Will The Niday & Brandrup Rulings Change How Foreclosures Are Conducted In Oregon? Not Likely!

Background. As mentioned in an earlier post here, the Niday case, which I have previously commented on here and here as it was winding its way up the appellate process, and its companion case, Brandrup, were recently decided by the Oregon Supreme Court.

Brandrup presented to the Court four “certified questions” for the judges, sitting as a full panel “en banc”, regarding MERS and its role as henchman for the Big Banks in the Oregon trust deed foreclosure process. The Brandrup opinion is found here.
Niday, was decided based of the Court’s answers to the certified questions in Brandrup. The Niday opinion is found here. Continue reading “Will The Niday & Brandrup Rulings Change How Foreclosures Are Conducted In Oregon? Not Likely!”

“The average sales price so far this year is $299,900, up 14.9% from the same period in 2012, when the average was $261,100. In the same comparison, the median price increased 15.0% from $220,000 last year to $253,000 in the first five months of 2013.” June, 2013 RMLS™ Market Action Report for the Portland-Metro area. [Based on May 2013 numbers.]

What Do These Statistics Mean To Sellers And Buyers? Let’s assume a 15% rolling 12-month price appreciation figure. That translates into a 1.25% per month increase in value [15%/12 = 1.25%]. Assume that a seller listed their home at $250,000 and received a full-price offer in 30 days. Then, assume that the transaction was subject to the buyer obtaining financing, and the closing date was scheduled for 60 days hence. Continue reading “QUERIN LAW: The Time-Value of Money in Portland’s Appreciating Real Estate Market”

How low can housing inventory go? According to Oregon’s Regional Multiple Listing Service (“RMLS®”), May’s inventory dropped to 2.5 months. To clarify, according to RMLS®, “inventory in months”:

“…is calculated by dividing the Active Listings at the end of the month in question by the number of closed sales for that month. This includes proposed and under construction homes.”

Here are the numbers from 2011 to date:

Continue reading “2013 Portland Metro Housing Inventory = Feeding Frenzy”

In a further example of “mission creep”, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (“FSOC”), another spawn of Dodd-Frank, charged with responsibility to oversee and regulate…everything with a dollar sign in front of it, is now proposing to designate certain non-banks as systemically important financial institutions, or “SIFI”. The honorees of this designation are American International Group (“AIG”), Prudential Financial and GE Capital. This effectively means that they are “TBTF” or too big to fail – at least as long as our government is run by folks like Henry Paulson, then Treasury Secretary, who in 2008, made sure that AIG got a U.S. taxpayer bailout paying it dollar-for-dollar on its obligations, so it could honor the billions of dollars of counterparty debt owed to his alma mater, Goldman Sachs, and other big Wall Street investment houses. In other words, rather than being forced into bankruptcy [proving that it wasn’t too big to fail], AIG – an insurance company – was suckled on the government’s bailout teat, along with all of the Big Banks.

Now it appears that two other big money companies will have the implicit guarantee of the federal government. And what’s more, regulation, the federal government’s raison d’être, will be further entrenched under the guise of protecting the American public from itself. Continue reading “QUERIN LAW: FSOC Declares Non-Banks SIFI – Now The Fun Begins!”

In a important decision on the future role of MERS in Oregon’s non-judicial foreclosure process, the Oregon Supreme Court answered four certified questions that had been submitted to it. Herewith, verbatim, is a copy of the media release. This is not the court’s written opinion. The release contains a link to the official opinion. [Note: I changed the formatting slightly for readability. PCQ]

SUPREME COURT Media Release Contact: The full text of these opinions can be found at http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/ Stephen P. Armitage Staff Attorney (503) 986-7023

Cases decided June 6, 2013

Bart G. Brandrup, et al., v. Recontrust Company, N.A., et al., (USDC Case No. 311CV1390HZ, 311CV1399HZ, 311CV1533SI, 312CV0010HA) (SC S060281)

On certified questions from the United States District Court. The certified questions are answered. Opinion of the Court by Justice David V. Brewer. Justice Rives Kistler concurred in part and dissented in part, and filed an opinion in which Chief Justice Thomas A. Balmer joined.

Today, the Oregon Supreme Court issued an opinion answering four questions that had been certified to it by the United States District Court. The questions all pertain to the Oregon Trust Deed Act (OTDA) and how it is affected by the practice in the home mortgage industry of drafting mortgages and trust deeds so that a certain Delaware corporation, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS), rather than the lender, is identified as the security instrument’s “beneficiary.” The questions arose when home loan borrowers in four separate cases brought actions in state court against MERS and other entitles that were attempting to use the nonjudicial foreclosure procedures of the OTDA to foreclose the trust deeds securing plaintiffs’ home loans. In each case, plaintiffs sought to enjoin the foreclosure on the ground that a condition for nonjudicial foreclosure set out in ORS 86.735(1) — that any assignments of the trust deed by the “beneficiary” be recorded in the relevant county real property records — had not been satisfied. In each case, defendants removed the case to federal court and then filed a motion to dismiss under FRCP 12(b)(6), arguing that MERS was the lawful beneficiary under the trust deeds and that all assignments of the trust deeds by MERS had been recorded. Uncertain as whether MERS could be deemed the “beneficiary” of the trust deeds in question under the OTDA, and, if not, what role MERS could play under the statute, the United States District Court certified the following (reframed) questions to the Oregon Supreme Court: Continue reading “QUERIN LAW: Oregon Supreme Court Decides Niday and Brandrup”

One of the most notable bi-products of the foreclosure disaster, was another disaster – the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act; a 2300 page tome bearing the names of two of the primary beneficiaries of the Lender Lobby, Chris Dodd, charter member of the “Friends of Angelo” [as in Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide] who gave sweetheart loans to his political cronies, and the irascible Barney Frank, whose distinction lies in the fact that while heading the Financial Services Committee in 2006, he patently ignored the credit and housing bubbles, while taking campaign money from one of his two largest contributors, the American Bankers Association. And both men – in what can best be described as “biting the hand that fed them” – co-authored the uber-regulatory bill that bears their names, then promptly retired from the Senate, leaving the bureaucrats to write the 400 rules interpreting this wildly aspirational set of laws.[1] Continue reading “CFPB – A Bad Case of Mission Creep”

Ever been curious which areas are hardest hit by foreclosures in the Portland-Metro counties? Wondering how many judicial vs. non-judicial foreclosures are filed? Are the foreclosure mills going to be hiring or firing personnel over the coming months?

Well, thanks to the raw data ably compiled in First American Title Company of Oregon’s Foreclosure Report, and a skilled Notre Dame law grad, Danica Skeoch, who did the wonderful graphics, the information for the first quarter of 2013 is depicted on the following ten pages here. I have some thoughts on what they mean, and hope to post them soon. Enjoy! ~PCQ

Introduction. For most Portlanders, Zillow and Case-Schiller should mean very little. Why? Because Zillow’s metrics don’t purport to be “fair market value,” or even an “estimate of value”. No, Zillow calls it a “Zestimate” – and readily admits that its figures are based upon publicly obtainable data. The more data, the more ostensibly accurate – and vice versa.

For example, in Seattle, Zillow’s home base [where presumably data is rich], its median margin of error is 7.3%.[1] A 7.3% margin of error in data-rich Seattle doesn’t strike me as a ringing endorsement of their analytics. What does this say about their “Zestimates” for Drain, Oregon? So, for example, a $200,000 Zestimate for your Seattle home could be off by over $14,000 – not an insignificant sum. In fact, I would venture to guess that if an appraiser were off by that margin, we might call it actionable negligence. Continue reading “QUERIN LAW: Why National Housing Stats Are Meaningless”

Introduction. The term “multiple offers” refers to situations in which sellers receive two or more offers to purchase their property. The reason for multiple offers during the boom years of 2005 – 2007 was because prices were rising rapidly, and buyers wanted their offers accepted quickly in order to lock in the price. Consider this: With average prices appreciating, say 18% per year [which was not unheard of], this meant that at 1.5% a month, by the time a buyer closed in 45-60 days, he or she had already realized a sizeable amount of paper equity. On the other side of the coin, sellers who had already committed to sell were often lured by higher offers that came in while their sale was pending with another buyer. It is for this reason that there were so many specific performance suits and/or arbitrations filed during this time; sellers didn’t want to close with their buyer, because after they went under contract they found they could get a better price, and looked for reasons to terminate the first transaction. Continue reading “QUERIN LAW: Dealing with Multiple Offers in 2013”

Introduction. After a false start in 2012, the 2013 Oregon Legislature has just passed its “new, improved” version of what was generally known as the Mandatory Mediation Law. Besides tweaking various provisions in the prior law, SB 558 closed a loophole big enough that the Big Banks were able to drive their Foreclosure Bus through it. Until July, 2012, virtually all lenders, except Wells Fargo, were conducting their foreclosures non-judicially, i.e. outside the court room. With limited exceptions, the process, which is found in ORS 86.705 – 86.795, had been the sole method used for residential foreclosures in Oregon for the past fifty years. While lenders have always had the option to judicially foreclose Oregon homeowners who defaulted on their loans, it was rarely used. In fact, in 1959, when the trust deed law was enacted, it was the lenders that lobbied long and hard for it; they knew it was far faster and cheaper than going to court to foreclose. Continue reading “QUERIN LAW: SB 558 – Oregon’s New Mandatory Resolution Conference Law for Borrowers Facing Foreclosure (2013)”