Until just recently, if you filed a bankruptcy or lost a home to foreclosure or completed a short sale, the FHA had a fairly lengthy waiting period for you to be eligible for FHA financing for the purchase of another home. If you filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you would have had to wait for two years after it was discharged. If you did a short sale or were foreclosed, you would have to wait three whole years before you could get another FHA loan. Now, however, those rules have changed. Under the new Back to Work – Extenuating Circumstances Program, you only have to wait one year if you qualify. Do you qualify? Here are some of the criteria: 1. You must have had significant (20% or more) reduction in household income for at least six month, resulting from loss of employment or some circumstance beyond your control. This qualifies as an “Economic Event”.… read more →
No one ever thinks their real estate tax bill is fair when it comes out. But to determine whether or not you might successfully appeal your taxes in Cook County, look at these things: 1) Check the description of your property. If the county thinks your house is bigger than it is, you have a good shot at appeal. Make sure you can provide blueprints or a survey or an appraisal that shows the size of your home. Of course, if the county thinks your home is smaller than it is, it’s probably assessed less than it should be anyway. 2) If your home has been damaged — water, fire, any kind of significant damage — that was not accounted for when it was assessed, you can appeal based on that. 3) If your home is in an exceptionally undesirable location (and no, not being able to stand your neighbors… read more →
If you were thrown out of your house pending a foreclosure case, this might interest you: The Illinois Attorney General recently filed a suit against Safeguard Properties, a large national company that maintains foreclosed properties for lenders. According to the Illinois Attorney General’s office, more than 200 homeowners have complained that Safeguard Properties wrongfully removed their personal property from their homes, even though the homes had not yet been foreclosed, and even had their utilities shut off. Moreover, Safeguard Properties supposedly told homeowners they could not continue to live in their homes pending foreclosure. Under state law, homeowners are allowed to stay in their homes until the foreclosure process is complete. The suit also alleges that Safeguard told tenants of properties in foreclosure that they must also vacate. Again, this is a violation of state law, which allows tenants to remain in possession until their lease ends, even if the lease ends after… read more →
After numerous complaints by homeowner’s struggling to be compensated or have their loans modified pursuant to the $25 million national mortgage foreclosure settlement, the settlement’s monitoring committee finally announced some changes last week. It turns out there are a whopping 304 standards that the banks are supposed to be following, but compliance has been slim Pursuant to the changes announced last week, all five banks affected by the settlement (Bank of American, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally/GMAC), will give homeowners 60 days to submit additional loan modification documents before the home goes into foreclosure. Generally, the banks have also stated they will provide better oversight of their employees.Additionally, Bank of America and Wells Fargo have agreed to the following additional policies: 1) They will have to provide specific information about missing documentation to homeowners. For example, instead of saying they never received “X document”, or “X document”… read more →