Readers weigh in on topics affecting the California real estate industry.

This article continues our series on shortsales and examines the cash-for-shortsale program banks have begun to offer to select groups of underwater homeowners as an alternative to foreclosure.

Nationally, banks modified 558,000 mortgage loans in the first half of 2011 – a 42% decrease from the 968,000 modifications made in the first half of 2010, says a report by a private-sector trade group of mortgage industry professionals. A drop in delinquencies also accompanies this staggering nosedive in modifications. Nationally, 2.7 million loans were [...]

Lenders have been quietly offering unrequested loan modifications or principal reductions on adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) to borrowers who are not in default, according to the New York Times. JP Morgan Chase (Chase) and Bank of America (BofA), who both inherited a sizeable portfolio of ARMs from lenders they bought during the housing crash, have [...]

The California housing market continues to flounder almost two years after the official end of the nation’s Great Recession (June 2009), and so does the broader economy. Statewide home sales volume and prices continue to decline and the present trend in the number of single family residential (SFR) construction starts is downward as well. [For [...]

The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) recorded 20,000 new mortgage loan modifications and 26,147 permanent modifications in February 2011. Thus national statistics are a new low for HAMP, a federal program established to aid homeowners avoid foreclosure with modifications which lower their mortgage loan payments or rates. 557,076 total active modifications have been entered into [...]

Lenders are still getting away with highway robbery, according to Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times Op/Ed columnist, Paul Krugman. Krugman eviscerates the banking industry and the wealthy class with a powerful reminder that although an economic recovery is under way, there has yet to be a final reckoning. More than a moralistic [...]

Homeowners who work with a housing counselor when seeking a loan modification are proven to have better chances of continued success under their modified loan terms. Many homeowners who receive a loan modification (typically of the extend-and-pretend variety) re-default on their loan within eight months of receiving the modification. However, a study of homeowners who [...]

Greater numbers of California lawyers are turning down homeowners fighting for a loan modification since state advance fee law prevents them from being paid until and unless their client receives a loan modification. Strict advance fee regulations for lawyers were the result of an effort to eliminate real estate scammers, who made big promises to [...]

During this period of prolonged artificially low interest rates, 80% of loan applications submitted nationwide are for a refinance. This financial adjustment may be a prudent decision for the well-informed homeowner who has an equity in his property, but the majority of Americans are relying on the risky calculations of financial advisers looking to profit [...]