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GMAC Mortgage was sanctioned by a Maine state court judge, who concluded that an affidavit filed by a company official to support a mortgage foreclosure was submitted “in bad faith.”
The ruling came in a case that last month revealed that GMAC, now part of Ally Financial Inc, had been filing affidavits falsely attesting that officials had reviewed mortgage documents and that they justified foreclosure. Get the full story »
ELITE STREET | By Bob Goldsborough | Eyeing a move to southern California for both professional and personal reasons, former TV anchor Diann Burns and her talent agent husband, Marc Watts, have placed their 13-room, 5,752-square-foot Lincoln Park mansion on the market for $4.825 million.
Burns, 54, was an anchor at top-rated WLS-Ch. 7 for close to two decades before jumping to WBBM-Ch. 2 in 2003. She left “CBS-2″ in 2008 when her contract was not renewed.
Since last spring, she has been hosting the Chicago Urban League’s “Next TV” program, which airs Sunday mornings on Fox-owned WFLD-Ch. 32. Get the full story »
U.S. regulators will put up a united front before a divided Congress on Thursday, promising to cooperate on hundreds of new rules aimed at preventing Wall Street excesses from triggering another financial crisis. Get the full story »
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has asked Ally Financial to freeze all foreclosures and not initiate any new ones against Illinois homeowners until an investigation of its foreclosure practices is complete.
According to the state, more than 100,000 Illinois homeowners have mortgages that are serviced by the company, including 78,500 first mortgages.
An Ally employee testified in a Florida court case that he signed at least 10,000 affidavits a month to process foreclosures without reviewing the underlying paperwork and that those documents were then filed with the court as evidence of Ally’s rights to foreclose on the homes. Get the full story »
From WBBM-Ch. 2 | Illinois residents being warned of scam artists preying on owners of vacation timeshares, posing as timeshare resellers to deceive consumers out of thousands of dollars. The Attorney General’s office has received dozens of complaints since January from timeshare owners targeted by the scam, according to a release. Get the full story >>
The 30-room, 8,596-square-foot home formerly owned by Tony Rezko. (Tribune, file)
From Chicago Magazine | The 30-room Wilmette mansion where the now-imprisoned political wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko threw fundraisers for Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich is undergoing renovations by its new owners, Dan Johnson, the managing director of Citadel Investment Group, and his wife, Katherine “Katsy” Johnson, an artist.
The couple bought the house from Bank of America for $3.71 million last March through a trust that does not identify them in public records. Chicago Magazine’s Dennis Rodkin said he learned their names last week through a source. Get the full story >>
(Reuters)
Single-family home prices dipped in July, hovering above multi-year lows absent the homebuyer tax credit that ended in April, according a Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price report on Tuesday.
The home price index for the Chicago area rose a modest 1 percent in July after a 2.5 percent gain in June.
High U.S. unemployment and millions of foreclosed homes and distressed borrowers keep stalling a home price recovery, overshadowing high affordability and record low mortgage rates, economists agree. Get the full story »
USG Corp., the largest U.S. maker of gypsum wallboard, said James S. Metcalf will take over as chief executive officer from William C. Foote on Jan. 1 as the company tries to reverse 11 consecutive quarters of losses.
Metcalf, 52, who joined the sales force in 1980, has been president and chief operating officer of Chicago-based USG for the last four years, the company said in a statement. Foote, who is 59 years old and has been CEO for 15 years, will continue as chairman. Get the full story »
Homeowners with more recent loan modifications are less likely to default on their payments, a report Friday showed. Thirty percent of modifications made in 2009 were seriously delinquent or in the foreclosure process, according to a second-quarter study released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision.
Siemens AG has recalled about 2.2 million circuit breakers that could cause fires, the company and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.
The electronics company recalled Siemens and Murray 15- through 50-amp single- and double-pole circuit breakers, load centers and meter combos. The circuit breakers have date codes of 0610 or 0710, and the load centers and meter combos have date codes from June through Augugust 2010. They were sold at hardware and home-improvement stores such as Home Depot Inc. and Lowe’s Cos. Get the full story »
The local home sales market failed to regain its momentum in August after tumbling in July, according to new data released Thursday by the Illinois Association of Realtors.
Sales of existing single-family homes and condominiums in the Chicago area rose a scant 1.3 percent in August to 5,561 homes sold, but were still down 19.6 percent from the 7,008 homes sold in August 2009. Get the full story »
Rates on 30-year mortgages this week were unchanged from the previous week, staying slightly above the lowest level in decades.
The average rate for 30-year fixed loans this week was 4.37 percent, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. Earlier this month, the rate dipped to 4.32 percent, which was the lowest level on records dating back to 1971.
The number of delinquent homeowners in the Chicago area who received permanent mortgage loan modifications rose almost 7 percent in August, but participation in trial modification plans fell 21 percent, according to data released Wednesday afternoon by the Treasury Dept.
In the Chicago area, 23,288 homeowners had received permanently modifications between the start of the Home Affordable Modification Program in the spring of 2009 and the end of August. Meanwhile, the number of local homeowners who qualify to receive lower payment terms on a trial basis fell to 10,058 in August, from 12,734 in July. Get the full story »
From Crain’s Chicago Business | Three weeks after the price was lowered on the eight-bedroom Gold Coast mansion owned by J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon, the property is under contract for $6.95 million. Dimon first put the 13,500-square-foot property at 25 E. Banks St. on the market in April 2007, asking price of $13.5 million. Get the full story >>
U.S. home loan demand fell for a third straight week though fixed mortgage rates slid near all-time lows, with potential buyers still unnerved by the jobs market, Mortgage Bankers Association data showed on Wednesday. Get the full story »
