July 27, 2015
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- New York federal courts says HSBC Bank USA NA will face suit from National Credit Union Administration for over $2 billion in mortgage backed securities that HSBC served as trustee for.
- In the US DOJ’s reply in Quicken Loans suit against the government, the DOJ claims it is a preempted False Claims Act challenge.
- The Second Circuit accepted force-placed insurance defense in suit against Balboa Insurance Co., after finding the insurer’s premium rates were state approved.
July 27, 2015 | Permalink | No Comments
July 24, 2015
From Owners to Renters
Frank Nothaft
CoreLogic’s July issue of The MarketPulse has in interesting piece by Frank Nothaft, Rental Remains Robust (registration required). It opens,
A vibrant rental market has been an outgrowth of the Great Recession and housing market crash. Apartment vacancy rates are down to their lowest levels since the 1980s, rental apartment construction is the most robust in more than 25 years, rents are up, and apartment building values are at or above their prior peaks. But the rental market is more than just apartments in high-rise buildings.
Apartments in buildings with five or more residences account for 42 percent of the U.S. rental stock. Additionally, two-to-four-family housing units comprise an additional 18 percent of the rental stock, and one-family homes make up the remaining 40 percent.
The foreclosure crisis resulted in a large number of homes being acquired by investors and turned into rentals. Between 2006 and 2013, three million single-family detached houses were added to the nation’s rental stock, an increase of 32 percent. The increase in the single-family rental stock has been geographically broad based, but has impacted some markets more than others.
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While the growth in the rental stock has been large, so has been the demand. Some of the households seeking rental houses were displaced through foreclosure. Others were millennials who had begun or were planning families, but were unable or unwilling to buy. (1-2, footnotes omitted)
Nothaft’s focus is on the investment outlook for rental housing, but I find that his summary has a lot to offer the housing policy world as well. He describes a large change in the balance between the rental and homeowner housing stock, one that has had an outsized effect on certain communities and certain generations.
Housing policy commentators generally feel that the federal government provides way too much support to homeowners (mostly through the tax code) and not enough to renters. Perhaps this demographic shift will spur politicians to rethink that balance. Renters should not be treated like second class citizens.
July 24, 2015 | Permalink | No Comments
Friday’s Government Reports
- The U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development jointly released the New Residential Construction statistics for June 2015 – which shows sizable increases in housing starts (compared to June 2014) for multiple unit construction, particularly in the Northeast (up 159.6% for 5 units or more), South (up 10.4% overall) and the West (up 27.4%).
- The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI) for May 2015 is up .4% from April 2015. The FHFA HPI is calculated using home sales price information from mortgages sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. From May 2014 to May 2015, house prices were up 5.7 percent. The U.S. index is 1.8 percent below its March 2007 peak and is roughly the same as the April 2006 index level.
- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Monthly Complaint Report reveals that the most complained about product is the Mortgage while the biggest increase in complaints has been in the debt collection sector. The report details complaint data by company, region and financial product.
July 24, 2015 | Permalink | No Comments
July 23, 2015
This Is What Bad Faith Looks Like
A New York judge ruled in Federal National Mortgage Assoc. v. Singer, 2015 NY Slip Op. 51038(U) (July 15, 2015 Sup. Ct., New York County) (Moulton, J.) (unpublished opinion), that two lenders will forfeit more $100,000 in interest payments on two mortgages because they did not act in good faith in negotiating a mortgage modification, as required by New York law. There is a lot of choice language in the opinion, but it is useful to read the judge’s summary of what the borrowers went through in trying to get the modification.
The judge disagreed with the lenders’ “positive assessment of the negotiations” as it was “belied” by the facts:
Fannie Mae delayed filing of Action No. 1 (filed on June 14, 2011) 17 and 1/2 months after the date of default. Counsel then delayed filing the RJI [Request for Judicial Intervention] for another three months after the answer was filed. The first settlement conference, scheduled on March 14, 2012, had to be rescheduled to May 2, 2012 due to Fannie Mae’s non-appearance, a one and one-half month delay. It took Fannie Mae and its counsel another five and 1/2 months to provide an explanation for why the two mortgages could not be merged or consolidated, and only after wasting time at two conferences in June and July attended by attorneys without knowledge of the case or settlement authority and only after my court attorney probed for answers. Thereafter, the Singers submitted the requested documentation for a loan modification of the 400-Mtge., despite confusing and conflicting requests by the Rosicki firm, by August 3, 2012. When that application became “stale,” the court directed the Singers to update the information and, finally, after another two-month delay, Seterus offered the Singers a trial modification plan on or about October 11, 2012. When the Singers received the permanent loan modification papers from Seterus in January 2013, they objected to the payment of $63,632.21 in accrued interest and the $5,605.23 accrued interest. It took many months for Seterus to admit its mistake on the escrow deficiency, and only after much prodding by the court for status updates. Seterus did not offer the Singers a new loan modification agreement until the very end of October 2013 — a whopping nine-month delay. Finally, it took Fannie Mae’s counsel another five months to reject the Singers’ January 1, 2014 counteroffer to pay $18,000 of the accrued interest.
Accordingly, the court holds that Fannie Mae and/or its counsel have acted in bad faith and have unreasonably delayed a resolution of this foreclosure action. As a result, interest should be tolled on the note and mortgage in the amount over and above 2% annually, for the period from September 30, 2011 (one month after Singers’ filing of their answer in Action No. 1) through the date of this Decision and Order. (10-11, footnotes omitted)
It is hard to really get how crazy the modification process can be in the abstract, so sitting with facts like these is a useful exercise. And this seems like the right result on these facts.
I have blogged before about the Kafkaesque struggles that borrowers face. Some deny that lenders behave this badly in general but the cases and the large scale settlements “belie” this too. What will it take to give borrowers a consistent and reasonable experience with mortgage modifications?
July 23, 2015 | Permalink | No Comments
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up
- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Staff Report, Determinants of Mortgage Default and Consumer Credit Use: The Effects of Foreclosure Laws and Foreclosure Delays, examines the interconnectedness of debt repayment decisions – specifically finding that mortgage default is negatively correlated with credit card and car loan defaults, unless foreclosure is delayed, in which case default rates increase across the board.
- Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’ Remodeling Futures Program recently released its Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) index which predicts annual spending growth for home improvements will accelerate to 4.0% by the first quarter of 2016.
- According to the National Association of Realtor’s recently released June Existing Home Sales data, sales are now at their highest pace since February 2007 (5.79 million), have increased year-over-year for nine consecutive months and are 9.6 percent above a year ago (5.01 million).
- The National Low Income Housing Coalition has compiled a helpful overview of the new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule, which was released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on July 8th. This document compares the old AFFH rule to the new AFFH rule and finds it makes modest yet positive steps toward encouraging more integrated communities.
- The Urban Institute’s Are You Rent Burdened? Is an interactive calculator the allows one to imput address, income and rental amount to determine whether one is rent burdened.
July 23, 2015 | Permalink | No Comments
July 22, 2015
Money on Airbnb
I was quoted in Money magazine in an article about Airbnb, Thinking About Renting a Room to Travelers? Here’s What You Need to Know. The article reads, in part,
Of all the categories shaken up by the sharing economy, few are as transformed as lodging. For travelers, ditching the hotel for Airbnb can be a more affordable way to go. And on the flip side, offering your own home or apartment to vacationers can earn you cash—$100 to $150 a night on average, according to Airbnb, much more in some popular destinations.
That can be fairly easy money. Unless something goes wrong, in which case it can be a disaster. You need to protect yourself from legal and financial risks. Here’s what home sharers should know.
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Play It Safe
Don’t just rely on the home-sharing site’s standard insurance plan, because the coverage is generally too ambiguous, says David Reiss, research director for the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship at Brooklyn Law School. Your existing homeowners policy may cover you for a single rental of less than two weeks, but call to ask.
More than that and you’ll need to switch to a commercial policy, which covers paying guests and typically costs an additional $500 per year, says Scott Wolf of CBIZ Property & Casualty.
Or try home swapping. For a small annual fee, sites such as HomeLink and HomeExchange connect people who want to visit each other’s location; because no money changes hands, you may avoid tax and liability issues. Still, check with your insurer—and of course, you need to be extremely cautious about who you let into your house. As a rule, none of these sites conducts background checks, so do your own by Googling guests and searching their social media accounts.
“Five years from now, the laws and the insurance policies will have caught up with the sharing economy,” Reiss predicts. “For now, though, it boils down to how risk averse you are.”
July 22, 2015 | Permalink | No Comments
Wednesday’s Academic Roundup
- Valuing Control, Peter C. DiCola, 113 Michigan Law Review 663 (2015).
- A Framework for Understanding Property Regulation and Land Use Control from a Dynamic Perspective, Donald J. Kochan, 4 Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law 303 (2015).
- The Use of Listed Real Estate Securities in Asset Management, Alex Moss & Andrew Baum.
- Financial Literacy, Broker-Borrower Interaction, and Mortgage Default, James Neil Conklin.
- Mortgage Default, Juan Carlos Hatchondo, Leonardo Martinez & Juan M. Sanchez.
July 22, 2015 | Permalink | No Comments
