s a significant difference.
It’s the difference that makes all the difference. Artificially low rates like we have today have the same effect on the market as affordability products: it increases house prices, but low rates when applied to a fixed-rate mortgage is extremely stable, so low rates are nothing like the toxic affordability products of the bubble.
I also take comfort in the fact that the neighborhoods I want to buy in, neighborhoods I can afford today, will always be accessible and affordable to me because lower income people will not be able to leverage themselves in and leverage me out.
I gamed the system by buying a short sale in 2012 with an FHA loan. I dont feel bad about it at all.
I don’t think that’s gaming the system at all. That’s just good timing.
I was buying REOs in Las Vegas with GSE loans back in 2011 and 2012, and I don’t feel guilty at all.
IR – I’ve seen it many times when a borrower will file BK the day of the sheriff’s sale, but the bank doesn’t get notified right away, so they have to undo the foreclosure sale after the fact. I wasn’t aware that filing BK would stall a post-foreclosure eviction. Why would it matter if the asset is no longer in the name of the borrower and the debt has been cancelled?
They filed the bankruptcy a couple days after the foreclosure and the attorney through the property into the bankruptcy anyway. It was not appropriate, but I had to go through a process to get the property removed from the bankruptcy filing. The day after we got it removed, the attorney re-filed the bankruptcy a second time and through the property in again. We had to go through the process a second time and have the judge order that it couldn’t happen a third time.
It was an egregious manipulation of the bankruptcy system, which is why it pissed me off so much. It’s also why I took pleasure in their heartache when we finally booted them out.
The Bankruptcy Code includes provisions for sanctioning filers and their attorneys for egregious misuse of the process.
It’s like anything though.. Does the cost of pursuing sanctions pay off in any worthwhile way? As an investor, he just wanted to take possession of the property and get it rented asap to start generating a return.
The author of this article is an arrogant ape. He has no idea what he is talking about, and shouldn’t ever be allowed to write his naive and ridiculously ignorant commentary in a public forum. He should be shot and lynched like the pig he is.
Good article, ties all the various pigs feeding at the trough together.
Perhaps it was due to editing, but I missed a few of these relationships. Who is “Golden?” First name? Is he a receiver?
Great post! Shows how the lending and real estate bastards confuse public forums with already bought media outlets. Makes them wish the author would turn into an ape-pig hybrid that would have no problem in a fist to fist duel with Manbearpig.