The Kestner Team

Facing Foreclosure: What to Do Right Now

By: Jerry DeMuth

Published: February 5, 2010

Foreclosure process takes time

The entire foreclosure process can take anywhere from two to 12 months, depending on how fast your lender acts and where you live. Some states allow a nonjudicial process that’s speedier, while others require time-consuming judicial proceedings.

Once you miss at least one mortgage payment, the steps leading up to an actual foreclosure sale can include demand letters, notices of default, a recorded notice of foreclosure, publication of the debt, and the scheduling of a foreclosure auction. Even when an auction is scheduled, however, it may never occur, or it may occur but a qualified buyer doesn’t materialize.

Bottom line: Foreclosure can be a long slog, which gives you enough time to come up with an alternative. Meantime, if your goal is to salvage your home, think about keeping up with payments for homeowners insurance and property taxes. Otherwise, you could compound your problems by getting hit with an uncovered casualty loss or liability suit, or tax liens.

Read the fine print

Start by reviewing all correspondence you’ve received from your lender. The letters—and phone calls—probably began once you were 30 days past due. Also review your mortgage documents, which should outline what steps your lender can take. For instance, is there a “power of sale” clause that authorizes the sale of your home to pay off a mortgage after you miss payments?

Determine the specific foreclosure laws for your state. What’s the timeline? Do you have “right of redemption,” essentially a grace period in which you can reverse a foreclosure? Are deficiency judgments that hold you responsible for the difference between what your home sells for and your loan’s outstanding balance allowed? Get answers.

Pick up the phone

Don’t give up because you missed a mortgage payment or two and received a notice of default. Foreclosure isn’t a foregone conclusion, but it’s heading in that direction if you don’t call your lender. Dial the number on your mortgage statement, and ask for the Loss Mitigation Department. You might stay on hold for a while, but don’t hang up. Once you do get someone on the line, take notes and record names.

The next call should be to a foreclosure avoidance counselor approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. One of these counselors can, free of charge, explain your state’s foreclosure laws, discuss alternatives to foreclosure, help you organize financial documents, and even represent you in negotiations with your lender. Be wary of unsolicited offers of help, since foreclosure rescue scams are common.

Be sure to let your lender know that you’re working with a counselor. Not only does it demonstrate your resolve, but according to NeighborWorks, homeowners who receive foreclosure counseling are 1.6 times more likely to avoid losing their homes than those who don’t. Homeowners who receive loan modifications with the help of a counselor also reduce monthly mortgage payments by $454 more than homeowners who receive a modification without the aid of a counselor.

Lender alternatives to foreclosure

Hope Now, an alliance of mortgage companies and housing counselors, can aid homeowners facing foreclosure. A self-assessment tool will give you an idea whether you might be eligible for help from your lender, and there are direct links to HUD-approved counseling agencies and lenders’ foreclosure-prevention programs.

There are alternatives to foreclosure that your lender might accept. The most attractive option that’ll allow you to keep your home is a loan modification that reduces your monthly payment. A modification can entail lowering the interest rate, changing a loan from an adjustable rate to a fixed rate, extending the term of a loan, or eliminating past-due balances. Another option, forbearance, can temporarily suspend payments, though the amount will likely be tacked on to the end of the loan.

If you’re unable to make even reduced payments, and assuming a conventional sale isn’t possible, then it may be best to turn your home over to your lender before a foreclosure is completed. A completed foreclosure can decimate a credit score, which will make it hard not only to purchase another home someday, but also to rent a home in the immediate future.

Your lender can approve a short sale, in which the proceeds are less than what’s still owed on your mortgage. A deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, which amounts to handing over your keys to your lender, is another possibility. The earlier you begin talks with your lender, the more likelihood of success.

Explore government programs

NASHVILLE, Tenn. --Tennesseans know all too well about the nation's No. 1 natural disaster: flooding. A FEMA flood insurance specialist told a group of about 35 real estate agents in Franklin, Tenn., on Thursday that now is a good time for property owners to protect themselves from the cost of flood damages by purchasing flood insurance.

More than 25 percent of all flood insurance claims are from moderate-to-low-risk flood zones. Anyone living in a community that participates in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) can purchase flood insurance regardless where their property is located within the community.

"There is a misconception that you can only buy flood insurance if you live in a special flood hazard area as identified on a community's adopted flood map," said FEMA's Federal Coordinating Officer Gracia Szczech. "But if your community participates in the program, you can buy flood insurance no matter where your property is."

Many agents said knowing about the NFIP is vital to the industry's credibility from this point forward.

"We're going to be challenged by and faced with these issues for years to come so that we can protect both our buyers and sellers," said Dianne Christian, a Realtor and broker with Keller Williams.

FEMA is meeting with real estate and insurance agents throughout the state to answer questions and help minimize the impact of future events.

FEMA specialists are also meeting with officials of communities throughout Tennessee to educate jurisdictions about the program and encourage non-participating communities to join.

To learn how your property is zoned, visit www.FloodSmart.gov. For more information on NFIP, call 888-379-9531, visit www.FloodSmart.gov, or call your local insurance agent.

On July 2, President Obama signed a bill reauthorizing the NFIP until Sept. 30, 2010. Policies purchased now will be effective 30 days after the premium is paid and will remain in effect for one year.

Follow the recovery in Tennessee online at www.twitter.com/tema, www.twitter.com/fema, www.facebook.com/TNDisasterInfo, www.youtube.com/fema and www.flickr.com/photos/t_e_m_a.

The social media links provided are for reference only. FEMA and TEMA do not endorse any non-government websites, companies or applications.

FEMA's mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.

Last Modified: Monday, 12-Jul-2010 08:39:01

Smartphones Easily Invaded, Researchers Find

By David Sarno

RISMEDIA, July 8, 2010--(MCT)--Security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you.

It's your phone number.

Using relatively simple techniques, this duo can use your cell phone number to figure out your name, where you live and work, where you travel and when you sleep. They could even listen to your voice messages and personal phone calls — if they wanted to.

"It's really interesting to watch a phone number turn into a person's life," DePetrillo said.

"Everyone's taught to keep their Social Security number a secret," Bailey said. "But the phone number seems just as dangerous, if not more so."

The world has come a long distance from old-style telephones, which were little more than a speaker, a bell and a microphone connected to a wire.

But as smart phones become more powerful and widely used, they also become busy hubs for data, packed with a user's digital Rolodex, e-mails and credit card details. Most phones are also fitted with a global positioning device that beams its location far and wide.

Taken together, this trove of personal information is valuable to both legitimate commercial companies and unwelcome intruders.

In the last several years, tens of millions of consumers have turned in their older-model cell phones in exchange for high-tech, computer-like handsets such as Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Google Inc.'s Android phones and Research in Motion Ltd.'s line of BlackBerry devices.

Used by about 21 percent of mobile phone customers, smart phones are quickly gaining ground on the previous generation of simpler flip phones, and by 2011 they are likely to become the standard for most consumers, according to Nielsen Co.

DePetrillo and Bailey are part of a busy community of security researchers — some of whom are known as "white hat" hackers — investigating and exposing the many security holes that have yet to be plugged by smart-phone makers and their wireless carriers.

And though many of those companies take a dim view when researchers and hacker groups publicize their vulnerabilities, it's the public that can benefit when those problems are uncovered.

DePetrillo and Bailey were surprised at how easily they could use widely available information and existing techniques to assemble a detailed dossier on a cell-phone user. (They stress that their demonstrations are for educational purposes and that they work better on some cell networks than others.)

Once they have a phone number — yours, for instance — they can easily determine your name by taking advantage of a vulnerability in the Caller ID system. Using special software, they can "spoof" a call — that is, make a call that appears to the phone company as though it's coming from your number. They can then call themselves using your number and watch as their Caller ID device lights up with your name.

Attackers could theoretically do this with thousands of numbers to create their own personal mobile phone book.

But it doesn't stop there: Once DePetrillo and Bailey have figured out that your name is the one associated with your number, they can query the cellular network to see where your phone is at that moment. After enough time, this bit of digital spycraft will yield a fairly clear picture of where you go and when.

"We can do a lot of cool things that we really shouldn't be able to as civilians," DePetrillo said. "It's like running your own private intelligence company."

Representatives from AT&T and T-Mobile referred questions about the issue to the CTIA, a wireless industry association, which said U.S. wireless carriers are vigilant about protecting subscriber privacy, and questioned whether DePetrillo and Bailey's tracking techniques were legal.

The vulnerabilities in the networks that track phones and connect calls are mirrored by security weaknesses in the phones themselves, one of which is the software they run.

All of the major smart-phone makers have created online markets where users can download any of tens of thousands of small programs — called apps. On the iPhone, there's the App Store; for Google Android, there's the Android Marketplace; and for BlackBerry, there's the App World.

Those stores have varying levels of policing. Apple certifies the security of every app it approves for its store — there are now 250,000 of them — but acknowledges that some malicious apps can occasionally sneak through. RIM and Google largely leave users to protect themselves from the bad guys.

Tyler Shields, a computer security researcher who specializes in mobile phones, likes to show off a nasty little application he wrote called TXSBBSPY.

The "TXS" part is his initials. "BB" is for BlackBerry. And the "SPY" is for the way his program can turn your device into a mobile surveillance station, with you as the target. Once installed on your BlackBerry, Shields' app would let him read your text messages, listen to your voicemails and even turn on your phone's mic while it's in your pocket.

Though Shields' app is intended to be a case study on BlackBerry security, he said an attacker could easily hide similar features in an app masquerading as something else, like a program to do online banking. If a user unwittingly downloaded the phony banking app, his or her device could quickly become compromised.

Because smart phones are only a few years old, Shields said, the art of smart-phone defense is still catching up to where the PC has been for years.

"We're still in the late '90s when it comes to security on mobile devices," Shields said. "It's akin to the older days before people knew to put antivirus software or firewalls on their computers."

For their part, RIM and Google say they have built some precautions into their phones to help users determine whether an app is legitimate. BlackBerry phones offer a set of controls that allow users to prevent apps from accessing some of the device's functions — such as its messaging and telephony features.

Similarly, before a user loads an app from Google's Android store, the device will display a list of the data to which it has access. If a tic-tac-toe game is asking to access your text messages, that could be a warning sign.

Google, RIM and Apple all say they remove offending apps from their stores when they become aware of violations. Still, they say, it's up to users to be vigilant when downloading apps — and to judge whether they're coming from a trusted software maker.

Charles Miller, the principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators in Baltimore, stressed that common sense is often the best defense against malicious attacks.

"For 10 years, people have been told all of these things you should do to protect your computer: Don't click on links in e-mails and only go to sites you trust," he said. "People tend to forget those when you're on your phone."

(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Metro rebuilding assistance program based on loans, grants, volunteer efforts

By Michael Cass • THE TENNESSEAN • June 29, 2010

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR CURRENT PROPERTY MANAGER ???

GOOD NEWS!!! Within the next couple of weeks I will be adding property management to my investor services !!! So now, you can have one stop shopping – buying / selling / managing – all with one agent!!!

For years I have heard my investor clients complain about the level of service they receive from their property management company. The complaints have varied - excessive fees, lack of response, not properly inspecting the property, and sometimes it’s just been a personality issue. Since I came from a 20 year background in commercial and residential management, I decided I could best help my clients by adding property management services. I’ve been working on the details, etc. for several months and have finally gotten down to the “almost there” stage. So now it’s time to drum up business!

First, I invite you fill out the attached survey and fax or email back to me. Even if you’re not interested in switching companies, your feedback will be of great benefit to me. AND YOUR SURVEY WILL BE ENTERED INTO A DRAWING FOR A $100 LOWE’S GIFT CARD!!! The drawing will be held on July, 15 2010.  The winner will receive an email or phone call and the winner's name will be posted on our blog on July, 16th 2010. 

Second, my business plan revolves around the client – you. I will do my best to provide better service WITHOUT taking all of your money. On top of lower fees, one service I provide (free of charge) is to video the property prior to all tenant move ins. A copy of the video will go on file and a copy emailed to the tenant. The video will eliminate any finger pointing as to whether or not the tenant caused any damage – front, back, inside and out – the proof will be there. Also, when I inspect your property, photos will accompany the inspection report. Pictures speak much louder than words, so when I inform you that there is algae growing on the side of the house, the photo will allow you to see just how bad it looks.

I’ll definitely be up and running no later than July 1.

SO KEEP ME IN MIND!!!! I AM HERE TO HELP YOU .

Don’t forget to fill out the survey!!!!