Mortgage Loan Compliance | 47 Year Low For New Housing

Home Builders are struggling to compete in markets saturated with foreclosures. High unemployment and uncertainty over home prices have kept many potential buyers from making purchases. Buyers purchased the fewest number of new homes in 2010 since records dating back 47 years.

Poor sales of new homes mean fewer jobs in the construction industry, which normally pushes economic recoveries. On average, a new home built creates the equivalent of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Associated of Home Builders.

Sales for all of 2010 totaled 321,000, a drop of 14.4 percent from the 375,000 homes sold in 2009, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. It was the fifth consecutive year that sales have declined after hitting record highs for the five previous years when the housing market was booming.

Economists expect prices will keep falling through the first six months of 2011. However, they say it could be years before sales rise to a healthy rate of 600,000 units a year.

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Mortgage Loan Compliance | Mass. High Court Rules Against Banks

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a lower court judge's ruling against U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo invalidating two mortgage foreclosure sales because the banks, in their capacity as trustees for mortgage securities, did not prove that they actually owned the mortgages at the time of foreclosure.

The decision, which highlights the failure of financial firms to adhere to the rules that govern mortgage-backed securities, is likely to lead more borrowers to sue bank servicers and trustees for wrongful foreclosures. It's unclear what the ruling means for people who were forced from their homes after defaulting on their loans or for those who purchased houses in foreclosure sales.

U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo, who were not the original mortgagees in the case, did not show that they held the mortgages at the time of foreclosure. As a result, the court found, the banks did not demonstrate that the foreclosure sales were valid.

The banks argued that the securitization documents they submitted were sufficient to prove they owned the mortgages before the publication of the notices of sale and the foreclosure sales.

Wells Fargo said in a statement Friday that as trustee of a securitized pool of loans, it expected those servicing the loans to abide by all applicable state laws, including those governing foreclosure sales.

U.S. Bancorp issued a statement saying that “as a trustee of the securitization trust that it has no responsibility for the terms of the underlying mortgage, foreclosure procedure, the conduct of the servicer, the process by which the mortgage is transferred to the trust, or the sufficiency of the mortgage documentation."

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Mortgage Loan Compliance® | The Forensic Loan Audit Company

Get The Facts, Audit Your Loan, and Protect Your Rights!

Call Today 1-866-966-6615 or Visit www.ml-compliance.com