I have been off the Blog radar for a while now, trying to make sense of all the banks 
out there that have an endless number of short sales in their cues and how they manage them. I recently had my first short sale listing go to auction and was not surprised to see the bank take less at auction then the offer we had submitted. Seventeen thousand less. Can you believe that? I don’t get it, and have stopped trying to make sense of it to be honest with you. It is disappointing to say the least.
On another note, if you haven’t already heard, Taylor Bean & Whitaker was recently raided by the FBI for fraudulent activities. They were the country’s 3rd largest FHA lender. Scary isn’t it? I’m sure that all of the particulars will come out in the news eventually, so stay tuned.
I also read an article on why banks aren’t doing loan modifications. It turns out that Uncle Sam himself gives the banks incentive money to help out distressed homeowners behind on their mortgage payments. Here’s the catch. For every month the homeowner is behind, the bank gets an incentive from the government. Now, the banks will not help you modify your mortgage unless you are behind on your payment, which gets them the incentive from the government and puts the homeowner further behind on their payment, to include late fees. Then if the bank does agree to the modification, they tack on all the late fees and penalties to the back end of the loan in the form of a forbearance, which really doesn’t help the homeowner out because now their overall loan amount has gone up, which means that their mortgage payment will go up. Meanwhile the banks are making money because the homeowner is behind on the payment. Have I mentioned that the banks are making money because the homeowner is behind on the payment. Vicious cycle isn’t it?
It’s silly really, all of it. It doesn’t seem like there is an end in sight and despite the fact that millions of Americans keep finding themselves in situations where they can no longer afford their mortgages, the banks still don’t want to play ball. Oh well, I guess the lesson learned here is that we should have just let the banks fail when we had the opportunity. Now we are stuck with them playing the same old games.
