A couple of housekeeping issues — I now have two new articles online. One is a Men’s Journal piece about sports feuds (it’s been a really excellent year or so for sports spats), and the link for that is here.

The other is “Invasion of the Home Snatchers,” a long piece about the foreclosure crisis. When I went down to Jacksonville to research this piece I initially told my editors that it wouldn’t be possible to do this article in one shot, that we would have to break it up into two parts or a series, because there was so much material. We had to leave an awful lot out of this article, purely for space reasons, among other things details about a wave of class-action lawsuits that are coming out now in various places around the country.

One such suit was filed by a Newark-based lawyer named Lawrence Friscia, who has launched a powerful suit against Bank of America and two subsidiaries for predatory practices on the one hand and a rush to commit fraud on the other. Friscia’s complaint eloquently spells out the entire history of the mortgage scam and anyone who is interested should check out Beals v. Bank of America.…Read More

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Bank of America has been hit with a class action on behalf of homeowners seeking damages for alleged disregard of foreclosure process rules.

The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Newark, N.J., accuses Bank of America and two subsidiaries, LaSalle Bank and BAC Home Loans Servicing, of “an undisciplined rush to seize homes” through “pervasive and willful disregard of knowledge, facts and statutes.”
…Read More

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TEN days from now, a four-bedroom house on a cul-de-sac in Middleburg, Fla., is scheduled to be auctioned off at the Clay County courthouse, 25 miles south of Jacksonville.

A judge who recently took over their foreclosure case has ordered Rodney Waters; his fiancée, Terri Reese; and their four children to leave the home they bought in 2006.…Read More

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WASHINGTON (AP) — One in 10 American households with a mortgage is at risk of losing its home, and the foreclosure crisis could worsen if jobs remain scarce.

About 9.9 percent of homeowners had missed at least one mortgage payment as of June 30, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday. That number, adjusted for seasonal factors, was barely down from a record-high of more than 10 percent as of April 30.…Read More

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Sales of previously owned U.S. homes dropped more steeply than expected in July to their lowest pace in 15 years, an industry group said Tuesday, implying further loss of momentum in the economic recovery.

The National Association of Realtors said sales dropped a record 27.2 percent from June to an annual rate of 3.83 million units, the lowest level since May 1995. June’s sales pace was revised down to a 5.26 million-unit pace.…Read More

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WASHINGTON — Nearly half of the homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.

A new report issued Friday by the Treasury Department said that approximately 630,000 people who had tried to get their monthly mortgage payments lowered through the effort have been cut loose through July. That’s about 48 percent of the 1.3 million homeowners who had enrolled since March 2009. That is up from more than 40 percent through June.…Read More

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More delinquent homeowners learned last month that they don’t qualify for foreclosure help in the Obama administration’s program, according to federal data released Tuesday.

Fresh concerns over the housing market’s health have renewed interest in the success of foreclosure prevention programs such as the president’s. An increase in foreclosures, combined with the recent drop in housing sales, could send home prices plummeting again.…Read More

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The poor orange hair monster from Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey is bankrupt. She’s selling her mansion, and now basically everything she and her husband own, including their freaking wedding rings, is being auctioned off. Lots of pics below.…Read More

With mortgage loans increasingly chopped up and repackaged into other investments, lenders must be able to demonstrate they still hold the underlying note before they can foreclose on a property, a Superior Court judge has ruled.

In Atlantic City, Judge William C. Todd dismissed The Bank of New York’s attempt to foreclose on a Brigantine house, saying the bank had not adequately documented that it holds the mortgage after a complex trail of financial transactions.…Read More

The value of all taxable property in Morris County dropped $1.3 billion in the past year, after growing for most years in the past decade.

The county’s total value still is almost $102 billion but the 1.2 percent drop — which mirrors declining real estate values nationwide — means that local governments can no longer rely on an expanding ratable base to help fund budgets. Some are already cutting personnel and services.…Read More