Faces Of Foreclosure

During a holiday gathering last evening, a gentleman from Ireland asked, “Isn’t the government embarrassed?” He was referring to the current mortgage nightmare America is facing. I ask that also.

My larger concern: Who manages the charters of these large lenders. Why aren’t they heavily fined . . . I know that’s being proposed now, but will it be carried out? Money from fines could then be used to actually modify loans. Why aren’t operating licenses suspended until they begin acting ethically?

The latest painful story excerpted from a loan workout site:

Are Wells Fargo, Wachovia, ASC and CEO John Stumpf
the Kings of the Predatory Servicing Sea?
Moe Bedard

“I just want to let the world know that Wells Fargo, Wachovia (who they now own) try to hide behind thier servicing arm, American Servicing Company (ASC). ASC is one the worst predatory mortgage servicers that I and thousands of homeowners have ever experienced. I feel it is to the point where their operations are on the verge of criminal.

They screwed you coming and they will screw you going. First they charged you a bunch of questionable fees when you got your home loan and then quickly sold you on Wall Street . . . now that you need help, they are tacking on more fees.

Here is a real world example from an actual Wells Fargo representative of actual loan modification fees being charged by Wells Fargo to a homeowner that is down and out.

Thank you for your patience. To follow is the breakdown of your contribution amount $1,585.10:

10/22/08
Preliminary Title report – $125.00
Recording fee – $200.00
Funds in Suspense -($122.16)
(loan modification process)

04/30/08
Title policy – $266.00
(foreclosure process)

Statutory reg mail – $ 31.26
Attorney fee – $775.00
(set sale date 4/10/08)
*allowable by VA*

WFHM acquired loan 12/1/06 from Washington Mutual: Below costs assessed prior to WFHM servicing the loan.

1/12/06
(foreclosure process)
Title cost – $185.00
9/21/05

(modification process)
Title cost – $125.00
Total payment $1585.10

Any questions feel free to contact me. Again, sorry for the delayed response!

Welcome to the mortgage servicing business where millions of homeowners need help and they are paying dearly for it. Some may pay $2,000 in “loan modification help” fees a pop. Now multiply that by gazillions of loans that need a loan modification and you have a very lucrative gazillion dollar business that will last you into 2010.

If this business wasn’t so damn profitable, John Stumpf and Wells would have never bought Wachovia along with their hideously toxic and decaying mortgage servicing portfolio. In other words, if gouging homeowners in foreclosure wasn’t a great way to make money, Wells would have never bought a company like Wachovia, right?

I am sure anyone out there in the loan workout business will testify to the fact that the day Wells took over Wachovia, loan modifications became almost non-existent. There were quite a few times they even claimed to have stopped performing them intermittently over the last 6 months.

I think investors and maybe our State Attorney Generals should take a look at this. These are all facts that I and I am sure thousands of housing counselors and loan modification companies can verify.

My recommendation: Blog! Here is a link to Wells Fargo Corporate Blog

Let them know how you feel about their sloppy business practices. Also let them know that you will steer everyone you can away from them. I’m positive that I have lost $3 million in business for Wells Fargo by diverting people elsewhere. That is just through personal conversations and has nothing to do with what this blog is doing. You do have a voice. You can fight back.

• I recently heard that a 60+ year old gentleman will shoot himself the day they take his house (which he has lived in for 37 years; he does own a gun). His home is in in foreclosure under questionable circumstances. A feisty Marin group got the issue into Federal Court and all is hanging by a thread.
• Warren Buffett, in discussing the mortgage crises during a recent interview said, “This is war.”
• This site — FacesOfForeclosure.com — is the fastest growing website I’ve built in 20+ years of building websites.

You hired Randy Shilts to cover gays a couple of decades ago when that was a hot topic.

Millions of hard-working people are being displaced . . . the very people who were your subscribers through the decades.

What about hiring or consulting with someone who has been in the midst of the mortgage mess?

Covering this from reality, instead of inane quotes from self-interested lenders, could increase your readership. Type in “Wells Fargo Mortgage complaints.” Result: 33,800 items; Type in “Bank of America Mortgage complaints.” THREE. Yes. THREE.

Of course, you COULD just be practical and focus on that bottom line since many of us WILL lose our homes. Perhaps Tom Stienstra could do a story on just what gear you will need to live under one of the Bay Area’s freeways. Advertisers: REI, LL Bean, North Face, Kaplan’s (are they still around?)

I’ve nothing better to do until Wells Fargo decides whether or not I have a home. As we are more than 330 days into that, I’m avoiding holding my breath. I have been trying for a remod since December 2008 with that lender. The word “inept” is paramount, immediately followed by “white collar crooks.”

Wells Fargo’s definition of “helping,” must mean “corresponding without resolution.” Wells Fargo’s new campaign: “We are here for you.” Really? Define “here.”

I have five typed pages, single spaced, 12 pt. Calibri of who said what to whom on what date. Haven’t yet talked with the same person twice. One week a letter arrives indicating “we can help,” followed a couple weeks later by a request for more paperwork (’cause they lost earlier submissions), followed by a rep saying “Uh, well, no, the note holders do not want to negotiate” followed by a letter or call that indicates they are “considering my request.” Initially I deemed Wells execs crooked. Now I think they are staggeringly inept on top of being larcenous. There is no indication that Wells knows what they are doing. And they sure as hell are “not here for you” or me or anyone. I’m trying to not “hate” them because it is such a negative emotion and causes “dis-ease.” However, I think I am losing that battle.

Check www.MarinFamilyAction.com. They just might feret out Marin’s white collar thieves in this mortgage mess and have just filed a report with the District Attorney on one questionable group. “Insider trading” seems to have a lot as to who gets what.
Want a duplex in Tiburon worth about $2.5 million for less than $1 million? Might be on the market soon due to lies and subterfuge. I’m serious. This all sounds nuts. Actually, it is nuts. But it is also true.

Hello to everybody. I miss The Chronicle every day and hope you are all well.

Oh, one more thing . . . this from the National Association of Realtors to Realtors:

“You help to stabilize the community, and without homeownership, there can be no stability in communities,” Stevens said. “Together, we must never let overexuberance overtake the housing market again, and interrupt the housing market and the lives of untold millions of Americans. Our goal must be nothing less than to craft a solid, sustainable housing market, a market with a secure foundation for the future.”

Is this before or after writing off the current millions of men, women, children, dogs, cats, etc. who are about to lose their homes? Just asking.

Everytime I hear a story like the following . . . which is happening frequently lately, I think of Steven Segal’s movie “Above The Law.”

The Foreclosure Survival Guide: Keep Your House or Walk Away With Money in Your Pocket This book from Nolo Press is excellent (as are all Nolo Press books). It will help you make decisions that will help save your home or help you walk away with grace (and money). That said, I am working on my own soon-to-be-published own guide as after 18 months of “negotiations” with Wells Fargo Bank — servicer of my note (a term I did not know 18 months ago) — the bank finally gave me a five-year stay of execution. I have a 20 pound, six-inch-thick binder of who said what to whom. It was nothing short of a nightmare. What would have been a rough six months in my life turned into 18 months of fear, sleeplessness, anger, etc. and my goal is to pay off this loan and never deal with this bank again. The Guide contains: Ways to negotiate, workout proposals, links to foreclosure laws by state, legal defenses of borrower, things lenders do not want you to know, letters requesting validation of debt, FTC and HUD complaints . . .

Interesting that the $12 million house squatter, Cheronda Guyton, a Wells Fargo executive, is scheduled to speak at the 1009 Trigild Lender Conference on October 21-23, 2009 at the US Grant Hotel in San Diego. Think she’ll show up?

Excerpted from
Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Los Angeles Business Times, Denver Post and various websites.

Wall Street has long worried that the hundreds of thousands of foreclosed houses in the U.S. are losing even more value as they become havens for vandals, vermin and drug dealers looking for a place to crash.

Here’s an unusual squatter: A senior vice president at Wells Fargo & Co., who is in charge of many of the bank’s foreclosed properties reportedly moved into a 3800 square foot, two story beach house in gated Malibu Colony last May after the bank foreclosed on the property.

It’s outrageous to take over a property like that, not make it available and then put someone from the bank in it,” said Phillip Roman, an 18-year Colony resident who lives a few homes away from the property.

Wells Fargo said in a written statement that it would conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations by neighbors, but said it wouldn’t “discuss specific team member situations/issues for privacy reasons.” The bank also said its ethics code wouldn’t allow employees to make personal use of property that has been surrendered to satisfy debts.

and

Such conduct would pose a conflict of interest, said W. Michael Hoffman, executive director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. “For a business to allow this to happen in today’s ethically charged climate is quite suicidal,” he said.

According to an LA Times article, a Wells executive, who is responsible for the bank’s foreclosed commercial properties, was seen throwing parties at a $12 million beach house in Malibu, California, which the previous owners had to surrender to Wells to satisfy debts. According to the article, Wells Fargo had refused to show the house to prospective buyers, perplexing local real estate agents.

Adding fuel to what must be a public-relations nightmare for the bank is the fact that the couple who lost the home in foreclosure had to give up the property because they were victims of Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme.

The Times interviewed neighbors who said they spotted the Wells executive, Cheronda Guyton, throwing lavish parties at the sleek, modern house with a patio overlooking the Pacific. At one party, guests arrived by yacht.

According to the Times, Guyton couldn’t be reached at her downtown Los Angeles office and Wells Fargo declined to discuss Guyton but said the bank will “conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations.”

It hasn’t been a great week for Wells, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders. Banks like Wells are taking heat for failing to modify troubled mortgages quickly enough as part of the Obama administration’s $75 billion foreclosure prevent plan. According to the Treasury, Wells Fargo has started trial mediations for 11% of its eligible borrowers who are at least 60 days overdue. That lags behind the average 12% rate of modifications among the nation’s lenders. Congressional leaders say lenders need to move faster to prevent another wave of foreclosures from stalling the housing recovery.

“It appears that at least one Wells executive involved in this effort may have been a bit, well, distracted in recent months.

More:

The house was foreclosed and wasn’t available for rent. The residents of Malibu Colony have told the newspaper that Guyton is one of the executives of Wells Fargo & Co. and that a Volvo with a registry date of year 2007 is also seen often in the garage. Upon investigation, it was learned that the car belongs to Ms. Guyton.

When the media tried to contact Cheronda Guyton, all the calls made to her office number were unsuccessful while there’s no number listed against her present home address. Previous residents of the home have accused the bank of acting against the agreement which states that the home will not used for any marketing purposes. However, the bank says that the agreement was valid for only a certain period of time and that the bank was listing the house for sale.

and

“Residents in the gated community told the Los Angeles Times that a woman they believed to be Cheronda Guyton took up occupancy at the home in May. Residents said they obtained Guyton’s name from the community’s guards, who had issued her a homeowner’s parking pass.”

The bank’s agreement with the prior owner required it to keep the home — a 3,800-square-foot, two-story structure built in the early 1990s — off the market for a period of time, Wells Fargo said in a statement to the paper. What awaits Guyton remains to be seen as Wells Fargo investigates the matter. But one thing is sure: Her days of partying in the celebrity-laden Malibu are done. – George White

and

Such conduct would pose a conflict of interest, said W. Michael Hoffman, executive director of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass.
“For a business to allow this to happen in today’s ethically charged climate is quite suicidal,” he said. And because Madoff’s fraud was the root cause of the situation, he added, “it’s like rubbing salt into the wounds of a national tragedy.”

Malibu Colony stretches three-quarters of a mile along the beach in the heart of Malibu. Its residents include actor Tom Hanks, former Univision Chairman A. Jerrold Perenchio and high-profile investment banker Michael Tennenbaum.

Colony residents said the woman they believe to be Guyton, along with her husband and two children, took up occupancy at 106 Malibu Colony Road shortly after Lawrence Elins turned it over to Wells Fargo Bank on May 13.

When a Los Angeles Times reporter used the buzzer at the home’s steel gate on Labor Day, a woman answered the intercom but declined to identify herself or come to the gate.

When asked whether the home had been foreclosed on, she said, “it’s not foreclosed. It’s owned by Collin Equities” — a Wells Fargo unit that liquidates foreclosure properties.

The woman on the intercom denied that she was living at the house or had been using it periodically over the summer. Asked whether she could say why she was at the home, she answered, “No, I cannot.”

and

The AP said it could not reach Guyton for comment.

Lastly, if it is true that there is an agreement to hold the house “off the market for a period of time,” per Wells Fargo, why is there a website built to show the home: 106 Malibu Colony AND if the house is actually on the market, why wasn’t it being shown to prospective buyers or renters on or around March 13, 2009, which is when the domain was registered through 1and1.com as 106malibucolony.com?

Real Estate agents do not register a name UNTIL they have the listing; it addition to having its own site, it is on Zillow “available for lease” at $65,000 per month long-term or $100,000 per month during summer through Coldwell Banker.

Speaking of Coldwell Banker, most real estate agents contacted by the L.A. Times re the incident expressed surprise over the use of the home and many were appalled. However, per the Times, agent Farrell “Burt” Bakman of Coldwell Banker in Beverly Hills, said he saw no problem with a lender using a property “as some sort of a bonus.” And there you have yet another example of what is wrong in America. A bonus for what? Foreclosure? This is absolutely insane.