Punished for trying to fix a flawed mortgage
by Slade Smith | 2014/05/27
A bank lost another mortgage because they made an error in recording their mortgage-- as is all too common, they attached the wrong legal description. However, in this unusual case, the bank caught the error before anybody else and applied to the court to get the incorrect legal description fixed, but a judge still voided it.
In reading the facts of the case, I thought the court got it wrong, resulting in a very unfair decision. See what you think.
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A Stunningly Bad Court Decision on Affiliated Business Arrangements
by Slade Smith | 2013/12/04
In a stunning decision, the Federal 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that under RESPA, sham affiliated business arrangements are legal. Apparently referrers of settlement service business, prohibited by RESPA from receiving kickbacks for referrals, can now cash in on referrals by setting up shell businesses which serve no other purpose than to distribute money for referrals to the referrer, There's no longer any need to make the affiliated business even look like a bona fide business with employees, an office, and work being performed. Can this decision possibly be correct? I certainly do not think so. I think the court missed something that was right under its nose.
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How the major home price indexes could be completely misleading
by Slade Smith | 2012/04/09
Releases such as the Case-Shiller home price index and the CoreLogic Home Price Index, which both report data on average sales prices for residential properties, provide some insights into the strength and direction of the housing market. But there's something unique about the nature of the current housing market that could cause the headline numbers reported by the major house price indexes to be distinctly misleading.
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More on the Vieiras-- would their case have been a winner in Arizona?
by Slade Smith | 2012/02/29
In a blog yesterday, I wrote about the Vieiras, a family which appears to be on a legal crusade against Wells Fargo over a mortgage made on their second home in Nevada which the Vieiras say was fraudulent because the appraiser hired by Wells Fargo inflated the appraisal. (If you haven't read my blog from yesterday, this blog will probably make more sense if you read that one first.) I've since looked into the Vieiras' case a little more. I learned that the Vieira's case has already been decided against them (I should have thought that the courts might have acted since the writeup I linked to was published-- duh! Certainly, no definitive adverse outcome in the courts would deter these single-minded crusaders!) As it turned out, the Vieiras took their case all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court, and lost every step of the way on summary judgment-- the decision against the Vieiras was clear to the courts based on the facts alleged by the Vieiras, without the necessity of a trial.
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