September 26, 2017
Tuesday’s Regulatory & Legislative Roundup
- Wells Fargo may have thought it was out the fire with their fraudulent accounts scandal; however, the super bank may face additional penalties. The Federal Reserve may be next in line to penalize the bank. Earlier this year, Wells Fargo received a $100 million dollar fine from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Though, Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve, did not allude to the specifics of a looming penalty the agency may impose, she did mention the agency will do whatever is necessary to ensure the appropriate controls are in place within the organization.
- After 30 years, East St. Louis Housing Authority no longer has to report to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In October of 1985, the federal agency began overseeing the department due to the physical condition of the city’s housing, the mismanagement of the agency’s finances, and poor management by the agency’s leaders. In 1985, the East St. Louis Housing Authority was the first agency taken under federal control and to date the longest agency under HUD’s control.
September 26, 2017 | Permalink | No Comments
September 25, 2017
Getting CAMELS Past Regulators
Bloomberg BNA Banking Daily quoted me in Court Asked to Second-Guess Bank Capital, Earnings, Risk Ratings (behind a paywall). It reads, in part,
September 25, 2017 | Permalink | No Comments
Monday’s Adjudication Roundup
- A class of tenants in New Jersey alleged their landlord unreasonably charged the group for attorneys’ fees during their eviction proceedings. In a New Jersey trial court, the group was unsuccessful at becoming a certified class; however, the group achieved success when the New Jersey Appellate Division overturned the prior decision.
- Spainhour Law Group recently overcame a legal challenge. Spainhour’s adversary attempted to disqualify the company from representing their client, Real Estate Management LLC. As a result, Spainhour may now move forward in defending the management group and its owner in a breached partnership agreement suit.
- Bank of America, is in a federal Colorado court. A class of homeowners sued the bank for allegedly conspiring to deny their loan modifications. Under the Home Affordable Modification Program, most of the applicants were eligible; however, the bank and it’s contractors allegedly determined various ways to deny their applications.
September 25, 2017 | Permalink | No Comments
September 22, 2017
What Is a Credit Reference?
image by www.cafecredit.com
WalletHub quoted me in What Is A Credit Reference? Definition, Examples & More. It opens,
A “credit reference” is a document that attests to the creditworthiness of a prospective borrower or rental applicant. The most common type of credit reference is a credit report, as it chronicles an individual’s or business’s credit history. And the most notable credit reports are those from TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. You can check your TransUnion credit report for free on WalletHub.
A credit report isn’t the only type of credit reference, though. The term can also refer to the individual accounts on your credit report. For example, someone with no prior credit history may be deemed to have “insufficient credit references.” And that just means there are too few data points for the lender to assess his or her creditworthiness.
A letter from a credible source that speaks to an applicant’s financial trustworthiness would also qualify. This type of credit reference isn’t likely to help individual borrowers very much, except maybe for situations involving small neighborhood banks and credit unions, which are more likely than national lenders to value personal relationships. But it plays a big role in corporate lending. This includes business-to-business credit arrangements, where a borrower’s history is less readily available and the voucher of a trusted source – such as a vendor with whom the business has previously worked – is thus more meaningful. In this context, a credit reference may also be called a “trade reference.”
Below, we’ll explore credit references in greater detail, explaining the most common types of credit references and when they’re most effective.
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Ask The Experts: Assessing The Effectiveness Of Credit References
Credit references are characterized by variety. Myriad types exist and the impact of many is difficult to quantify. We therefore sought additional perspectives from a panel of lending experts from both the consumer and corporate sides of the aisle.
David Reiss
Mortgage lenders want to know that borrowers have the capacity to repay your loan and one way that they can gain comfort is to see what types of assets you have. Lenders will often ask to see your statements from financial institutions as part of their underwriting process. These statements can be considered as a type of credit reference. The more liquid the asset (a savings account, for instance) the better, as far as the lender is concerned. This is because it means that you can access the funds in the account readily if you needed to make a mortgage payment.
September 22, 2017 | Permalink | No Comments
Friday’s Government Reports Roundup
- Core Logic released a Home Equity Report for the second quarter of 2017. Homeowners across the U.S. experienced a 10.6 increase in their home equity from year-to-year. While 10% seems like a nominal amount, in the aggregate the total exceeds over $700 billion in increase of home equity for homeowners throughout the U.S. Further, home owners with negative mortgages, individuals with a mortgage balance that exceeds the value of their home, decreased by 21.9%.
- The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary Ben Carson, recently outlined his goals for the federal agency. As the first step, Secretary Carson will ensure the staff of the agency is well trained so as to ensure the services rendered to the public are efficient and correct. He further believes this initial step will decrease fraud, waste, and abuse that often occurs with the implementation of the agency’s programs. His other ideas include community partnerships and revising the agency’s rental assistance practices and procedures.
September 22, 2017 | Permalink | No Comments
September 21, 2017
Agalarov Oligarchs Sell NYC Real Estate
Emin Agalorov, son of Aras Agalarov
The Daily News quoted me in Oligarch family in Trump Russia dealings sells $2.8M Manhattan apartment. It opens,
The oligarch tied to President Trump’s dealings in Moscow sold a multimillion-dollar apartment in Midtown as his family’s name began to surface in the Russia investigation.
Irina Agalarova, the wife of Kremlin-connected billionaire Aras Agalarov, closed the sale of her pad on W. 52nd Street at the end of June, according to city property records.
The two-bedroom property fetched more than $2.8 million, up only $300,000 from what the Agalarovs paid for it last February.
It was not immediately clear why the wealthy family, whose patriarch rose from his roots in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan to become one of the biggest real estate developers in Russia, chose to sell its Manhattan digs.
The sale, which had not previously been reported, closed roughly 15 months after the apartment was purchased.
Agalarov’s connections to Trump came under scrutiny as part of the probes into alleged Moscow meddling in the 2016 election.
Property documents list the Midtown apartment contract date as May 11, as investigations into possible Kremlin collusion with the Trump campaign heated up with the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
The family’s connections to Trump go back further, however, to when Emin Agalarov, the pop-star son of Aras, featured Miss Universe in a music video.
That choice that later led to the family bringing Trump and his Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013, with the then-reality TV star trotting out his catchphrase, “you’re fired,” in another of Emin’s Europop videos.
Trump and Agalarov also had discussions about creating a Trump Tower Moscow, which never materialized.
While Aras Agalarov had a passing mention in the unverified “dossier” against Trump published in January, his family was brought back into investigators’ orbit after Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, unveiled his list of foreign contacts in late June.
Those contacts included a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on the Clinton campaign that Aras Agalarov had obtained from Moscow’s top prosecutor.
Emails show that Rob Goldstone, the British publicist for Emin Agalarov, told Trump Jr. that the information was part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. and others have said that nothing came of the meeting, which also included Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, Kushner, Goldstone, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, a translator and Agalarov employee Ike Kaveladze.
News of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting sparked interest in the oligarch family’s dealings, including that Aras Agalarov had put his posh home in Bergen County, N.J., up for sale in mid-June.
Real estate website Zillow shows that the listing was removed on July 14, in the aftermath of the Trump Jr. emails.
Scott Balber, a lawyer representing the Agalarovs in the U.S., told the Daily News Wednesday that the timing was not in any way a reaction to swirling investigations in Washington.
“There is absolutely no connection between selling these two properties to anything in the news,” Balber said.
“I can assure you that Mr. Agalarov knows a lot more about real estate investment than you or I do,” he said.
In fact, the Agalarov clan’s properties in New York, which public records show include two other apartments, are just a few tacks on the map of foreign buyers gobbling up Manhattan real estate.
David Reiss, a real estate expert at Brooklyn Law School, told The News the buyers from abroad can have numerous motivations for coming to New York including “getting real estate as an asset class, taking money from their home country and bringing it abroad so it can’t be clawed back by the local government, or to have another home for family members.”
While Balber trumpeted his client’s investment acumen as a reason for the sale, Reiss said that the $300,000 gain may have actually been a loss after other fees are included, raising questions about its use as an investment.
“In the context of the Agalarovs’ portfolio this is probably a very small item so it was unlikely that this was considered a significant investment by the family,” he said.
While Reiss said there are no indications of wrongdoing on the Agalarov’s part, money laundering has become a persistent worry as multimillionaires and billionaires stash possibly ill-begotten cash in Manhattan apartments.
September 21, 2017 | Permalink | No Comments
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Roundup
- Jonathan Spader and Shannon Rieger released a research brief entitled, “Patterns and Trends of Residential Integration in the United States Since 2000,” detailing the trends of U.S. neighborhoods since 2000. To ensure consistency and reliability, the duo defined integration using two definitions. In the end, the pair determined that neighborhoods across America are more integrated today. Specifically, no-majority neighborhoods increased by approximately 2,000 neighborhoods.
- 143 U.S. consumers are at risk due to the Equifax data breach which exposed consumer’s names, social security numbers, and birth dates. As a result, the New York Attorney Genera, Eric Schneiderman,l launched an investigation of the company’s breach. He wants to ensure that such a catastrophic event does not take place at the other two large credit agencies. Further both, Transunion and Experian must detail their security measures in a letter to the Office of Attorney General so that the state can protect it’s eight million consumers which were affected.
September 21, 2017 | Permalink | No Comments
