Coral Gables Environment, Politics and Government
October 30, 2010 Leave a comment
Not much to add to this. Please wake up the Coral Gables commissioners.
Banks have an inventory of about 1 million foreclosed homes, plus another 5 million homes where the loans are badly nonperforming.
via Numbers to Ponder, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.
October 25, 2010 Leave a comment
…by comments from a real estate expert on CNBC today (sorry I missed his name). He stated that 20 percent of all house owners/mortgages are under water and another 33 percent are no more than 10 percentage points away from being under water. He also stated that this will take “many years” to overcome.
Does the city of Coral Gables imagine that rising property values and new construction will save its property tax budget in the next five years?
October 15, 2010 Leave a comment
The program does not help homeowners whose drywall came from companies other than Knauf. Some of those Chinese firms have ignored U.S. lawsuits.
To be eligible, a home must have had virtually all of its defective drywall made by Knauf. Many of the affected homes in Florida contain a blend of Chinese drywall from Knauf and other companies, said Kerry Miller, a lawyer for Knauf.
October 10, 2010 Leave a comment
This problem of the essential fairness (instead of corruption) of the US foreclosure system was well known for years to those involved in the system. The huge number of companies and lawyers involved in this out-of-control system is a mirror of the system that helped us take out the failed mortgages.
Florida has evolved a system of fast foreclosure process that again favors banks, developers, real estate agents and associated industry that wants to rush through the foreclosures to clean out the bad debt, rather than finding a fair and permanent solution to the underlying problem. See my earlier post, Florida’s High-Speed Answer to a Foreclosure Mess – NYTimes.com.
The only solution to the problem is a scheme of national debt foregiveness (cancellation) of mortgage debt on a large scale. This will keep people in their houses, will protect the social foundations of our towns and cities, and help people who can, under no circumstances, move on to rental units. This will also keep house prices from falling even further (this is the big benefit of the system for people who have kept up their payments).
Consumer advocates and lawyers warned federal officials in recent years that the U.S. foreclosure system was designed to seize people’s homes as fast as possible, often without regard to the rights of homeowners.
…
As momentum builds for a national moratorium, the administration has begun assessing the potential impact, examining the threat it could pose for the ailing housing market and the wider financial system.
via Government had been warned for months about troubles in mortgage servicer industry.
Coral Gables Watch 