Word: miami
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...Miami Gardens officials acknowledge that they don't know what percentage of their at-risk homeowners have gotten loan modifications. (Williams' ordinance would also require the banks to provide that data.) But the spike in foreclosure signs tells them it's too few. And given the city's grinding 15% unemployment rate, many believe they have no choice but to try to leverage banks into taking MHA more seriously...
...city of 110,000 people just north of Miami is staring at another figure today: a 13% home-foreclosure rate. That's the second highest in Florida, a state that now has the nation's highest rate of homes - 23% - either in foreclosure or delinquent on mortgage payments. Many of the mortgages that have collapsed in Miami Gardens were subprime; city leaders like Williams say they were ethically questionable deals pushed by banks that too often knew their clients were in over their heads. (Read "Four Steps to Ending the Foreclosure Crisis...
...wants to give his frustrations some legal teeth. Williams has proposed a city ordinance that could penalize banks that fail to offer modifications before starting foreclosure proceedings. Local governments have no formal legal oversight over banks, but under Williams' ordinance, if a lender's number of foreclosure actions in Miami Gardens over a designated period exceeds the number of loan modifications it offers to financially burdened or delinquent homeowners, the city would pull its accounts or other business from that bank. "The taxpayers put these banks back on solid ground with the bailouts," says Williams, "and now it's time...
...Their goal is to help homeowners like Ruby Milligan, a single, 61-year-old retired middle school teacher who suffered a mild stroke a few years ago. During the housing boom, when her three-bedroom Miami Gardens house was appraised at what she now acknowledges was an unrealistic $294,000, Milligan says she took out adjustable-rate home-equity loans to help with medical bills. They raised her mortgage principal to far more than the house is now worth in the housing bust. Her mortgage interest has since adjusted up sharply, and she's saddled with monthly payments that...
...interest revenue out of the sale. That's a big reason so many banks have balked at loan modifications in spite of MHA: they'd rather roll the dice with another owner since studies show many modified mortgages still go south, just delaying the inevitable. But in cases like Miami Gardens, says Milligan's lawyer, Miami real estate attorney Rashmi Airan-Pace, lenders need to realize that as foreclosures mount and infect neighborhoods, their chances of auctioning those houses dim significantly. "Given what fair market value of these homes has become today," Airan-Pace says, "they especially need to change...