Eligibility to the program is expected to help up to 15,000 families who have been rejected by other assistance programs.

Illinois residents whose income has fallen  at least 25% or are currently unemployed can seek up to $25,000 in mortgage help.

The purpose of the program is to give temporary relief to homeowners who have fallen behind in their mortgage payments. 

Program Highlights:

• For Illinois residents whose incomes have fallen 25% or are temporarily unemployed.
• Provides up to a maximum of $25,000 to bring delinquent loans current and keep them current for up to 18 months.
• This loan is for 10 years and may be forgiven if homeowner meets all program criteria.
• Homeowner must participate in making payments of 31% of income toward their mortgage.
• If unemployed the program will pay 100% of the mortgage until homeowner gets a job.

For more details on this program please contact your local Illinois Housing Development (HUD or CEDA) offices. The program is a FREE PROGRAM. http://www.ihda.org/

That is according to the latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price index, which showed prices weakening across the country and also setting new post-peak lows in eight other cities.

The annual decline in the Chicago area was the second biggest among 20 major metropolitan areas, trailing only Atlanta, which posted a 7.9 percent decline. But the drop in the Chicago area was an improvement from the 8.5 percent annual drop reported in November 2009.

The index for the Chicago area stood at 119.57 in November 2010, falling below the 119.71 level of last March, which had been the low for the year, and marking the lowest point since April 2002, when it stood at 118.97.

The 10-city composite fell 0.8 percent over the month and slid 0.4 percent over the year, while the 20-city composite fell 1 percent over the month and dropped 1.6 percent over the year. Home prices fell in 19 of 20 metropolitan areas over the month, excluding San Diego, which reported a 0.1 percent gain. Only four metropolitan areas showed gains over the year—Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

The eight other metropolitan areas that set new lows since home prices peaked in 2006 and 2007 are Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, Portland and Seattle.

“With these numbers, more analysts will be calling for a double-dip in home prices,” David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P said in a statement. “Certainly nine cities setting new lows and with the only positive news concentrated in southern California and Washington, D.C., the data point to weakness in home prices.”

 Thirteen of the metropolitan areas and both composites have posted at least seven months of decline since the beginning of 2010. The Chicago area has posted five months of decline since then. As of November, average home prices across the country are back to the levels they were in the latter half of 2003. Since June and July 2006, the 10-city and 20-city composites are down 30.3 percent.

Home prices in the Chicago metropolitan area set a new low since prices peaked in 2006, falling 2.2 percent in November from October and 7.6 percent over the year.

That is according to the latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price index, which showed prices weakening across the country and also setting new post-peak lows in eight other cities.

The annual decline in the Chicago area was the second biggest among 20 major metropolitan areas, trailing only Atlanta, which posted a 7.9 percent decline. But the drop in the Chicago area was an improvement from the 8.5 percent annual drop reported in November 2009.

The index for the Chicago area stood at 119.57 in November 2010, falling below the 119.71 level of last March, which had been the low for the year, and marking the lowest point since April 2002, when it stood at 118.97.

The 10-city composite fell 0.8 percent over the month and slid 0.4 percent over the year, while the 20-city composite fell 1 percent over the month and dropped 1.6 percent over the year. Home prices fell in 19 of 20 metropolitan areas over the month, excluding San Diego, which reported a 0.1 percent gain. Only four metropolitan areas showed gains over the year—Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

The eight other metropolitan areas that set new lows since home prices peaked in 2006 and 2007 are Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, Portland and Seattle.

“With these numbers, more analysts will be calling for a double-dip in home prices,” David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P said in a statement. “Certainly nine cities setting new lows and with the only positive news concentrated in southern California and Washington, D.C., the data point to weakness in home prices.”

Thirteen of the metropolitan areas and both composites have posted at least seven months of decline since the beginning of 2010. The Chicago area has posted five months of decline since then. As of November, average home prices across the country are back to the levels they were in the latter half of 2003. Since June and July 2006, the 10-city and 20-city composites are down 30.3 percent.

According to IAR Chief Legal Counsel Steve Bochenek: “This moratorium will impact clients in different ways. A seller client will have a little more time to sell a house where the mortgage is in default. In addition, if the suspension lasts for long then the lenders/servicers might have some incentive to agree to a short sale. Buyer clients that may be in the process of purchasing REO properties will not be able to close until the suspension is lifted and so there may be some delay in closing a transaction, although we do not know how long. Also, buyer clients need to be advised to obtain title insurance to insure title to REO property they are purchasing. Clients that have rented properties that were then foreclosed on will have some additional time before they may be evicted. The key is that if any client of a brokerage company has a question as to how this suspension impacts them they need to talk to an attorney or call the Illinois Attorney General’s office.” The Attorney General’s Homeowners’ Referral Helpline is 1-866-544-7151.

More than 700 days after putting up for sale the home they owned for three decades, a Glen Ellyn couple says they’d received multiple offers on the home, but couldn’t get any answers from their mortgage company.

Gus and Fran Trantham owed more on their home than its market value, so they were a “short sale,” industry lingo for selling a home for less than is owed.  Bank approval is needed for this type of transaction, as the loss is shouldered or shared by the mortgage holder.

But the two year struggle put the couple on the verge of bankruptcy.

“I never dreamed I would have a house this beautiful,” Fran Trantham said of the custom-built, 4,000 square foot home she and Gus built.

They now rent a condo in Woodridge, not far from the home they say they have been trying to sell for so long, and they blame JPMorganChase for failing to offer them any assistance in their efforts to avoid foreclosure and complete a short sale.

“We had a house we thought was worth the money to carry us through,” Gus Trantham said, questioning why Chase ignored three contract offers the couple received on the home. “They are obviously making so much money… two-and-a-quarter billion in a quarter.  They are not looking down at the bottom of the feeding scale to the houses of Americans.”

The team of professionals working with the Tranthams say they were also at a loss to explain why Chase wouldn’t even answer the potential buyers’ offers.

ReMax agent Joel Adams said he and his clients never got any answers when they submitted the first three contract offers.

“Never one. Nope, not one. They never responded in any formal way. Never,” he said.

The Tranthams’ agents said it’s a lose-lose proposition and a problem that is not unique to Chase: the bank never answers and the prospective buyers almost always walk away.

“If you can imagine being a buyer, thinking you are going to buy a house and waiting four or five months for an answer, you have to go out and buy another house,” said ReMax Suburban Vice President James R. Nelson.

To try to save the deal, their lawyer Joseph Horwitz said he took a more direct route.

“It’s unbelievable, to put it mildly,” Horwitz said.  “We wrote letters begging for an answer and it never came. So the date came and went and those people finally left.”

Meanwhile, the couple said the price of their home, along with the market, kept dropping.

With so many homeowners in the same boat — owing more than their home is worth — the Obama Administration recently offered incentives to get banks to complete more short sales.  But is anyone keeping track on whether the banks are actually doing that?

After repeated requests for information, a spokesperson for the US Department of Treasury, which oversees foreclosure alternative programs, said the agency is tracking the number of short sales completed by banks. But, he said, it is too early for the department to report those numbers.

For its part, Chase also won’t say how many short sales it has completed in recent months, but a spokeswoman said that last year the company was focused on loan modifications and keeping families in their homes.

Spokeswoman Christine Holevas said the company is now turning more attention, and adding more staffing, to short sale transactions.  She said Chase does not keep transcripts of conversation with its customers, but that its internal notes do indicate Chase representatives responded to the early offers on the Trantham home.

She said the notes indicate the offers were too low and that the bank countered.  The Tranthams, their lawyer and their realtor all dispute that. 

Eight days after NBC Chicago’s call to Chase to raise the Tranthams’ questions, their short sale offer was approved.

Gus, 79, Fran, 78, said they had very different plans in mind for their golden years and are hoping for a new beginning.  But say they had to wait for at Chase to say the word.

“It’s just an unbelievable situation. The system isn’t working. This should have been taken care of a year ago,” said Gus Trantham.

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/Chasing-Chase-96513319.html#ixzz0r5RrfJBW ]]> http://ilrealestatespecialists.com/2010/06/16/channel-5-news-report-on-chase-bank/feed/ 4 http://ilrealestatespecialists.com/2010/06/16/fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-shares-to-be-pulled-off-nyse/ http://ilrealestatespecialists.com/2010/06/16/fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-shares-to-be-pulled-off-nyse/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:49:17 +0000 Jack Lewitz http://ilrealestatespecialists.com/?p=1349 The NYSE plans to delist the shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  This means Fannie and Freddie Mac will no longer be traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

 As of June 15, 2009, one share of Fannie Mae stock was selling at .92 cents while Freddie Mac shares were at $1.22.

In September of 2008 the Government took over both Fannie and Freddie when the housing bubble collapsed. So far taxpayers have poured $145 billion dollars into Fannie and Freddie to keep them afloat during the housing crisis and now they are being pulled from the NYSE.

What does this mean to you and I?

Well it means to date there is no confidence in our government running these two agencies and no market to sell these guaranteed mortgage back securities to private investors.

Remember Fannie and Freddie were created by Congress to buy mortgages from banks and then package them into bonds and sell them into the open market as mortgaged backed securities to investors.  When the rating system of these mortgages collapsed and loans started to go into default then the market lost all confidence.

Today 31 million home loans worth $5.5 trillion dollars or half of all mortgages are guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie Mac.

When you see Congress debating over financial reform they are really debating over how to fix Fannie and Freddie as they are crucial to the success or failure of our housing market and banking markets.

During the last couple of days I have been hearing the testomony from top executives at Goldman Sachs.

It appears from their testimony that it does not matter whether the market is up or down they will always find a way to profit.

According to Lloyd Blankfein , Chief Exectutive at Goldman, betting against mortgage backed securities that the firm was selling to clients was not a conflict of interest, or unethical.

According to Blankfein and other at Goldman, betting against mortgage back securites was just good business sense for the firm since the firm was hedging against lossess  on sub-prime mortgages when they were on the other side of the transaction.

To them Short Selling a Security is just a normal activity for Goldman Sachs and their customers know this and trust them.

Yet would you trust a company when their interests come first before their customers?

It may take months before we see the affects of any financial reform legislation as a result of Golman Sachs behavior.

The first article was on the front page of the business section ” Illinois Housing Defaults Double” the other was on page 4 of the same section “$3.3 billion profit at JPMorgan tops estimates”.

So here is my question, is JPMorgan  making such huge profits? I think the answer can be found in the article on the first page and that would be the homeowner.

Almost 15,000 Illinois homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure this year in the first 3 months. This is twice as many homes that went back to lenders during the same period in 2009.

Clearly there is a disconnect between what is being reported and the realities of the housing market as it relates to homeowners in Illinois.

According to Jamie Diamond, Chase Bank CEO, the US economy is clearly showing signs of improvement.

Well Jamie maybe it is showing signs at your bank with profits up from $2.1 billion in 2009 to $3.3 billion in 2010 but don’t tell that to homeowners who are loosing their homes to foreclosure in Illinois because I do not think they can appreciate what you are saying.

Maybe thats why this news is on the 4th page of the Business section instead of page 1.

Several Political Action Neighborhood Associations met at a rally to voice support for a $1,000 fee on all judicial foreclosure sales in Illinois that would be used to try to prevent foreclosure.

• The $1,000.00 fee would be collected from purchasers at a Sherrif Sale.
• The collection of this fee would affect most lender’s  because they are usually the ones who buy back the property at a Sheriff Sale.
• The fee would go into a Foreclosure Prevention Fund and help finance foreclosure prevention programs, organizations who are assisting homeowners who are delinquent on their mortgage.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed a law suit against Dallas Based “Credit Solutions of America”. Madigan is attempting to stop them from doing business in Illinois and wants the company to pay restitution to its Illinois customer, pay a $50,000 fine for violating the state’s Consumer Fraud Act and pay additional fines of $50,000 for each instance of fraud.

In the lawsuit, Credit Solutions of America accepted money from Illinois customers but failed to negotiate a lower payment on their debt with the bank. While Credit Solutions claimed to be successful in reducing customers debt by 50% it actually left them deeper in debt according to the law suit.

Lisa Madigan and the Illinois Attorney Generals office has filed similar lawsuits against SDS West Corporation and Debt Relief USA.

Her office seeks to ban all Debt Settlement Companies from operating in Illinois, unless they meet the following requirements:

• Provide individual credit counseling:
• Become licensed and Bonded in Illinois:
• Disclose risks to customers about entering into a debt settlement contract;
• Provide a written contract with a right to cancel clause.

Over the past year the Attorney Generals office received over 12,000 complaints regarding debt an credit issues.