The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

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.…

The Making Home Affordable program was designed to be the savior of the crashing real estate economy. People nationwide were taking solace in the President’s effort to save our homes and lead us through the worst economic situation our country has faced in almost 100 years. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure due to the bubble bursting on a plague of poorly schemed sub-prime mortgages rejoiced in what seemed to be a cooperative effort on the part of the a supportive new Washington administration and the Wall Street.

Unfortunately, the program has landed far from expectations. The foreclosure rate has seen only minor blips in decline and it has become difficult to hear government officials even address the existence of the program, unless to defend it.…

Foreclosures have become a plague across the country, sickening the economies of small towns, the general contractor industry and even the commercial real estate industry. No facet of the real estate world has gone unaffected.

Whether your home was foreclosed upon or your mortgage lender granted you a short sale (negotiated permission to sell your home for less than what is owed), it was probably considered a tremendous relief to drop the proverbial financial anchor tied around your neck.

However, thousands of Americans once in the same boat are now finding that the tide is again rising around them, as banks and lenders are coming back months later for the remainder of what is owed on the home.…

It’s official: Making Home Affordable isn’t owning up to its namesake.

After months of simmering frustration with the federal program designed to financially encourage lenders to be more cooperative with economically-challenged mortgage holders, it seems that the national media has finally created an outlet for the hundreds of thousands of Americans trying to sort it all out.

The success of a program like Making Home Affordable, and the general willingness of banks to assist consumers in adjusting their mortgages, is so critical because recent reports have indicated that avoiding foreclosure is one of the primary reasons people file bankruptcy. In most cases, a Chapter 13 will allow a person to stay in their home by catching up on missed mortgage payments.…