Maryland Daily Record Maryland's trusted source for business and legal news
NEW YORK — Bank of America is providing mortgage relief to about 200,000 homeowners.
Homeowners that qualify are those whose home values have fallen below what they owe on their mortgages. Bank of America will reduce the amount owed by the homeowners by as much as $100,000 in some cases. Only mortgages that are currently owned by Bank of America will qualify. Those that are owned by government entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or backed by the Federal Housing Administration will not be eligible.
The move will help the bank reduce the amount of penalties it owes to the government’s Housing & Urban Development agency by $850 million.
The penalties were part of a broader $25 billion settlement announced Feb. 9 by federal and state attorneys general and the largest mortgage lenders in the country to resolve investigations into abusive home lending and fraudulent foreclosure practices.
About 11 million American households are “underwater” on their mortgages, meaning they owe more than their homes are worth. The broader settlement with five mortgage lenders is expected reduce loans for only about 1 million of those Americans and send checks to others who were improperly foreclosed upon.
Of the five major lenders, Bank of America’s penalties were the highest: $11.8 billion.
The settlement ended a painful chapter of the financial crisis, when home values sank and millions edged toward foreclosure. Lender abuses exacerbated the crisis. Many companies processed foreclosures without verifying documents. Some employees signed papers they hadn’t read or used fake signatures to speed foreclosures, a practice known as robo-signing.
In the fall of 2010, Bank of America along with other large lenders temporarily halted foreclosures after a furor over robo-signed documents.
Details of Bank of America’s and other mortgage lenders’ plans to help homeowners as part of the settlement will be contained in court documents that are expected to be filed Friday.
The next fight will be to get these banks to write down the mortgage principle on the Freddie and Fannie loans totalling between $400-700 billion dollars we all know are fraudulent in many ways. As hard as Third Way corporate Democrats are trying to have the taxpayer pay this bank fraud in their push for first, this $25 billion mortgage fraud settlement and now with the call for Freddie, taxpayer owned to do the write down, the people will continue to fight this injustice until the banks have been held responsible for this massive mortgage fraud.
The next fight will be to get these banks to write down the mortgage principle on the Freddie and Fannie loans totalling between $400-700 billion dollars we all know are fraudulent in many ways. As hard as Third Way corporate Democrats are trying to have the taxpayer pay this bank fraud in their push for first, this $25 billion mortgage fraud settlement and now with the call for Freddie, taxpayer owned to do the write down, the people will continue to fight this injustice until the banks have been held responsible for this massive mortgage fraud.
My loan was part of this settlement, although in November was sold to freddie mac via BOA, serviced by Seterus. I’m 100K upside down in my home, how is this fair? I was part of the Countrywide robo-signing scam. If they knew this settlement was coming, why did they sell the loans just before the settlement was announced? Where is the relief. All they did since selling my loan to Freddie in November 2011 is raise my interest rate. Should I obtain an attorney to sue BOA/Countrywide. Appreciate any help with this. Regards, Homeowner part of BOA robo-signing fraud.