When you buy a foreclosed home, it comes with some risks. You expect some damage and repairs. You expect that there may be some mess to clean up from the former occupants. However, you do not typically expect the former owner to show up at your home, or worse. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Foreclosure
Bank Gets Foreclosed On
In a rare twist, a Florida couple turned the tables on Bank of America by foreclosing on them! Warren and Maureen Nyergers paid cash for a home in Naples Florida in 2009. At the time of purchase the home was in foreclosure, and the Nyergers bought the home directly from Bank of America. Continue reading
Sharpie Parties – Trendy Way to Vandalize Abandoned Homes
Vacant homes are a target for all sorts of crime. In some cities, criminals break into foreclosed, abandoned homes to steal copper piping. In others, the homeless seek residence in empty properties. In California, however, a new crime has sprung up in empty homes across the state: Sharpie Parties. Continue reading
Bank Takes Wrong Home and Loses Possessions
There are few nightmare scenarios worse than a foreclosure. You lose your home, your finances are in ruin, and it takes a decade for the bad news to be removed from your credit report. What’s even worse, however, is when a bank forecloses on a home that you own outright and mortgage free.
A family arrived at their desert home near Twentynine Palms, California, not far from Palm Springs, to find their home broken into and all of their possessions gone. Continue reading
Insurance And Arson – Avoiding Foreclosure Without Damaging Your Credit
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Why risk losing your home to foreclosure if you can’t make the payments? Why should you ruin your credit because you can no longer afford the house you live in? An Arkansas attorney and real estate developer, Aaron Jones may have come up with a unique approach to get out of debt while keeping his FICO score intact. Burn the heavily insured house down and collect the insurance money. Somehow, he thought that would be a good idea. The State of Arkansas and the insurance company disagree. Continue reading
The New Foreclosure Victims – Innocent Homeowners Like You
Banks are foreclosing on homeowners who are in default. While they’re at it, they’re even foreclosing on homeowners who are either current with their payments or don’t even have a loan with that bank. The confusion created by the robo-mortgage fiasco has resulted in lots of mistakes involving who owes what, and where those mortgaged houses are. However, that confusion hasn’t stopped banks from plowing ahead and throwing out the innocent with the homeowners in default. Continue reading
House Squatting – Why Buy Or Rent When You Can Just Squat
Recently, Randy Quaid brought the illegal act of squatting into mainstream news, but really, there’s nothing new about it. Apparently squatting in really expensive homes has hit the news in a lot of major areas in the US. Some squatters are even able to get the utilities turned on and brazen enough to move all of their belongings into the house and make it their home. Squatting is becoming a big problem in major US cities. Continue reading
Trashing Foreclosed Homes
The banks aren’t the only ones hurt when foreclosed homeowners vandalize their homes before being kicked out. See how far some actually go to get back at the bank. Find out who the real victims are, besides the bank. Continue reading
Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) Redefaults Approaching 50%
Want to know how your soon to be increased tax dollars are being spent? HAMP was designed to help homeowners, unable to pay their mortgages, avoid foreclosure. Instead, we’re spending millions of dollars just to give them a few more months in their home before they lose it. Now that’s money well spent. The results listed in the Treasury Department’s latest report show that it’s not working. According to the report, almost 50% of the 1.3 million homeowners enrolled in the loan modification program have failed to meet their requirements and are no longer in the program. According to Inman News, “Many analysts expect that more than half of HAMP loan mods will end up redefaulting.”
Google, Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com Now Offer Misery Searches
I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to go through a foreclosure. Just imagine the humiliation if everyone you knew found out about your foreclosure? Now you don’t have to imagine it, you can Google it! Google now gives you the ability to search for foreclosures on Google Maps. Not only is Google Maps offering misery mapping options, but Zillow.com, Trulia.com, and Realtor.com are offer foreclosure searches too. Continue reading
Eliminate Your Mortgage Payment While Living In Your Dream House
How can you live in the house of your dreams without paying for it? Steal it! Eliminate your mortgage payment by becoming a squatter. Better yet, upgrade while sticking it to the Banker Man! Why live in your $150,000 house when you can break into and squat in a $1.9 Million house? What’s the worse that can happen, jail? In jail they give you free food and a free room. No matter what happens, you get a free place to live. Continue reading
Banks Are Abandoning Foreclosed Homes Too
Homeowners aren’t the only ones making an investment decision to walk away from their mortgages. Apparently banks are walking away from their abandoned properties too. Banks that hold properties that suffer from deferred maintenance, vandalism, or declining property values may cost more to foreclose, manage and sell than the property is worth. In situations like these, many banks are a choosing to abandon the vacated property and consider it a loss. Continue reading
Bombs Found In Two Houses
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In District Heights, Maryland, a real estate agent was inspecting a recently foreclosed home and found what appeared to be two pipe bombs left in the basement, believed to be left by the previous owner. In an effort to retaliate against the bank, he is suspected of booby-trapping the house with two explosive devices. The real estate agent called the bomb squad and the devices were disposed of. So, while buying your next foreclosure, you’d better get a home inspection, termite inspection, foundation inspection and now, a bomb inspection too. Continue reading
Squatters Destroy Newlywed Couple’s Dream Home
You’ve saved up for years to buy a house, you find the home of your dreams, buy it and get ready to move in only to find out that there’s a squatter living in it. It happened to Zael Zura and his fiancee Veronica Botts when they bought their dream home and discovered on move-in day that alleged serial squatter, James McClung, was living there posing as a renter. Notice I said “serial squatter” because this vagrant has pulled this scam several times before and is probably pulling it even as we speak. The home that he targeted was a recently renovated bank-owned home in Shoreline, Washington. Zura and Botts put an offer on that home on the day Zura proposed to Botts. They discovered the vagrant 10 days before closing, when Zura drove by the house, that was supposed to be vacant, and found strangers living in their enchanted newlywed cottage. This was the same day as their engagement party too. What a way to ruin a celebration. Continue reading