Among the various options offered to help distressed homeowners deal with collapsing mortgages and the resulting loss of houses and credit, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act is a little known break, freeing homeowners from a tax liability on mortgage debt...
Hardship Short Sales: A Break for Sandy Victims
The recent Hurricane Sandy affected mortgage holders in hard-hit Northeastern states in a number of ways. Lenders from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on down stepped up to offer ways to ease the burden of mortgage payments and avoid foreclosure. Among those options is...
Distressed Homeowners Take the Short Sale Option
Before the great mortgage crisis of 2008 - 2011, relatively few people outside the real estate community knew much about specialized terms like ARM or short sale. But as more and more houses fell into foreclosure, these words made headlines across the country. And...
Flopping Houses: A New Kind of Mortgage Fraud
In the aftermath of the mortgage meltdown of a few years ago, several new varieties of mortgage fraud emerged, as buyers and sellers scrambled to grab properties and turn them over as fast as possible. Among the latest: , a strategy in which sellers deliberately...