Bishop Eddie Long Now Faces Mortgage Fraud Charges in Addition the Molestation Lawsuits

In my experience in the legal profession and the area of real estate law in particular, typically, the biggest crooks are those who always wear religion on their sleeves and somehow work religion into what ought to be a purely business/legal matter. Now, Bishop Eddie Long - who is already facing lawsuits brought by four young men who accuse him of sexual coercion while using his church position to gain their confidence - has reportedly been linked to a mortgage fraud operation being run from his church. Apparently, Long was not satisfied with the $3 million salary he was drawing from his church. CBS Atlanta is reporting that thousands of homeowners may have lost their homes after paying an upfront $1500 foreclosure rescue fee during church sponsored seminars - surprisingly, even Virginia has legislation that bars such up front fees - only to end up losing their homes and/or ending up in bankruptcy. Here are some story highlights:
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CBS Atlanta News has found Bishop Eddie Long and another local megachurch leader, Gary Hawkins, are linked to a questionable mortgage venture that is being investigated by the feds. CBS Atlanta was the first to report on Matrix Capital's long list of victims. The company promised to lower people's mortgages for $1,500 upfront. Police say thousands of homeowners paid Matrix money, but according to investigators, most of them ended up in bankruptcy and losing their homes.
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So many people trusted Matrix Capital front man Fred Lee because he made promises of lowering people's mortgages in the sanctity of their local church. CBS Atlanta first tracked down Fred Lee on the campus of New Birth, Bishop Eddie Long's church.
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On Wednesday nights, New Birth is where Lee convinced church members to pay him instead of their mortgages. That is where people started the process that would eventually cost many their homes. "Where is Eddie Long? Because we would like to talk to him about why he is holding these seminars on his property here," Saltzman asked the security guards at New Birth. "You have to leave the property," the officer responded. The case against Lee is now being investigated by DeKalb County police and the Secret Service.
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In a statement, Long said Matrix Capital is no longer holding seminars at New Birth. But CBS Atlanta has learned another Matrix executive has continued making those same presentations in Lee's place.

Housing Market to Remain Troubled for At Least Three More Years

If this prediction by RealtyTrac, a foreclosure marketplace and tracking service, proves accurate, it could spell the doom of any re-election hopes the Liar-in-Chief may hold. I've been arguing since the summer of 2007 that unless and until the residential housing market stabilizes and begins to rebound, the overall economy will NOT get better for most Americans. Wall Street may be raking in obscene profits and the wealthy seemed about to get a tax windfall at the expense of the rest of the nation, but housing market stability and increasing home equity is what will drive an overall recovery. No one in Washington, D.C., of either party gets this simple fact and no one is holding mortgage lenders accountable for irresponsible foreclosures and foreclosure sale prices that are ridiculously low which in turn pressure neighborhood home prices to fall further. And as prices fall, more homeowners will find themselves upside down on their mortgages with less incentive to continue paying their loans. It's a domino effect that shows no sign of ending. Here are highlights from Rueters:
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The housing market will remain depressed, with record high foreclosure levels, rising mortgage rates and a glut of distressed properties dampening the market for years to come, industry experts predicted on Tuesday.
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"We don't see a full market recovery until 2014," said Rick Sharga of RealtyTrac, a foreclosure marketplace and tracking service. He said that he expected more than 3 million homeowners to receive foreclosure notices in 2010, with more than 1 million homes being seized by banks before the end of the year.
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Both of those numbers are records and expected to go even higher, as $300 billion in adjustable rate loans reset and foreclosures that had been held up by the robo-signing scandal work through the process. That should make the first quarter of 2011 even uglier than the fourth quarter of 2010, he said.
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Mortgage rates will start to rise in 2011, further dampening demand and limiting affordability, said Pete Flint, chief executive of Trulia.com, a real estate search and research website. "Nationally, prices will decline between 5 percent and 7 percent, with most of the decline occurring in the first half of next year," he said.
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Almost half -- 48 percent -- said they'd consider walking away from their homes and their mortgages if they were underwater on their loans. That's up almost 20 percent from when the same question was asked in May. "If that continues it would be an epidemic of strategic defaults," said Flint.
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Roughly 1 in 5 consumers said they expect it to be 2015 before there is a recovery in housing, according to the survey, conducted in November by Harris Interactive. Most respondents said they think recovery will come in 2012 or 2013. Would-be buyers suggested they wouldn't really get serious about purchasing a home for another two years.
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Homebuyers who are willing to take risks and buy distressed properties are likely to see discounts of around 30 percent from prices on comparable homes that are not in distress.

California freefall: Home prices down 26% in February

While McCain blathers about economic jargon he does not even understand and Hillary Clinton keeps trying to knee cap Barack Obama - who I suspect Bill and Hillary refer to in private as that "uppity nigger" - the country is going to Hell in a hand basket quickly, as shown by what is happening to home prices in California. I truly wish that for the good of the country Hillary would close down her campaign, stop trying to blackmail Nancy Pelosi and the U. S. House of Representative Democrats, and slink off somewhere to spend the $30+ million she and Bill have accumulated in a little over 3 year's time. Here are highlights on the housing free fall in California that has to be leaving many homeowners with mortgage balances well in excess of what their homes are now worth (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/03/california-free.html):

Signs of distress are piling up in the California housing market, where prices are falling at three times the national rate of decline. Statewide, median sales prices fell by a stunning 26% from year-ago levels in February, with home prices dropping at a rate of nearly $3,000 a week, the California Association of Realtors reports. Further, the CAR says the Fed's interest rate-cutting campaign "will have little near-term direct effect on the housing market."

In the San Fernando Valley, losing a home to foreclosure is now almost as common for families as buying a home. The L.A. Daily News: "During January and February, there were 1,084 foreclosures and 1,335 sales of houses and condos in Valley communities from Glendale to Calabasas, according to the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center at California State University, Northridge."

On a percentage basis, the California price meltdown is more than three times as severe as the national decline of 8.2% in median prices reported this week by the National Association of Realtors. On an absolute basis, the California meltdown is even more severe: Nationally, prices fell over the past year at a rate of $338 per week; in California, prices fell at a rate of $2,788 per week.