It’s Monday, and we are waiting to see if the markets continue to hammered this week.  In the meantime, here’s a new glimpse into the fraud that helped bring on this collapse: [Thank you Vegas RE]   So just how extensive was the fraud anyway?  Feel free to chime in with your four cents worth [Trite phrase adjusted for inflation.] or share your links ideas and stories- anything housing related. This is an open thread, so the floor [or whatever you happen to be on at the moment] is yours.

Foreclosures are up in the Phoenix area- way, way, up. Last June Doom looked at the Notice of Trustee Sales [NOTs] and Cancellation of Notice of Trustee Sales [CNOTs] issued in Maricopa County. [Phoenix area] Our data includes both residential and commercial property. There was a record 2325 NOTs issued is June 2007.  As of last Frday, there were 6668 NOTs issued in Maricopa County for the month of June, and there is still one business day left. At the height of the S&L crisis in the 1980s, the record month for NOTs was March 1988 when 1431 NOTs were…
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Just when I think I’ve seen every possible home buying incentive: PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – She has tried nightclubs and online dating sites, but now a 42-year-old single mother is looking for love where everyone else’s heart is breaking: the real- estate market. After a year of trying to sell her four-bedroom home and eight years of singledom, Deven Trabosh is offering her Florida home and a shot at marrying her on the Internet. "Marry a Princess Lost in America," Trabosh wrote in the ads she posted on eBay and Craigslist last week. She describes a life of romance…
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In January of 2007, Doom was reporting that a mortgage lender that had gone out of business had apparently left files and computers in the office.  Our principal worry at the time was the potential theft of personal data.  John however, pointed out another problem with sloppy paperwork earlier this week to me: Looks like that blizzard of paperwork and files (electronic and otherwise) lost in the meltdown of the subprime originators could conceivably come back to bite bondholders in a way we didn’t anticipate. The short story is that default servicing gets problematical if you’ve lost all the paperwork…
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On our masthead is the quote from Churchill "A nation that forgets it’s past is doomed to repeat it."  By extension we could add "A nation that doesn’t learn from the mistakes of other nations is doomed to repeat their mistakes." An article from today’s Vancouver Sun should sound familiar to Doomers.  It is discussing how the Victoria housing market is cooling- and the article could have been lifted from a 2006 Arizona Republic, Las Vegas Review Journal, Sacramento Bee, etc. [Bubbleheads know the cast of characters]   VICTORIA — Real estate sales are down in the provincial capital. The…
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We’ve noticed a significant number of users have been accessing Housing Doom on their mobile phones, and have launched a new mobile version of our site. The new site is optimized for mobile phones (including a special version for the iPhone) – it should load significantly faster. You can also check the latest Housing Doom news by sending the text message "Doom" to 41411 – it will reply with the title and beginning of the latest article. We are also accepting advertisers for the mobile site.

We’ve got some smart readers out there, and we have a question for you. Prior to the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act that was enacted in December of last year, lenders could issue a 1099 as a result of modification of the terms of the mortgage, or foreclosure on your principal residence. This is not true for all mortgages however. I received the following question: It’s my understanding the Mortgage Relief Act only applies to purchase loans for owner occupied properties.  The following loans are excluded:   -second homes -investment homes -cash out refis of any type(over the original mortgage…
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From the desk of the System Administrator (not Twist): HousingDoom has been under assault from spammers the past few days – if you use our handy RSS feeds, you might have noticed some of the spam. We have upgraded to the newest version of WordPress, and it should prevent exploits of this kind. Please let us know if you experience any issues (or notice ads for pharmaceuticals showing up all of a sudden).

Thanks to John Hernandez for this story of foreclosure and "counter-foreclosure": Condo associations that are in a financial bind from mounting foreclosures are now targeting lenders who have taken back units from owners in default but are themselves failing to pay their share of maintenance fees. As more units end up in the hands of lenders, the banks and mortgage servicing companies are responsible for maintenance payments for those units. But administering the growing pool of real estate has proved challenging for lenders. The Residences at the Bath Club Condominium Association in Miami Beach is pressing a foreclosure action against…
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FYI… I was surprised a couple of days ago when I didn’t see the Relevant Articles section on our sidebar.  It seemed that sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t.  I complained to our sys admin, who assures me the sidebar isn’t going anywhere.  The  Relevant Articles now only appear on the homepage, and not on individual posts.

We’ve heard tale after tale of bitter homeowners gutting their homes prior to losing them to foreclosure.  Now they might want to think twice: [Hat tip MR!] MERCER, Pa. — A former Mercer County mortgage broker who gutted his $1.2 million home before a sheriff’s sale has been sentenced to three to 15 months in jail and must pay more than $174,000 to an insurance company. Authorities say 40-year-old Scott McCuskey, of Sharpsville, stripped cabinets, toilets, a Jacuzzi, locks, garage doors and other items. He was convicted of defrauding creditors and fraud in insolvency in April. McCuskey unsuccessfully argued to…
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Doomers undoubtedly are aware by now of Bank of America’s pending takeover of Countrywide, but did you know that you are helping to finance the deal? June 25 (Bloomberg) — Bank of America Corp.’s $3 billion takeover of Countrywide Financial Corp. will be financed by 138 million tax-paying Americans. Bank of America, led by Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis, can use tax write-offs to pay for Countrywide, the country’s biggest mortgage lender, said Robert Willens, a former managing director at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. who now runs his own accounting firm. Taxpayers may pick up about $5 billion of Countrywide’s…
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People are now waking up to the fact that what that real estate investment guru was pitching at the seminar wasn’t necessarily an "investment":   London: During the housing bubble a lot of people confused consumption with investment, a fact now becoming painfully obvious in Britain as prices fall and businesses suffer. As in the United States, home owners helped inflate a wider bubble by plowing money into housing-related consumption, from granite kitchen countertops to living room furniture to under floor heating. The illusion, or justification, was that this consumption, often financed via mortgage debt, was actually investment in a can’t-miss…
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With nearly a 3 year supply of million dollar homes for sale in Scottsdale, AZ, [1,572 actives, 46 solds in the past month] something’s gotta give.  What is giving is asking prices. M noted this trend: Here’s an interesting search I set up a few months ago.  As you know Scottsdale has a glut of 1M+ homes, although it has shown "improvement" lately.  This is not because of an increase in sales however, but rather a decrease in the number of 1m+ homes. This search: Original list price: greater than  $1,000,000 Current list price: less than $1,000,000   These are…
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You have to hand it to the guys at Goldman Sachs, who now say they shouldn’t have upgraded financial and consumer discretionary sectors a few weeks ago.  They manage to lend an air of dignity and professionalism to a statement that basically says, "Uh, We messed up!": "We boosted our consumer discretionary and financials weights in May on the belief the sectors would benefit from bank recapitalizations and fiscal stimulus," Goldman strategists led by David Kostin wrote. "Our thesis was clearly wrong in hindsight."