12-5-12: Foreclosure Help Running Out

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Foreclosures-1205.mp3

With tens of thousands of Maryland homeowners somewhere in the foreclosure process, we’ve been following the National Mortgage Settlement closely. This is a $25 billion deal that five major lenders made with state attorneys general in response to accusations of robo-signing--the practice of signing thousands of foreclosure documents without checking for accuracy. The deadline to make a claim under this settlement is January 18, 2013.

The latest progress report on the settlement came out a couple weeks ago. We'll talk about it today with Anne Balcer Norton, deputy commissioner for financial regulation with Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. She’s on the monitoring committee for the settlement.

We'll also let you know about a remediation program that’s gotten less attention: the “Independent Foreclosure Review.”  If your primary residence was involved in a foreclosure process in 2009 or 2010—whether foreclosure started or finished, or started and never finished, during those two years—you might be eligible for financial compensation. But the deadline to apply for a review is close—December 31st.  Less than four weeks.

We'll talk about that with Bryan Hubbard, spokesperson for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, one of the federal agencies involved in the program, and with Mary Bushel of Belair-Edison Neighborhoods, Inc.

If you are a distressed mortgage holder in Maryland, and you're looking for help, you can call the MD HOPE hotline at 1-877-462-7555, or go to mdhope.org.

And again, the deadline for the Independent Foreclosure Review is December 31, 2012, and the deadline for the National Mortgage Settlement is January 18, 2013.