Banks, accelerating efforts to move troubled mortgages off their books, are offering as much as $35,000 or more in cash to delinquent homeowners to sell their properties for less than they owe.
Lenders have routinely delayed or blocked such transactions, known as short sales, in which they accept less from a buyer than the seller's outstanding loan. Now banks have decided the deals are faster and less costly than foreclosures, which have slowed in response to regulatory probes of abusive practices. Banks are nudging potential sellers by pre-approving deals, streamlining the closing process, forgoing their right to pursue unpaid debt and in some cases providing large cash incentives, said Bill Fricke, senior credit officer for Moody's Investors Service in New York.
Losses for lenders are about 15 percent lower on the sales than on foreclosures, which can take years to complete while taxes and legal, maintenance and other costs accumulate, according to Moody's. The deals accounted for 33 percent of financially distressed transactions in November, up from 24 percent a year earlier, said CoreLogic Inc., aSanta Ana, California-based real estate information company.
Karen Farley hadn't made a mortgage payment in a year when she got what looked like a form letter from her lender.
“You could sell your home, owe nothing more on your mortgage and get $30,000,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) said in the Aug. 17 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.
$200,000 Short
Farley, whose home construction lending business dried up after the housing crash, said the New York-based bank agreed to let her sell her San Marcos, California, home for $592,000 — about $200,000 less than what she owes. The $30,000 will cover moving costs and the rental deposit for her next home. Farley, who is also approved for an additional $3,000 through a federal incentive program, is scheduled to close the deal Feb. 10.
“I wondered, why would they offer me something, and why wouldn't they just give me the boot?” Farley, 65, said in a telephone interview. “Instead, I'm getting money.”
Tom Kelly, a JPMorgan spokesman, declined to comment on the company's incentives.
“When a modification is not possible, a short sale produces a better and faster result for the homeowner, the investor and the community than a foreclosure,” he said in an e-mail.
A mountain of pending repossessions is holding back a recovery in thehousing market, where prices have fallen for six straight years, and damping economic growth. Owners of more than 14 million homes are in foreclosure, behind on their mortgages or owe more than their properties are worth, said RealtyTrac Inc., a property-data company inIrvine, California.
Foreclosure Holdouts
Short sales represented 9 percent of all US residential transactions in November, the most recent month for which data is available, up from 2 percent in January 2008, according to Corelogic. Bank-owned foreclosures and short sales sold at a discount of 34 percent to non-distressed properties in the third quarter, according to RealtyTrac.
As lenders shift their focus to sales, they are finding that some borrowers would rather risk repossession while they wait for a loan modification, according to Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade journal. In a loan modification, the monthly payment, and sometimes principal, is reduced to help prevent seizure. Homeowners facing foreclosure may live rent-free for years before they are forced out.
“That's why the banks have got to pay the big bucks,” Cecala said. “The real question is why is the bribe so big? Is that what it takes to get somebody out of their home?”
Multiple Banks
Banks also pay a few thousand dollars to the owners of second liens, whose loans can be wiped out by a short sale, to encourage them not to block the deals.
While JPMorgan is giving the largest incentive payments, other banks and mortgage investors are also offering them, according to interviews with 12 real estate agents in Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Washington. Lenders also provide incentives on loans they service and don't own when the mortgage investor, such as a hedge fund, requests it.
JPMorgan, the biggest US bank, approves about 5,000 short sales a month. It generally offers $10,000 to $35,000 in cash payments at settlement, real estate agents said. Not all of the sales include incentives.
Borrowers also can receive payments from the federal government's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program, which in 2010 began offering as much as $1,500 to servicers, $2,000 to investors and $3,000 to homeowners who complete short sales.
Quicker Resolution
For banks, approving a sale for less than is owed on the home can cut a year or more off the time it takes to unload a property. From listing to sale, the transactions took about 123 days on average at the end of last year, according to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey.
Lenders spend an average of 348 days to foreclose in the US and an additional 175 days to sell the property, according to RealtyTrac. In New York, a state that requires court approval for repossessions, it takes about four years to foreclose on a home and then resell it, the company said.
Lenders can often afford to forgive debt, offer the incentive and still make a profit because they purchased the loan from another bank at a discount, said Trent Chapman, a Realtor who trains brokers and attorneys to negotiate with banks for short sales.
Chapman, who also writes a blog on TheShortSaleGenius.com, said he's heard about 50 homeowners who have received incentives from lenders including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc.
Wells Fargo
“My guess is they want to get rid of bad loans,” Chapman said. “If they short sale these types of loans, they have less of a headache and have some goodwill with the homeowner.”
Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, offers relocation assistance of as much as $20,000 for borrowers who complete short sales or agree to transfer title through a deed in lieu of foreclosure “in certain states with extended foreclosure timelines, including Florida,” Veronica Clemons, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
Bank of America Corp. sent letters to 20,000 Florida homeowners as part of a pilot program, offering incentives of as much as $20,000, or 5 percent of the unpaid loan balance, Jumana Bauwens, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. The program expired in December and theCharlotte, North Carolina-based bank hasn't decided whether to introduce it in other states, she said. About 15 percent of the homeowners agreed to participate in the program, she said.
Citigroup Offers
“The bank is pleased with the response,” Bauwens wrote. “The state is experiencing higher foreclosure rates than other parts of the country and is therefore seen as a viable market to gauge incremental short-sale response and completion rates when presenting homeowners with relocation assistance at closing.”
Citigroup offers $3,000 to most borrowers who qualify for its program, but the “amount may increase based on the circumstances of each individual case,” Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for the New York-based bank, said in an e-mail. “Investor programs have different guidelines for relocation incentives, which we honor.”
Susan Fitzpatrick, a spokeswoman for Detroit-based Ally, didn't comment specifically on incentives when asked about them.
Borrowers typically can't negotiate the incentives, which arrive by mail, Chapman, the Realtor, said.
Tap on Shoulder
“It's not really easy to identify the guidelines because Chase doesn't tell you, they kind of tap you on the shoulder,” he said. “When I first saw it in January 2011, I thought it was a joke or a typo. I was convinced it must say $3,000, not $30,000.”
Offering enough for the homeowner to put down a deposit on a rental apartment is reasonable, said Sean O'Toole, chief executive officer of ForeclosureRadar.com, which tracks sales of foreclosed properties. Giving tens of thousands of dollars to delinquent homeowners sends the wrong message, particularly if they got into trouble by running up home-equity loans during the housing boom, he said.
"Si può avere un senso per le persone a piedi, non ha senso per loro vengono premiati per farlo", ha detto O'Toole. "Non è colpa del padrone di casa che i prezzi delle case è sceso in modo così drammatico, ma hanno già ricevuto mesi di affitto libero, se non cash out".
Cecala di Inside Mortgage Finance ha detto che chiede se i creditori sono grandi effettuare i pagamenti su immobili con problemi di fondo del titolo. Evan Berlino, managing partner di Berlino Patten, un vero e proprio studio legale immobiliare in Sarasota, Florida, ha detto che i rappresentanti di una grande banca gli ha detto gli incentivi sono principalmente dato mutuatari quando non hanno i documenti necessari per vincere proprio il suo caso di preclusione. Ha rifiutato di nominare la banca per la pubblicazione.
Incentive Disconnetti
Procuratori generali degli Stati attraverso gli Stati Uniti ha iniziato a studiare le pratiche di preclusione in ottobre 2010 in seguito alle accuse che servicers mutui migliori della nazione stavano usando documenti difettosi di rientrare in possesso case.
Berlin ha detto il suo ufficio negoziato circa 400 vendite allo scoperto nell'ultimo anno e circa un quarto incluso un incentivo, che vanno da $ 3.000 a $ 48.000. In alcuni casi, i pagamenti non sono incentivi a tutti perché sono offerto dopo il mutuatario ha quasi completato la vendita a breve, ha detto.
"L'idea è che questo è l'assistenza delocalizzazione," Berlino ha detto. "Ma quando stai offrendo 48 mila dollari, ovviamente non costa 48 mila dollari a trasferirsi".
Cooperazione ricercata
The size of the payment may have little to do with sales price. JPMorgan gave one Phoenix homeowner $20,000 after she sold her property in June for $32,000, according to Royce Hauger, the real estate agent who represented the seller and shared a copy of the settlement sheet with Bloomberg News. The bank also agreed to forgive more than $70,000 in debt, she said.
Kelly, the JPMorgan spokesman, declined to comment on the payment.
The homeowners are getting the money in exchange for their cooperation, said Kris Pilles, a Riverhead, New York-based real estate broker who represents banks, servicers and hedge funds that own distressed housing debt.
Pilles is frequently dispatched to the homes of delinquent borrowers to explain the benefits of avoiding foreclosure, he said. His clients have paid as much as $92,500. In return, the lenders expect the seller to clean the house before showings, and trim the grass.
“Money talks,” Pilles said. “From the bank side, it's anything to initiate a conversation with someone who may not be listening to them.”
SOURCE: By Prashant Gopal
