The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has entered a new decision explaining the requirements for a valid foreclosure. In the case of Eaton v. Fannie Mae, the homeowner sued Fannie Mae seeking to invalidate the foreclosure of her home. The homeowner made three arguments. First she argued...
People often struggle with their mortgage servicer. It is hard to get information from them, you wait for hours on the phone when you have a question, and sometimes they even break the law. So how do mortgage servicers break the law, and why should...
Many important principles of mortgage and foreclosure law are dealt with in a recent case from the First Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appeals court covering Massachusetts. The case started when the homeowners sued the alleged owner of their mortgage, U.S. Bank, after they had...
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that a foreclosure is valid even though the bank who foreclosed did not send a mandatory post-foreclosure notice to the city. Previously, the Supreme Judicial Court has held that a violation of any of the foreclosure laws renders a...
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is poised to decide what a consumer must do before filing a lawsuit against a business under the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act, called Chapter 93A. Under Chapter 93A, a pre-suit demand letter is usually required before a consumer may sue a...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued new regulations designed to encourage banks and mortgage servicers to provide homeowners with loan modifications and to protect them against unnecessary foreclosure. “The Consumer Bureau is committed to ensuring that homeowners and struggling borrowers are treated fairly by mortgage...
Regulations from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) require a face-to-face meeting between a mortgage servicer and a homeowner before a foreclosure on a property, if the servicer has any kind of office within 200 miles...
Homeowners in Massachusetts may not use the legal theory of negligence to sue their banks for faulty processing of their loan modification applications. So says the Massachusetts Appeals Court in a recent decision that many consumers may find counter intuitive. In this case, the homeowner sued...
In a case brought by Culik Law against Bank of New York Mellon, challenging its right to foreclose, a federal judge of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts has recognized what he called a “novel legal theory” and refused the bank’s request to dismiss the...
A new decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has clarified when an attorney may handle a foreclosure on behalf of a bank, holding that attorneys need not have written authorization in order to do so. The case, Fannie Mae v. Rego, was the appeal of...
After years of refusing to do principal reductions in homeowners’ loan modifications, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have finally relented, announcing a new program under which they will provide principal reductions if homeowners meet certain criteria. To qualify for a potential principal reduction, a homeowner must...
Homeowners are sometimes behind on their mortgages for extended periods of time. This often is not all the homeowner’s fault, as banks often refuse to accept payments after a certain period of time. What happens in many cases it that no payments are made for...
Does a mortgage servicing company who tries to collect a discharged debt violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act? Yes, said a federal Court of Appeals in the recent case of Garfield v. Ocwen. When a consumer files for bankruptcy, most of their debts, including mortgages,...
One of the most common complaints about mortgage servicers and banks is that they lose homeowners’ loan-modification documents (like bank statements and modification applications), then make the homeowners start over. To make matters worse, homeowners who were initially behind by just a month or two...
With a foreclosure set for just before the Labor Day holiday, the mortgage servicer Provident Funding had plans to foreclose on a Middlesex County home. The foreclosure, however, suffered from major paperwork flaws, according to a complaint filed by Culik Law in Middlesex Superior Court. First, the...