Banks, Homeowner | featured news

Ten major banks and mortgage companies agreed Monday to pay $8.5 billion to settle federal complaints that they wrongfully foreclosed on homeowners who should have been allowed to stay in their homes.

Bank of America is testing a mortgage-to-lease program in four states. The idea: Instead of evicting homeowners who face foreclosure, it lets them stay as tenants and sells the homes to investors.

Bank of America said Friday it would reduce by about $100,000 the amount owed by as many as 200,000 underwater homeowners as part of the recently announced government foreclosure settlement with top mortgage servicers.

Bank of America NA prevented homeowners from receiving mortgage-loan modifications under a federal program in order to avoid millions of dollars in losses while benefitting from financial incentives for participating in the program, according to a complaint unsealed in federal court Wednesday.

More and more, homeowners say that mortgages they thought were dead and buried are springing back to life, sometimes haunting them all the way into foreclosure.

Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman called Monday for a major financial overhaul that would break up too-big-to-fail banks and deliver justice to homeowners and investors harmed by rogue foreclosures.

With one out of every 245 Minnesota housing units in foreclosure during September, news has broken that Wells Fargo, along with other big banks, may have helped push some homeowners off properties with the use of "robo signers."And the bank, with deep ties to Minnesota, has no intention of changing its ways.

Officials in 49 states have launched a joint investigation into allegations that mortgage companies mishandled documents and broke laws in foreclosing on hundreds of thousands of homeowners.

Borrowing on the home for quick cash is a lot harder than it used to be in the United States, and it's causing headaches for homeowners, banks and the economy.

A growing number of homeowners are considering a "strategic default," walking away from their mortgages not out of necessity but because they believe it is in their best financial interests.