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Foreclosure

Study: College Costs Drove Households Into Foreclosure

The problem of rising college costs is often associated with the possibility of discharging student loan debt in a New York bankruptcy filing. However, higher-education costs also affect students’ parents. In a new study that appears in the journal Demography, the authors estimate that parental contributions to their children’s college attendance corresponded with higher foreclosure …

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Big FDCPA Supreme Court Case Offers Lessons to New Yorkers

Maybe it’s good news for some New Yorkers, but its result probably won’t affect them: The U.S. Supreme Court recently chose to hear a case about whether the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) applies to parties initiating non-judicial foreclosures. New York State, however, no longer allows non-judicial foreclosures, so the Court’s ruling probably won’t …

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Bankruptcy Before or After a Short Sale

Short-selling an underwater home is frequently touted as an alternative to New York bankruptcy, but sometimes the two go together. Debtors might find it dispiriting to hear that solving their mortgage problems might require two bureaucratic processes, but knowing how short sales and bankruptcy intersect can help debtors decide whether it’s necessary to take both …

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Choose Bankruptcy, Not ‘the Sweatbox’

A while back, I wrote several posts to illustrate who Brooklyn bankruptcy and New York bankruptcy debtors are by the chapter they file in. (For example here is, “Who Are Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Debtors?“) Although I think the posts covered the topic quite well, one of their weaknesses was that they used averages from aggregates, …

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Bankruptcy Reform Reduced Filings, Increased Insolvency, Foreclosure

The Wall Street Journal article I referred to in my post on what debtors should do when they’re too poor to afford bankruptcy filing fees cited a pair of articles by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that I missed. In 2015 the branch explored the effects the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Protection and Consumer …

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Bankruptcy Has No Statute of Limitations

Not all areas of the law are the same, which can lead to confusion for people who are unfamiliar with the law. This can be especially true for bankruptcy because it’s a mundane court process that millions of Americans have encountered, even though it takes place in federal court. One question debtors may ask is …

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What Are ‘Suspense Accounts’ and How Do They Relate to Foreclosure?

Normally, when a homeowner makes a mortgage payment, the servicer places the money in escrow and then distributes it to the relevant parties (the creditor, the insurance company, the government, and itself as a fee). Problems can arise with partial mortgage payments. Instead of placing it in escrow, making a partial distribution to the creditors, …

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Why File Chapter 7 to Delay an Inevitable Foreclosure?

Chapter 7 New York bankruptcy is often offered as an option for stopping a foreclosure. However, debtors should ask why it’s worth the trouble if they think they will lose their homes anyway. It’s a fair point: Debtors who are behind on their mortgages might not keep their homes in chapter 7. Ultimately, the answer …

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Is Renting Your Underwater Home From the Bank a Good Idea?

A long time ago, I discussed the requirements in New York for a successful deed-in-lieu of foreclosure agreement, also called a mortgage release. The benefits of such an agreement are that the lender is able to resell the property and the borrower is no longer obligated to pay on an ultimately unaffordable mortgage. The question, …

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