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Foreclosure

New York City Homeowners Struggling More Than National Average

More than two years ago, I raised the question of whether another mortgage crash would strike New York homeowners. It’s a provocative discussion because New York City wasn’t seen as representative of the mortgage crash like Las Vegas or Miami. At the time, many homeowners in the New York City metropolitan area had been served …

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What Is the ‘Election of Remedies’ Rule in New York Foreclosure?

I wrote recently about “non-recourse” debts after New York bankruptcy, commenting that the terms “recourse” and “non-recourse” loans usually refer to deficiency judgments after foreclosure. Specifically, state laws differ on allowing plaintiff-creditors to sue defendant-debtors for amounts owed beyond either the fair-market value of the properties or the auction prices at foreclosure sales. Some states …

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What Is New York Bankruptcy Loss Mitigation?

“Loss Mitigation” sounds like an intimidating term, but it’s really just a mechanism within New York bankruptcy to help parties resolve foreclosure issues to debtors’ and creditors’ benefits. That is, its objective is to keep debtors’ principal residences out of foreclosure or reduce needless costs to creditors. It involves negotiations between the parties, possibly including …

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Federal Reserve Survey Shows Continued Household Financial Anxiety

Understanding the state of household finances in the U.S. can give debtors a benchmark to compare their circumstances to. The Federal Reserve recently published its “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2015,” which is based on the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED). The SHED is only three years old and …

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Co-ops in Foreclosure and New York Bankruptcy

I recently wrote about what happens to condo or homeowners fees in New York bankruptcy, but I left out the prominent alternative, non-renting urban residence: co-ops. That wasn’t an accident; the reason is co-op maintenance fees are paid before mortgage payments, so a debtor would default on a mortgage before co-op fees. The result is …

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At Last, a Principal Reduction Opportunity for Underwater Homeowners

In addition to mortgage modifications, deed-in-lieu of foreclosure offers, New York bankruptcy, and other options, the federal government has finally created the effective solution that until now has been off the table for underwater homeowners: mortgage principal reductions. On April 14, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced the Principal Reduction Modification program, which would …

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What Happens to Condo or Homeowners Fees in Bankruptcy?

Many New Yorkers live in condos or homeowner communities as opposed to independent, single-unit owner-occupied or rental housing. Keeping a home in New York bankruptcy is a common topic, as is protecting the interests of renters—including those in rent-stabilized units—but not so much is said about condos or homeowner communities. In New York City such …

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More on Bankruptcy Reform’s Legacy: Repeat Filing Continues

I have one more point of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005 to analyze: changes to the automatic stay to repeat filings. In the time leading up to its passage, many in Congress (and certainly creditors) believed debtors filed successive, strategic bankruptcies in a manner to avoid paying debts they …

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Is Debt or Income Preventing Young Americans From Buying Homes?

It’s understandable that young Americans would not want to take out even more debt to purchase a home after the housing bust led to a wave of New York bankruptcy filings and foreclosures. Indeed, according to a 2014 Federal Reserve Bank of New York study, the number one reason a group of renters gave for …

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