Boston Real Estate for Sale
This week’s $1.5 billion bipartisan stimulus proposal from the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus offers another round of $1,200 stimulus checks and other cash assistance for those in need as the Covid-19 recession wears on.
But it’s unlikely the proposal would stop a potential wave of evictions and foreclosures next year if the economy doesn’t rapidly improve.
Straight cash for people who are behind on their mortgage or on rent is obviously a welcome help. But it’s a short-term fix unless jobs recover. So is the idea of extending just by one month the CDC’s current eviction moratorium. This all buys time.
Original Boston Real Estate Blog Post
According to the NY Times today, state attorneys general are starting to investigate foreclosure practices with some of the biggest banks — including Massachusetts.
This news has been bubbling up for a while, but the issue now seems to be building. Apparently there’s been a lot of sloppy paperwork, and even some courts have had cause to question basic foreclosure information provided to them by banks.
The flawed practices that GMACMortgage, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have recently begun investigating are so prevalent, lawyers and legal experts say, that additional lenders and loan servicers are likely to halt foreclosure proceedings and may have to reconsider past evictions.
Problems emerging in courts across the nation are varied but all involve documents that must be submitted before foreclosures can proceed legally. Homeowners, lawyers and analysts have been citing such problems for the last few years, but it appears to have reached such intensity recently that banks are beginning to re-examine whether all of the foreclosure papers were prepared properly.
