Minneapolis Property Tax Sticker Shock: Exhibit A B C D E W(??) Where: 2737 Lake of the Isles Parkway in South Minneapolis. What: 1903 Dutch Colonial with 5 BR/5 BA and over 5,000 finished square feet. The home is a foreclosed property being sold by the lender, Bank of America. When: approaching 2 years of market...Read More
Straw Horse? How About, Straw Herd?? “Long before Sanford Weill suggested last week that big banks should split up, Bank of America executives and directors considered the idea and then decided against it, said people close to the nation’s second-biggest bank by assets.” –“Bank Breakups: Not So Fast“; The Wall Street Journal (July 29, 2012)...Read More
Average Payment per Countrywide Victim: $1,595 “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson Surveying the latest paltry big bank settlement for predatory lending practices that helped pump up the housing market — before causing it to collapse — it seems obvious that Emerson’s famous line about killing kings has a...Read More
“Hurry, Bank of America, This Offer Expires Soon!” If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem. –John Paul Getty Why can’t a [debt restructuring process] be put in place to help the millions of American homeowners who for whatever personal reasons ” usually no...Read More
“Yeah, That’ll Work” Department Quickly perusing an unread, post-Christmas Wall Street Journal (yeah, I’m behind), I came across an article discussing a fight between Dynasty Financial Partners and Bank of America over client information that the former took from the latter. In particular, this excerpt caught my eye: A New York state judge granted a temporary restraining order...Read More
Make That Four Theories (#4. Overreaction) In my post on Thursday, “National Moratorium on Foreclosures,” I puzzled over the seeming disconnect between the stocks of publicly-traded title insurance companies (barely affected), and the supposed tidal wave of claims headed their way due to defective mortgage foreclosures. I posited three possible explanations: 1) the aforementioned companies...Read More
