Monday Meeting Notes Feb 4 2013

from Kathryn:

Present: John, James,Susan, Bev, Sonny, Richard and Kathryn (taking notes)

Richard brought a great deal of material which can be made available to others about the foreclosure situation in Buncombe County and the Metro area.  Although housing prices have held up in Asheville better than many other communities there was still at 12% decline in prices between first quarters of '09 and '12 in the four county region. In 2011 there were 1877 homeowners 90 days overdue and 2700 in foreclosure compared to 250 before the crash.  On 9/12 1.6% of prime loans were 90 days over and 2% were in foreclosure.  Although Asheville only has 2.3% of owner occupied subprime loans, 16% of this market is either in foreclosure or 90 days overdue.  Richard has spent time in the registrar of deeds office and found that looking for errors in the paperwork is tedious and not very rewarding.

 

Loan modification is done by the "servicer" of the loan, not the lender.  The programs for this have not been effective.  They can be contested by challenging filing inaccuracy.  Modifications are still available through 2013.  OnTrack can help with this.  However, sometimes it is not to the advantage of the servicer to modify (they get less interest, etc.) and it might be helpful to bring public attention to the situation.

 

Bev had talked with Bill Whelan at Pisgah Legal.  He or someone else from the organization would be willing to talk with us about what they know of the legal aspects.  Bev will get back with him and ask for someone to come speak with us. He did think it would be helpful to bring more public attention to the continuing difficulties ("tell the world of the injustice") and link people to resources.  However, there are mortgage relief scams everywhere and we must be careful not to get confused with them.

 

Kathryn agreed to rewrite John's letter to make it fit the criteria for possible publication as a letter to the editor.

 

Susan talked about the FOIA.  Each person has to do apply individually.  NVDA will discuss if they want to do it.  Sonny said that Naomi Wolf's book has information on how to do it.