The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

Think high unemployment concerns have passed? Well, according to the Labor Department, these concerns are just as pressing as ever, with a paltry number of jobs added in May to keep up with the growing demand of an expanding labor force.

As Reuters is reporting, “Employment rose far less than expected in May to record its weakest reading since September, while the jobless rate rose to 9.1 percent as high energy prices and the effects of Japan’s earthquake bogged down the economy. Nonfarm payrolls increased 54,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, with private employment rising 83,000, the least amount since June.…

To commemorate the Federal Trade Commission’s annual National Consumer Protection Week (March 6 – 12, 2011), the FTC is providing a budget-load of handy-dandy information designed to protect your money, your credit, and your overall post-recessionary financial future. So whether you’re rebuilding your economic life post-bankruptcy, or simply trying to speed up your savings, the NCPW blog can yield a wealth of resources exactly at a time when average Americans need a financial infusion, including information about:

• Avoiding foreclosure rescue and other mortgage-related scams;
• Knowing how to spot employment opportunity scams;
• Making the most of your money in the early stages of your career;
• Building and maintaining a budget to improve financial stability;
• Avoiding time-share and credit-card scams offered via text messages; and
• Learning what steps to take to save your home from foreclosure.

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We talk a lot about the real estate reckoning and its effects on companies, individuals, municipalities, and sometimes states. But these days the mortgage crisis is even handing the family pet a raw deal, as families are forced into foreclosure and out of their homes, and the animals they owned are left behind in animal shelters, or worse yet, in the empty houses to languish alone.

A recent USA Today article reported that some of these same pet owners, befuddled by their beleaguered budgets, astonishingly enough will leave their pets behind with small amounts of food and water. In the best of cases, these animals are found days later, starving and near death.…

This week you may have seen many ghouls and goblins trolling around your neighborhoods, asking for tricks or treats. But, the scariest thing currently happening in your community is an array of potentially unlawful home repossessions from mortgage companies expediting the foreclosure process or refusing mortgage modifications in bad faith. In turn, a whole host of homeowner lawsuits have erupted on the scene, with the vast majority of them revolving around the idea that mortgage companies are deliberately misleading and manipulating homeowners just like you for their own financial benefit.

How can you know if your bank or mortgage lender is acting scary?…

Think the economic downturn is now only a temporary concern? Well, according to an authority on the history of financial crises—Carmen M. Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland—this country’s economy could suffer from super-slow growth and staggering unemployment for a full decade or more. This seemingly unending economic malaise remains a direct result of the collapse of the housing market and the economic turmoil that began some three years ago.

As a recent New York Times report explained, Ms. Reinhart’s paper (co-written with her husband, Vincent R. Reinhart, a former director of monetary affairs at the Federal Reserve) drew upon research she conducted with the Harvard economist Kenneth S.…

In previous posts we’ve mentioned the findings of Third World America, Arianna Huffington’s new book taking an up-close-and-person and personal look at those hardest hit by the ongoing economic crisis: individuals, families and even whole communities.

In the process of capturing this unwelcome slice of American life, Huffington’s own news and information website The Huffington Post has “mapped the areas hardest hit by home foreclosure, unemployment and bankruptcy this year.”

To give you an idea of the depth and scope of the damage done by the financial meltdown, here’s an overview of how hard people are being in hit throughout a state like North Carolina.…

During the mid-2000s, housing prices reached stratospheric levels with mortgage lenders more than willing to be liberal with their loans, selling the idea of the “home as American Dream” to anyone who would listen—whether they were qualified or not.  But, if the recent housing crisis has taught us anything, it’s that home ownership isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

So, after the recent mortgage meltdown, many are wondering: “where do we go from here?”

That’s the very question asked in a recent report by NPR. In it, correspondents found that after two decades of expansions in home ownership—fostered by government mortgage guarantees by the now much-maligned likes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—many policymakers are looking at housing finance reform as a top priority to the nation’s prospects for economic recovery.…

Debtors attempting to avoid bankruptcy by waiting for housing prices (and equity) to increase may be waiting a long time. In fact, according to The New York Times, wealth-building via housing booms may have also gone the way of guaranteed pensions, free healthcare, and secure employment.

Per the NYT, “many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg. The wealth generated by housing in those decades, particularly on the coasts, did more than assure the owners a comfortable retirement.…

You can’t turn on a television or read a newspaper today without hearing about the housing crisis, with foreclosure remaining the focus of many a homeowner’s worst nightmare. Yet even in areas where banks aren’t repossessing Americans’ biggest assets, the real estate market meltdown is still having its way with local politics and policymaking, haunting many communities—in the form of skyrocketing property taxes—for years to come.

As PBS Newshour’s Dante Chinni found, many long-term residents in some of America’s more attractive areas are facing unprecedented property taxes as newcomers move in and make themselves at home in houses (and communities) that have ballooned in value—even amid the mortgage meltdown.…

Just when you thought it was safe to call it an economic recovery, the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) pointed to a continuing recession with reports last week that personal bankruptcy filings for the month of May 2010 have increased compared with a year ago (May 2009). In this data also reveals figures finding that total bankruptcies dropped slightly in May 2010 versus the previous month of April 2010.

According to the ABI findings, in May 2010, 136,142 personal bankruptcy cases were filed, a nine percent increase from May 2009, when 124,838 cases were filed. May’s total marked a six percent drop from April of this year, when 144,490 cases were filed.…

Don’t call him a repo man. But if you are behind on the house payments, he’s coming for your keys.

In what can only be considered a sure sign that the current housing crisis is unlike any other, banks are now deploying professional “mediators,” to visit struggling homeowners to negotiate a settlement, which usually ends up with the homeowner accepting a check and the bank changing the locks. In the same day.

Long the route taken by banks to seize cars from owners who, for one reason or another, could no longer make the payments, repossession is now a strategy being used by mortgage lenders across the country.…

While millions of struggling Americans still working hard to find meaningful employment might disagree, economists are heartened about prospects for growth this year as industries increasingly report better profits and add new jobs, though they still expect the recovery to remain slow, a new survey shows.

As The Huffington Post reported this week, 70% of those recently surveyed by The National Association for Business Economics believe real Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—the measure of our country’s overall economic output— will “grow by more than two percent this year, up from 61 percent who said the same in January. Twenty-four percent are predicting real GDP will grow by more than 3 percent in 2010, up from 14 percent earlier this year.…

As the mortgage crisis continues on, ironically, President Obama seemed right at home at the podium during his 2010 State of the Union address just as millions of Americans face losing their home. As a result, many concerned citizens sought in the President’s national address any signs not only of “hope” or “change”—expressions made famous during his campaign days—but also second year specifics about what a new year would mean for the millions of average Americans, just like them, facing imminent foreclosure.

In that address, the President laid out an ambitious agenda attempting to attack one specific problem from every conceivable angle: the terrible economic squeeze on America’s middle class.  One portion of his plan mentioned helping Americans stay in their homes, retain their home’s value or absolve home debt, as the President works to “lift the value of a family’s single largest investment.”

President Obama revealed he intends to “step up” programs that encourage re-financing for affordable mortgages.…

One of the greatest benefits of filing for bankruptcy protection is that it allows struggling homeowners a second chance to catch up on missed mortgage payments. For many people, the fear of losing a beloved family home is one of the most stressful parts of their struggle with debt. But is your house really worth saving?

If you find yourself living in an “upside down house,”  it may be worthwhile to consider simply letting the house go. “Upside down” refers to a property where you owe more money than the house is worth. Back when the housing  market was still booming, this situation was almost unthinkable, but now that the bubble has burst, short selling―selling a home for less than what is owed―is all too common.…

Say you find yourself struggling with a mountain of debt. Your paycheck seems to be spent before you even get it, as soon as you pay a bill another one arrives, and you’re starting to wonder how much longer you can deal with the stress of unmanageable debt. To make matters worse, you fall behind on your housing payment and your bank threatens you with foreclosure.

So when your phone rings and a professional sounding individual on the other end promises to stop your foreclosure or even modify your mortgage, you see it as a godsend! After all, the government has been promising to help Americans hold on to their homes.…

Several months ago, in the heart of the recession with no recognizable signs of clotting in America’s collective financial blood loss, the government passed on a bill to allow millions of shaky mortgages to be subject to struggling homeowners’ bankruptcy petitions. Known as the Cramdown Bill, it would have given bankruptcy judges the right to modify, or “cramdown” mortgage terms, such as interest rates and principal balances, as part of the approval of a personal bankruptcy plan. The banking lobby launched a heavy campaign to defeat the cramdown provision, leaving families with limited options to save their homes.

Said Dick Durbin (D-Ill), “After two years of efforts that rely on banks to volunteer to rework mortgages, it is time to admit that the programs that have been put in place thus far to ease the crisis are clearly not working.…

Are you one of the thousands of people across the country who got caught up in the turmoil of the home mortgage meltdown? Are you afraid of losing your home and wondering what to do? First ask yourself whether you want to save your home or whether you are willing to let it go.  Whichever decision you make, bankruptcy can help you and your family with a fresh start.

If You Want To Save Your Home

If you want to save your home, you have a number of options. You can work directly with your lender to renegotiate the terms of the loan to lower your payments.…