Bankruptcy Blog Archives

Mortgage lenders facing stiff reprimands, possibly penalties & fines April 14, 2011 By Mike Hinshaw Anyone who’s considering or who has filed for bankruptcy protection needs to be aware of the latest news in the ongoing probe of the biggest U.S, mortgage lending banks. This is especially relevant for those who have been driven to [...]

According to real estate data collected by RealtyTrac, foreclosures rose to a record 1.05 million last year, eclipsing the previous record of 918,000 a year earlier. That means 26% of all homes sold in 2010 were foreclosures. 2.9 million homes received foreclosure notices in 2010, with 20% more than that total expected to be in [...]

By Mike Hinshaw Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor and bankruptcy expert who’s getting the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ready to launch in July, was cool under fire last week during often heated questioning at House Finance subcommittee hearing. NY Times writer cites ‘war on Warren’ According to a March 20, Paul Krugman op-ed in [...]

Continued from: “Lobbying for ‘reform,’ was credit-card industry fighting its own excesses?“ March 16, 2011 By Mike Hinshaw Last time we looked at possible correlation between rising bankruptcy rates and increased use of consumer credit, beginning with the introduction of the modern credit card in the late 1940s, its evolution into a general-purpose credit instrument [...]

First in a series: Examining the interplay among bankruptcy, historical forces and baby steps of the seemingly emergent, struggling Recovery March 11, 2011 By Mike Hinshaw When the Fat Lady of the Great Recession finally sang, it was less an aria and more a whimper–so quiet, in fact, that when the National Bureau of Economic [...]

Being upside down on the ownership of a home in our current marketplace seems to be the rule rather than the exception. When a homeowner gets upside down and has a high interest mortgage to boot, it doesn’t take much for the homeowner to get discouraged and want to leave their problems behind, especially if [...]

This personal bankruptcy story was posted on the internet in February of 2011 as comments in a bankruptcy discussion: “Judgment against homestead owner — Lien on excess value of homestead property. A judgment against the owner of a homestead shall become a lien on the value of the homestead property in excess of the homestead [...]

The 2010 tallies are in. According to an article written for CNNMoney.com by Les Christie and posted  January 13, 2011, “Foreclosures were at a record high in 2010, and more than 1 million people lost their homes, even as notices started leveling off during the end year. In total, there were nearly 2.9 million foreclosure [...]

This bit of news came from a blog in December of 2010 from a forum discussion on bankruptcy: Next year could very well be a peak year for foreclosures, says Rick Sharga, a senior vice         president at RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties. The market is       expected to tally about 1.2 million [...]

The number of Americans filing for personal bankruptcy is up by 17% in 2010 and rose by nearly a third in 2009, a surge largely driven by foreclosures, credit card abuse, and job losses. Overall, personal bankruptcy filings hit 1.41 million last year, up 32% from 2008, according to the National Bankruptcy Research Center. Chapter [...]