foreclosure prevention

A spin-off group from Occupy Wall Street, called Occupy Our Homes, has formed to reverse and stop foreclosures. Lately, the group has been using creative tactics to raise awareness about the banking practices that led to the housing bubble.

Janet's a lawyer who's losing her home, and she knows: When it comes to foreclosure, bureaucracy and paperwork can be your friends. Her foreclosure process has lasted for nearly 900 days, and counting. For homeowners in dire financial straits, her story is a lesson in how to keep a roof over your head as long as possible.

Regulators want the nation's big banks to reduce what borrowers owe on underwater mortgages, but they're still focused on solutions that rely on banks to voluntarily do the right thing. But we've already seen that won't work, and history shows what will -- giving bankruptcy judges back the right to cram down mortgages.

Recent movements in Congress to deactivate some of the federal foreclosure-prevention programs are getting a lot of press, despite the fact that these programs are probably safe for the time being. What gets much less publicity are the billions of dollars that are still available to help distressed...

A California appeals court has ruled that U.S. Bank conned Claudia Aceves out of her home by tricking her into giving up her bankruptcy protections. Now she can sue the bank for damages and fraud, and conceivably, so could other homeowners in similar situations.

When the state tightened its foreclosure rules in response to the document crisis, it ordered the six largest servicers to explain why they should be allowed to continue foreclosing on homes. In effect, their response went something like this: "Trust us, everything's fine now."

Bank of America's persistent failure to modify home loans has resulted in the inevitable: a consumer class action lawsuit. Last week, Susan Fraser of Missouri filed suit on behalf of herself and other qualified homeowners whom the bank failed to give permanent loan modifications to.

Back in December 2008, John H. was small-business owner with perfect credit and a house he could afford. But when his business started suffering, he appealed to Citi Residential Mortgage for a modification. Now, he faces foreclosure -- for the fourth time -- the day before Thanksgiving.

Citigroup Inc (C) said it may have to refile thousands of foreclosure affidavits. The bank is reviewing 10,000 affidavits executed before the company overhauled its foreclosure operation in February, Harold Lewis, a managing director with CitiMortgage said in written testimony for a congressional...

In a Senate hearing Tuesday, Bank of America vowed to improve its foreclosure operations to avoid more "robo-signing" documentation problems. The bank halted foreclosures in October amid allegations of faulty paperwork and did find errors, although it claims no unwarranted foreclosures took place as a result.