The Zombie Apocalypse is Here

I ran into this article the other day about 'zombie foreclosures'.

Absolutely sickening.

Consistent readers will note that I have had a long term interest in the housing market and the attendant foreclosure crisis. Part of the reason for my concern was situations just like this.

I'll be blunt; the banks in this nations have been getting a legal pass for years in foreclosures, basically because the debtors never fight back. Statistically only a small percentage ever file a response, and it is not the court's job to protect your rights; its your job the spell out those rights and ask the court to enforce them.

Since the debtors rarely have done that, lenders and their attorneys have become increasingly lax about addressing those rights in their own pleadings and official paperwork.

Ever heard of Robo-Signing? Basically, in order to file suit you need an affidavit- a sworn statement- of the facts, and that statement requires the signer to state that they have 'personal knowledge' of the facts they have just sworn to.

Guess what? In some (maybe a majority, and maybe a VAST majority of the)  cases they did not. These sworn affidavits would be signed without  review of the file or any knowledge, much less personal knowledge, of the facts.

Another issue was banks foreclosing on mortgages they didn't legal own. In order to have the power to foreclose a lender either has to have a mortgage of record or a valid assignment of that mortgage of record in the county where the property is located, and usually the county where the foreclosure is taking place.

This was a requirement the courts have only recently- since 2010 or so- been enforcing, by requiring the lender to file a copy of the assignment with the foreclosure complaint. But for years banks were able to process a foreclosure through the Sheriff's sale and taking possession without ever legal proving they had the authority to do so.

So we have been through the robots and now we are on to zombies. One more way for the banks to steal by using the court system.

And why are the banks behaving like this? Well, I can think of multiple reasons.

1. The Cities and Counties are making the banks maintain the homes they have title to;
2. The housing market is still collapsing, and the banks know it;
3. The debt they are owed is well above the value of the property;
4. The costs of maintaining and selling the property cut into what little profit there is in the property;
5. The legal risks of owning the property outweigh the benefit of having title;
6. The legal fees are lower, because they have cut out approximately 40% of the process;
7. The judgment can be held over a creditors head for years, guaranteeing the creditor or collector will receive some payment.

Cities and Counties. I have some experience in two of the cites named in the article, both in Ohio. In these areas- especially Cleveland/Cuyahoga County- the government is cracking down hard on bank owned property. Some communities are requiring owners to maintain the property in a livable condition, meaning working plumbing and electrical, intact windows and doors and a good coat of paint.

The problem is these communities are incredibly depressed. Property values are basically the based on the amount of copper in the standing structure. Homes are selling for less than $10,000 on a consistent basis. Yet, as soon as the local thieves break down your door and steal all of the wiring and copper plumbing, the owner is required to make repairs. For the second, third or fourth time.

Although conceived as a plan to keep the community livable and to make sure the banks didn't become owners of vast swaths of decaying property, the banks quickly developed a work around. Knowing they held a $40,000 mortgage and a $45,000 judgment, the property would sell for less than $20,000, of which they would realize, after taxes, real estate commissions, transfer costs and the cost of the foreclosure action itself, maybe $10,000. Better to sell the judgement to a third-party collector than actually take the collateral for the debt. This instantly solves items 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

It contributes to item 2, but what do the banks care? Housing will depreciate whether they take title or not. Item 7 is the leverage the banks have when they sell the judgment. In most states this judgment will last 10-15 years, and be a lien on any property the debtor owns. They are unable to buy another home; the judgment would have priority the new mortgage, so the banks won't lend, and if they can scrape up enough cash for a home, the judgment can be enforced against the new house. The debt collector will get his money in better than 60% of the cases.

Not that I am against debtor's paying their debts or banks making a profit or taking advantage of a legal procedure. But a long standing process for the repayment of a bad mortgage has been established. It's the reason the property was pledged as collateral for the loan.

But the process of failing to complete the sale of the property is criminal. After all, no law requires these banks to purchase the property at sale. Let the property go to sale, accept the proceeds of the sale to a third party against your judgment and then file for a deficiency judgment for the balance, which they can then sell to the third-party collector.

Then it becomes a better situation all the way around. The debtor no longer has possession of the property; the bank has their mortgage satisfied; the property has a new owner who will start caring for it immediately, which helps the community, and the bank has no liability to assume or portfolio of real estate to manage.

There is probably a very good reason that banks have decided on their current course of action instead of the one I propose.

But I'll be honest; I can't see what it would be.

But maybe because I'm not a bean counter at some Lender or another.

Sometimes a Book is Just a Book

I recently read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. I am still trying to make my mind up about the novel in some respects.

Parts were a fascinating read; others parts I found less interesting, particularly the parts that seemed cribbed from a Penthouse Forum Magazine. Every chapter seemed to have a part that should have begun “I really never thought it would happen to me, but…”  The worst part was the end.  It literally felt like the author ran out of enthusiasm for the book and just wrapped it up somehow. Through a thousand pages a given character would act a certain way, with certain motivations. In the last 80 pages all of that went out the window.

Am I glad I read it? Yes. But I won’t bother with the sequel and I won’t bother to read it again. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?

As briefly as the plot of a 1,087 page novel can be described; a small, fictional medieval English Monastery and its village build a cathedral. The book chronicles the arrival of the master-builder to the site and the various political and financial maneuverings that both enable and stymie the construction. That also includes the personal lives of the various characters; the Prior of the Monastery, Prior Phillip; the builder, Tom; his family-children, step-child and wives; the local Bishop and the local Earl. 

This is where I found my first fault; only one or two of the characters were well rounded, even the essential ones. If they were evil; they were never nice to anyone. If they were good, they never had a bad moment. Until the last chapter.

The second fault was the lack of detail on the construction of the Cathedral. For a book about the building, you would think a few of the 1087 pages could be spared for a few details on the actual construction or maybe a description of the various trades involved. But then the author would have had to drop one of the forty or fifty sex scenes that seemed to plague the story. I was beginning to think someone had actually slipped me a copy of 50 Shades of Grey. Based on this book every Cathedral in Europe physically went up without a hitch.

Well, until they fell down. Which, of course, this one did. The primary crux of the story was the change between round and pointed arches; a discussion that took place with minimal interruption of the characters lives and even less explanation of why this was such a sea change in public building. They did discuss how the pointed arch allowed for taller churches with more windows, but more history of development between the round and pointed arch would have been apropos, especially given the pivotal place in the story given to the pointed arch.

Bear in mind, in most communities the Church was THE public building. There were no public halls or municipal buildings like town halls. The Church was the town hall; it was the center of the community and the gathering place for every purpose.

Pillars does reflect that, and in some ways is a fascinating look into Medieval England, in the years immediately following the Norman Invasion and during the period of Anarchy after Henry I death. The history seems to be correct, albeit with our fictional characters thrown into the mix. And one of the fictional characters being thrown into the mix suffers a non-historical fate. But, since he really wasn’t a part of the history, and his fate is almost required by the story, so, no harm, no foul. At least in this case.

But there were a lot of other fouls; illiterate builders use multi-syllabic words; the language itself is not even remotely like Norman English and the characters seem to be able to speak both native English- akin to German- as well as Norman English- very French-like- with equal ease and without fault. There also seemed to be an acceptance of quite a few cultural items without comment, almost as if we should be as familiar with the methods of Medieval Dress and Buildings as we are with modern ones.

These can be written off as poetic license; liberties taken to insure a smooth flow and readability of the story. And I would be willing to agree; if elements of the story itself didn’t constantly remind me of a Harlequin dime romance.

Let’s take the character of Waleran Bigod. When we first meet him he is an archdeacon to the Bishop of Kingsbridge, the fictional location of the Cathedral. His first act in the book is to scheme with the hero of our story, Prior Phillip, maneuvering Phillip into agreeing to support Bigod to replace the current Bishop. Later it becomes evident that the Bishop was already dead, a fact Bigod was hiding from the world. This is just the beginning. Bigod is constantly scheming, lying and dealing, not only as an arch-deacon, but as a Bishop as well. His scheming never lets up, and includes the ordering of the murder of members of his diocese, with absolution granted prior to the act itself.

And then in the last few pages he repents and becomes, almost literally, a kind, saintly old man. Which in itself is not a problem; entire books are based on the reasons behind a character’s motivations for changing himself. But here the motivation is lacking. Maybe it’s there, and I just missed it. But the change is similar to Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, without the intervention of the Lord’s lightning.

Set in an era when The Church ran everything, and being ex-communicated was almost a death sentence, only Prior Phillip seems to be truly devout. Monks in the Monastery do their best to avoid devotionals or anything relating to their religious duties and most of the main characters, most of them deeply involved with building a Cathedral, the highest concrete form of worship, seem agnostic at best, and atheist at worst.

As I said early on; it was a fascinating read in parts, and I am glad I read it.

I am also equally glad I didn’t buy it.

‘Nuff said.

Be Different

I found this through Bing this morning. Hundreds of pictures of people holdiong up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Now I know what to do the next time I'm in Pisa.

Take my picture with the Leaning Tower.

But I'll be pushing it over!

Again One Thing Leads to Another

Okay, so here's the story I am blogging about. I found it through a link at Instaundit; that lead me here, and then finally to this.

Which story am I blogging about?

Well, MINE of course!

I read Instapundit daily, at least. I consider it the Reader's Digest of the Internets. Not the modern, large format People Magazine wanna be, The Old Reader's Digest. The one that aggregated Stories of Lasting Interest.

Any rate, the tree ring story caught my eye on Instapundit. Interesting reading. But they never do explain how they figured out how old the trees were. I can understand how they fell into the lake, but how do they know which tree is is 20 years old, and which one is 2,000?

And I'd love to know how they can extrapolate the temperature OF THE ENTIRE GLOBE from a bunch of soggy trees in Finland!

That leads me to the second article.
A dungeon, secret passageways, peepholes and lingering ghosts: A young couple paid $395,000 in CASH and might have gotten more than they bargained for by buying castle in Missouri is the headline. But what is the news? They bought an old house, dressed up with a lot of stonework. Yehaw. Here is what I found interesting. They paid cash. $395,000 in cash. What makes that funny?

The buyer is a MORTGAGE BROKER. I didn't realize there were still mortgage brokers. I thought they had disappeared with the property flippers.

And then the last story. This guy spent 40 years looking for a stolen car; and found it. They don't go into details, but from the way the story reads it must have been Dad's car; Dad died and the kids were settling up the estate by selling the car.

Here's my question: How did Dad (assuming I am right) tag and insure a stolen car for over 40 years?

And also: if your car was stolen, how long would you keep the keys and old title?

In the interest of full disclosure, I still have the owner's manual and the key to a car I sold 30 years ago. So maybe I would still have the key and title to one that was stolen.

But; I also admit to being a little odd....

Butt Ugly... And Pretentious to Boot

Remember that post I did about our new butt ugly courthouse a while back? I finally had a chance to get a picture of the side you can see with out breaking your neck.

You see, the street this mess faces is one way; going away from the front of the courthouse. Not that side is much better looking; basically it's a wall of glass and a flag pole.



Now here is the part that makes me wonder if this building wasn't put backwards on the site on purpose. Its the pretentious part.

Look at the first picture again. You see how it looks like there are two buildings here? one that is straight to the corner and another one that is a little cockeyed and a little shorter?

See, if this building had faced the one way street, nobody would have ever seen the back, and this useless bit of drivel.

Here is another shot, showing the building site:

The building is on the south end of the lot with parking to the north. you can also see the little building the big building ate in this shot if you look close.

So to sum up: we have an ugly building that should face south, but faces north on a one way street that heads north, that has a pretentious bit of tomfoolery that probably added a couple of million to the cost of this cow pie.

And here is the part that takes all the fun out of this joke; they paid for this pile of dung with my money.

And they will probably have to tear it down and replace it about the time its paid for.

Ain't an unresponsive government a wonderful thing?

Housing is Due for a Regression

My old internets buddy Sippican Cottage has a new gig at Rightnetwork, and has a new post up over there that I very highly recommend, as opposed to his other writings, that I only highly recommend.

I have mentioned before my thoughts on the housing market, and the linked post does a good job of linking current events with the current housing situation.

Talk about your Modern Frontiersman; Mr. Sullivan has recently moved from the civilized state of Massachusetts to the wilds of western Maine. The conversion has been interesting reading, to say the least.

I have to promote both a great post and a great blog for a minute; Sippican Cottage.

He makes furniture for a living and wordplay for a hobby; and does very well at both.

And he's right, you know.

My County just did the same thing.

Above is the Old Courthouse; built in 18 and 88. Full of marble and stained glass.

I can't find a picture of the new "Administration Building" on line. Spent millions of my dollars on the place and aren't proud enough of it to even post a picture.

Not that I blame them. It's a flat mess. They faced it North, on a one way street that heads North, so unles you twist in your seat like a corkscrew, all you can see is the back.

And that is concrete and dark windows, and not many of them.

The inside isn't any better. A two story lobby that is concrete and glass and stainless steel.

About as inviting as a cell block.

I can't imagine being forced to spend 40 hours a week in that soulless box.

Government buildings didn't leave the warm and comfortable behind by accident. It was done on purpose. What good is the Town Square, except to give folks a comfortable spot to sit and watch the courthouse and its goings-on?

Do you see the issue? Can't have folks keeping an eye on the government, now can we?

Best to drive them away, and allow the government to function away from prying eyes.