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Thursday, March 28

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The Mechanics
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Housing Thu Apr 07 2011

Cook County Court Halts 1,700 Foreclosures

If you've read Christopher Gray's great piece on aggressive home foreclosures over there in the featured column, then you've got a sense of what unscrupulous lenders were doing to grow their business.

Check out this admission from a foreclosure firm in this Tribune piece on a court's decision to halt 1,700 foreclosures because mortgage lenders' counsel were adding pages to affidavits and then re-attaching signature pages, i.e., lying about what customers had agreed to.

The admission to the court by Fisher and Shapiro does not involve rubber-stamping of documents but rather removing the signature page, altering the affidavit's content and reattaching the signature page, the court said.

The changed contents included the addition of attorneys' fees, insurance costs, preservation costs, inspection costs and taxes on the property, costs that may have been incurred before or after the servicer signed the original affidavit, [Judge] Jacobius said in his order dated March 2.

The firm's admission signals a note of caution to purchasers of distressed homes, which represent about 50 percent of local home sales, because of potential lingering legal issues if the title transfer process was faulty.

This would be shocking if it had happened in a few dozen cases, considering the immense financial and personal impact on the families involved. That it has been discovered in this many cases, in one place, is simply unconscionable and tells us something about just how easily powerful financial institutions can ladle burdens on working families dependent on them. Now check out that last sentence! Fifty percent of local home sales may be disturbed by unquieted titles. What a mess.

 
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Feature

Parents Still Steaming, but About More Than Just Boilers

By Phil Huckelberry / 2 Comments

It's now been 11 days since the carbon monoxide leak which sent over 80 Prussing Elementary School students and staff to the hospital. While officials from Chicago Public Schools have partially answered some questions, and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool has informed that he will be visiting the school to field more questions on Nov. 16, many parents remain irate at the CPS response to date. More...

Civics

Substance, Not Style, the Source of Rahm's Woes

By Ramsin Canon / 2 Comments

It's not surprising that some of Mayor Emanuel's sympathizers and supporters are confusing people's substantive disputes with the mayor as the effect of poor marketing on his part. It's exactly this insular worldview that has gotten the mayor in hot... More...

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Mechanics is the politics section of Gapers Block, reflecting the diversity of viewpoints and beliefs of Chicagoans and Illinoisans. More...
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