These walk-away programs are not scams. Yes, they can very well undertake to purchase your mortgage notes from your bank so that you can clear out your obligations. There was a time when the only other option you can take in place of facing a foreclosure is a short sale. In a short sale, you and your bank agree to sell your property at less than what you have left on your loan balance. In such a sale, you do not necessarily free yourself from any obligations. The bank could disagree with the proposal of a short sale. Or, you might not even find a buyer for your property even at a discount. A walk-away program offers a better foreclosure solution in that when your walk-away company agrees to take over your mortgage for you, you can actually walk-away and start your life all over again, no ifs, no buts.

So, is buying notes from the bank legal? Definitely. These walk-away companies negotiate directly with your bank’s legal department to fulfill the necessary legal obligations that are required by law. There are important documentation that needs to be accomplished. You will be asked to submit a list of requirements to your walk-away company so they can prepare for their negotiations with your bank. You do not have to worry about these legalities. When the walk-away company agrees to take on your property, it takes over on your behalf. There is no reason for the bank not to agree with their offer especially as it is their best chance of getting the most out of your property.

Contrary to popular belief, a short sale does not necessarily free you of any obligation towards your debt. As you are selling your property for less than what you owe your lender, there definitely will be an amount that will be left unsettled. Depending on your agreement with your bank, you might still be held liable for the balance left after the short sale. In other cases, the short sale might not happen before the foreclosure sale date falls due or the bank might not even agree to a short sale. One of the viable alternatives to a short sale is a walk-away program where you let another company take over your property and negotiate with your bank for the purchase of your promissory note. By doing this, you are able to let go of your property without the fuss and the stigma that is associated with foreclosure proceedings.

For more details please visit www.walkawaytoday.org

http://www.cnbc.com/id/34877347

In contrast, when you refer a short sale listing to us, since we buy the first mortgage, we then are able to foreclose out the junior lien, and thereby take away any leverage they have. In many cases, rather than foreclosing we buy their note for literally pennies on the dollar. Either way, they do not have the leverage with us that they have with you, when you are trying to get their cooperation on a short sale.

If you’ve got a short sale that’s not moving, sell to us. With walkawaytoday.org, there is no more dealing with the short sale department. No more second mortgages holding you hostage. We deal directly with the banks legal department

“The transaction process went well. My contact Michael Daniels was very
helpful in working with us to make this a smooth transaction. My client was
pleased and was able to go ahead and move back to California to be with his
family. I look forward to regaining the listing for sale. I am currently
working with other homeowners who may take advantage of what your company
has to offer.”

Dianne Lewis
Broker/Owner
Target Georgia Realty, Inc.

Hi Jason,
So far I have been pleased with your company,I received my payments on time and my
customers have been happy too.I look forward to the next phase when I can list and sell
the properties as well.
Thank You,
Matt Togstad
Remax Signature
Arlington,Wa. 98223

“While I haven’t yet had a closed transaction I wanted to comment on 
WalkAwayToday and their team members.  As a long time REO and short sale 
specialist I have seen the devastating results of foreclosure first hand.
 
WalkAwayToday offers a solution to the iffy situation of the short  sale. 
It makes good sense from both an investor’s and seller’s viewpoint  and is a
viable alternative to add to a Distressed Property Specialist  arsenal. 
 
In addition, I would also say that this firm is super at communications and
 keeping me up to date with what is happening in the foreclosure world.
 I look forward to a long relationship with them.”
 
Steele V. Propp
Certified Distressed  Property Expert
Bank Owned Property Division
Schatz Group Real  Estate
1009 Mainstreet
Minneapolis, MN  55343

 ”I am a real estate investor, and in our current “real estate economy,” I find myself working with properties that require a short sale. As most people know, short sales don’t always work out. For that reason, I have used Walk Away Today on several occasions, for situations where the lender would not approve the short sale, or even for situations when the lender did approve, but was not willing to release the debt from the homeowner. I have been very satisfied with the service, and would highly recommend.”

Sincerely,
Eddie Kearns
KAIN

 ”I am new at trying the program. I have to say, that they got back to
me quickly. I was assigned somebody to personally work with.
Michael has returned my phone calls and emails quicker than most
agents and clients I work with. The process and paperwork was very
easy. I am finishing up my first deal with them, and hoping the
rest is just as smooth. I know if was a huge burden off my seller.”

Pamela Berkeley
Myrtle Beach Real Estate

“After having a  heart to heart with my clients about their
emotional exhaustion and options in the short sale process and the
possibility that their foreclosure was going to move forward
anyways, I offered another option that worked perfectly for them.
Walkaway.org provided exactly what my exhausted clients were looking
  for. Peace of mind and a way out. They did everything they said
they  would, and treated my clients very well. Answered all their
questions and worked with them to make it easy to get out of their
foreclosing house and start fresh. I have happy, emotionally
recharged clients and look forward to listing it down the road.

Jay Klosinski
Century 21 Roberts & Andrews

“After having a property listed as a Short Sale for many months and the bank not cooperating I referred the property to Walkawaytoday and within 10 days the deal was done and the client was happy to be out  of the home and moving on.  I am now in the process of working with some additional properties to refer.”

Peter E. Herrmann P.A.
Broker Associate
Peoples Choice Realty Services LLC

“Working with Walk Away today is really easy! They communicate in a timely fashion and have answered all my questions. I have yet to get a listing, as I have only referred on client. My goal, as well as Walk Away today’s is to help sellers not have a deficiency and be able to move on with life in the easiest possible way.”

Tammy Hatch
Windermere Real Estate

[MERS] has reduced transparency in the mortgage market in two ways. First, consumers and their counsel can no longer turn to the public recording systems to learn the identity of the holder of their note. Today, county recording systems are increasingly full of one meaningless name, MERS, repeated over and over again. But more importantly, all across the country, MERS now brings foreclosure proceedings in its own name — even though it is not the financial party in interest. This is problematic because MERS is not prepared for or equipped to provide responses to consumers’ discovery requests with respect to predatory lending claims and defenses. In effect, the securitization conduit attempts to use a faceless and seemingly innocent proxy with no knowledge of predatory origination or servicing behavior to do the dirty work of seizing the consumer’s home … So imposing is this opaque corporate wall, that in a “vast” number of foreclosures, MERS actually succeeds in foreclosing without producing the original note — the legal sine qua non of foreclosure — much less documentation that could support predatory lending defenses.

The real parties in interest concealed behind MERS have been made so faceless, however, that there is now no party with standing to foreclose. The Kansas Supreme Court stated that MERS’ relationship “is more akin to that of a straw man than to a party possessing all the rights given a buyer.” The court opined:

By statute, assignment of the mortgage carries with it the assignment of the debt … Indeed, in the event that a mortgage loan somehow separates interests of the note and the deed of trust, with the deed of trust lying with some independent entity, the mortgage may become unenforceable. The practical effect of splitting the deed of trust from the promissory note is to make it impossible for the holder of the note to foreclose, unless the holder of the deed of trust is the agent of the holder of the note. Without the agency relationship, the person holding only the note lacks the power to foreclose in the event of default. The person holding only the deed of trust will never experience default because only the holder of the note is entitled to payment of the underlying obligation. The mortgage loan becomes ineffectual when the note holder did not also hold the deed of trust. [Citations omitted; emphasis added.]

MERS as straw man lacks standing to foreclose, but so does the original lender, although it was a signatory to the deal. The lender lacks standing because title had to pass to the secured parties for the arrangement to legally qualify as a “security.” The lender has been paid in full and has no further legal interest in the claim. Only the securities holders have skin in the game; but they have no standing to foreclose, because they were not signatories to the original agreement. They cannot satisfy the basic requirement of contract law that a plaintiff suing on a written contract must produce a signed contract proving he is entitled to relief.

The Potential Impact of 60 Million Fatally Flawed Mortgages
The banks arranging these mortgage-backed securities have typically served as trustees for the investors. When the trustees could not present timely written proof of ownership entitling them to foreclose, they would in the past file “lost-note affidavits” with the court; and judges usually let these foreclosures proceed without objection. But in October 2007, an intrepid federal judge in Cleveland put a halt to the practice. U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Boyko ruled that Deutsche Bank had not filed the proper paperwork to establish its right to foreclose on fourteen homes it was suing to repossess as trustee. Judges in many other states then came out with similar rulings.

Following the Boyko decision, in December 2007 attorney Sean Olender suggested in an article in The San Francisco Chronicle that the real reason for the bailout schemes being proposed by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was not to keep strapped borrowers in their homes so much as to stave off a spate of lawsuits against the banks. Olender wrote:
The sole goal of the [bailout schemes] is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from suing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value — right now almost 10 times their market worth. The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process.

The catastrophic consequences of bond investors forcing originators to buy back loans at face value are beyond the current media discussion.The loans at issue dwarf the capital available at the largest U.S. banks combined, and investor lawsuits would raise stunning liability sufficient to cause even the largest U.S. banks to fail, resulting in massive taxpayer-funded bailouts of Fannie and Freddie, and even FDIC . . . .

What would be prudent and logical is for the banks that sold this toxic waste to buy it back and for a lot of people to go to prison. If they knew about the fraud, they should have to buy the bonds back.

Needless to say, however, the banks did not buy back their toxic waste, and no bank officials went to jail. As Olender predicted, in the fall of 2008, massive taxpayer-funded bailouts of Fannie and Freddie were pushed through by Henry Paulson, whose former firm Goldman Sachs was an active player in creating CDOs when he was at its helm as CEO. Paulson also hastily engineered the $85 billion bailout of insurer American International Group (AIG), a major counterparty to Goldmans’ massive holdings of CDOs. The insolvency of AIG was a huge crisis for Goldman, and Goldman was the largest recipient of public funds from the AIG bailout.

In a December 2007 New York Times article titled “The Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs,” Ben Stein wrote:
For decades now … I have been receiving letters [warning] me about the dangers of a secret government running the world … [T]he closest I have recently seen to such a world-running body would have to be a certain large investment bank, whose alums are routinely Treasury secretaries, high advisers to presidents, and occasionally a governor or United States senator.

The pirates seem to have captured the ship, and until now there has been no one to stop them. But 60 million mortgages with fatal defects in title could give aggrieved homeowners and securities holders the crowbar they need to exert some serious leverage on Congress — serious enough perhaps even to pry the legislature loose from the powerful banking lobbies that now hold it in thrall.

The 3 most common exemptions are:

1)  primary residence.  If the property is/was your primary residence, you are probably exempt from being liable for income taxes on the ‘loss’ the bank took.

2) insolvency.  If you were insolvent immediately prior to the loss, you are exempt.

3) bankruptcy.  If you discharge your debts in a chapter 7 bankruptcy, you will not be liable for the income tax.

You can get complete information in IRS publication 4681, which you can download here:  http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p4681.pdf

They even have an insolvency worksheet so you can find out if you qualify.

a)  the property is in bad condition…needs repairs to make it
in rentable condition…we dont accept these kinds of properties,
commonly known as ‘fixers’ or humorusly described in Realtor
listings as ‘just needs a little TLC’ which in many cases
really means ‘this place should probably be condemned!’

The property needs to be in rentable condition, or very close
to rentable condition.  If you have questions about your listings
condition, call in and we will pre-screen it for you.

b)  the agent or seller wait until the last minute to refer
the deal.  If the seller has a tenant in the property, sometimes
they just collect the rents and wait until the last possible
minute to send in their packet.  They wonder why we have to reject
their packet, when we told them to get it into us as soon as
possible so we can start the legal process.

Please be aware of these two issues.  If you are an agent, please council your clients on
the importance of starting the legal process with the banks,
and that we need time to do our job right.  We cant come in at
the very last minute and save the day.  It doesnt work like that.

So please, get your properties into us as soon as possible, and
dont delay.  Timing is a very critical part of the success of
any legal process, and this is no different.

Thanks,

Jason Smith

Affiliate Manager

The tidal wave of foreclosure properties has definitely changed the landscape for Realtors.  In my 21 years as broker, there has never been a time when the need to understand the short sale process has been more urgent.  Unfortunately, understanding the process is vastly different than being successful at closing short sales.  The National Association of Realtors just released a report which shows that only 15% of short sale listings actually consummate in a closing.  That means we are wasting a lot of time on deals that we never get paid on.  What is wrong with the system?  I recently asked this question of Paul Pritchard, CEO of Home Advocate Trustees, a defaulted property acquisition company based in Seattle, Washington.

“The core problem is two-fold.  First, when you are working on a short sale as a Realtor in a traditional fashion, the lender has all of the leverage.  Their word is final, and negotiations are very limited.  Second, the sheer volume if defaulted properties has completely overwhelmed their systems.  There is nothing that we can do about the second issue, but we can and do affect our leverage with the bank by an aggressive legal defense that puts the leverage on our side, and gets us results.”

By approaching the banks from the legal side, Paul’s company is able to bypass the ‘loss mitigation’ departments, and deal directly with the legal departments at the banks.  The result, My Pritchard says, is a much higher success rate.  “When a seller assigns their property to our company, we immediately begin a legal defense that gives us leverage.  We demand the seller produce the original note, and in some cases we also do a forensic audit on the loan to look for TILA, RESPA and various other violations.  Because we are the new title holder, we now have legal standing and rights and we aggressively defend these rights.  What is our goal?  To stop the foreclosure process for the seller, and to buy the ‘paper’ or the actual note directly from the banks.  What’s the outcome?  Same result to the seller as a short sale, but we do all the work and our success rate is better than 90%”

Will these same techniques help Realtors with our short sale listings?  I asked Mr. Pritchard to elaborate on this.  “Absolutely,” said Paul.  “We close over 100 transactions per month now, all across the country and Realtors are our #1 source of referrals.  Often they refer a transaction to us after they have tried the short sale route, but are frustrated.  We provide a win-win scenario.  The Realtor is paid a referral fee up front, and after we settle and purchase the note from the bank, we re-list the property with the referring Realtor at a 6% commission.  The Realtor community has really gotten behind our service, and they see tremendous value for their client and for themselves.”

Mr. Pritchard said agents who are interested in becoming an affiliate should visit their website, and click on the affiliate link at the top for instructions to sign up.  It’s free and they provide video and ongoing training to help you be successful.

One thing is for certain.  Our industry will need to continue to find creative solutions to deal with the problems posed by the foreclosure crisis.  The traditional models of listing a short sale are just not working, and alternative solutions are needed.  Home Advocate Trustees provides an alternative that appears to meet the needs of all parties involved.

Home Advocate Trustees is based in Seattle, Washington.  The main website for Home Advocate Trustees is www.walkawaytoday.org, and complete contact information can be found on their website.

The thought was that it would help keep supply lower, during a time that forecosures were at record levels.  Well, most banks did that, but the market has not improved, and these banks are bursting at the seams now with inventory that they have kept off the market.

Now it appears that they cannot, or will not keep this inventory off the market any longer.  What does this mean if you are trying to sell your ‘short sale’ property?  More supply, pushing prices further down, less offers and if you are lucky enough to get an offer, it will be a low offer.

You can read all about this coming inventory, which they call the ‘shadow’ inventory BY CLICKING HERE