Ninety Days Respite For House Owners

Posted in Foreclosed Homes, Foreclosure, July 13th, 2007 |

The white flag of truce is sending out signals at – harassed borrowers will get 90 days time to breathe. The State Attorney General, Martha Coakley, has declared a deal. It will give reprieve to 2,000 Bay State property owners facing foreclosures.

The Fremont Investment & Loan body has been persuaded to put on hold all foreclosure steps on each and every one of its mortgages in Massachusetts for a period of 90 days. During this time the State Attorney General’s office will peruse and minutely scan the loans. If any hint of unfair and deceptive practices is smelt out then the California based sub-prime lender will be stopped on its tracks from proceeding further with foreclosure proceedings. If such a situation arises then the Martha Coakley’s office will find out new avenues of payment to give relief to the borrower.

The move by the Attorney General’s office could not have been better timed. A foreclosure tornado is creating havoc across the state due to sudden increase in interest rates for borrowers who had bad credit ratings and went in for sub-prime mortgage to realize their dreams of owning a house.

The Freemont Investment & Loan Company ranks high in Boston and the state among the number of sub-prime lenders involved in initiating the most number of foreclosures against its borrowers. Coakely is thinking of making similar arrangements with other lenders in the sub-prime market. The first one is being treated as a role model to be emulated for action against others.

The counsel for foreclosure victims Robert Pulster, lauds the plans of the AG office. Since 2006 Pulster’s organization Jamaica Plain has been working for dozens of borrowers who were going to be thrown out of their homes and condos. Pulster opined that there was hardly a single loan that was not problematic. The background of all loans appeared to be the same. At the time of applying for loans the borrowers usually quoted higher income figures than what was real. On the one hand the borrowers were keen to own a home anyhow and on the other they fell into the well laid out trap of the lenders who knew from the beginning that the borrowers would ultimately drop out.

When cornered a spokesman for Fremont refrained from comment by saying that they were about to make their exit from the mortgage business.

Via