Category Archives: Foreclosure

Massachusetts foreclosures tick up, bankruptcies to follow?

By doug | Published: April 27, 2012

There was a big increase in both new and completed foreclosures in March 2012, perhaps portending a coming increase in bankruptcy filings. According to the Warren Group, which tracks real estate market activity, 850 Massachusetts properties were lost to foreclosure in March, an increase of 36% over the prior year. There were a whopping 1621 […]

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Mass. bankruptcy court says too bad if you didn’t receive notice of a foreclosure

By doug | Published: April 26, 2012

Massachusetts law requires that a lender send two notices to a homeowner before a foreclosure auction can be held — one by certified or registered mail, and the other by regular first class mail. Advertisements must also be placed in a local newspaper. But what if the homeowner never receives these notices? Can the foreclosure […]

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Massachusetts church uses bankruptcy laws to stave off foreclosure

By doug | Published: March 21, 2012

The congregation of Roxbury’s Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church has authorized its leaders to file a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in order to stop foreclosure proceedings scheduled for later in the week. One of the leading churches in Boston’s black community, they need to use the bankruptcy law to try to restructure a balloon […]

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Form 1099-A, foreclosure, and bankruptcy cases

By doug | Published: February 9, 2012

Recently the IRS has been sending out a blizzard of forms 1099-A to homeowners who lost their house to a foreclosure or short sale in 2011. Since so many homes have been lost this way in the Merrimack Valley and southern New Hampshire recently, a lot of folks have been getting them. The 1099-A Form […]

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Massachusetts foreclosures rise before holidays

By doug | Published: November 23, 2011

It can’t be very much fun to contemplate losing one’s home at the start of the holiday season. Nevertheless, the Boston Globe is reporting that Massachusetts home foreclosures rose a whopping 35% in October. That figure represents homes actually seized; foreclosure petitions, which track homes that banks intend to foreclose on in the near future, […]

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Could mortgage modifications use a dose of bankruptcy court mediation?

By doug | Published: October 20, 2011

You are probably aware just how difficult it can be for a homeowner to get a mortgage modification when he or she needs one. Perhaps you have had a personal experince trying to get your mortgage modified, only to be told “no” after submitting reams of paperwork. Is it possible that a bankruptcy court mediation […]

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Bankruptcy court can help if your loan modification goes in to foreclosure anyway

By doug | Published: October 17, 2011

Homeowners who are successful and navigate the often arduous loan modification process are liable to “hit the roof” when they get a foreclosure notice anyway. Yet this bizarre scenario is probably more common than you would think. The Boston Globe just ran a front page article on how a Lawrence woman is suing Bank of […]

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For the true procrastinator: trying to get your foreclosed house back through bankruptcy court

By doug | Published: August 11, 2011

Some folks just love to wait until the last minute to get improtant things done. And then there are those folks who wait until after the last minute . . . In the world of bankruptcy law, it has long been thought that there is nothing that can be done to recover a house that […]

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Attorney general enters the debate over MERS; efforts may help bankrupt homeowners

By doug | Published: July 28, 2011

The Boston Globe recently reported that Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is not backing off her invetigation into the practices of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System known as MERS. Recently, a Massachusetts bankruptcy judge found no fault in the use of MERS to record mortages in dummy names at the registry of deeds statewide and […]

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Bankruptcy court says MERS is alive and well and living in Massachusetts

By doug | Published: July 11, 2011

MERS is doing OK here in Massachusetts. Just in case you are not obsessed with the lingo of real-estate banking, MERS stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., a corporation whose sole business is filing mortgage documents at county registry of deeds nationwide. If you check your mortgage doen at the Northern Essex registry of […]

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