GMA Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention Services goal is to  work with and help homeowners who are facing foreclosure / struggling to pay their mortgage . GMA Loan Modification & Foreclosure Prevention Services will mitigate with the Lenders/Banks to STOP FORECLOSURE and Reduce homeowners monthly mortgage payment and interst rate. All qualified homeowners will get a loan modification with a new monthly mortgage payment they can now afford.

Everyone experiences financial problems at times throughout their lives and a foreclosure can potentially happen to anyone. It's how we deal with these problems and over come them that defines us. You should never feel ashamed or embrassed because millions of people are in your same situation. GMA Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention Services is dedicated to helping homeowners just like you to overcome your mortgage problems. Let our experienced Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention consultants get your loan modified and keep you in your home that you have worked very hard for.
GMA Loan Modification and foreclosure Prevention Services can help all qualified homeowners save their homes. We at GMA Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention Services have helped many homeowners in the New York Metropolitan area ( Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan / New York, Staten Isaland) Long Island (Nassau / Suffolk County) and homeowners from various parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Florida. GMA Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention Services can help any homeowner in the USA; as of now our Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention Services is being used by homeowners in New York (NY), New Jersey (NJ), Connecticut (CT), Pennsylvania (PA) and Florida (FL).

A loan modificatIon can be an extremely successful process to help homeowners like yourself stop the foreclosure process, reduce your monthly mortgage payment and keep your home. GMA Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention consultants are highly effective at getting the terms of your mortgage permanently changed to benefit you and your family in the long term. Based on our experience, wer are able to pre-qualify you after a short FREE consultation and if you meet the criteria to have your loan modify, there is a 98%  chance your loan will be modified. You have absolutely nothing to lose by giving us a call or filling our  form, by doing so you will take one step closer to saving your home.

If you are facing a hardship, unbearable mortgage payments or a foreclosure, it is imperative that you speak to one of our Loan Modification or Foreclosure Prevention consultant TODAY ! Time is of the essence when it come to your mortgage and delaying the process can have numerous negative ramifications. During your initial free consultation, a representative can answer any loan modification or foreclosure questions that you may have. Also, the representative will pre qualify you for a loan modificaton by discussing your  current circumstances. If you qualify through our loan modification program, then you will be walked through a retainer agreement and immediately have a full staff working on your loan modification. We understand how overwhelming and stressful it is to know that your mortgage payment is unbearable or you are facing a foreclosure. Let GMA Loan Modification and Foreclosure Prevention Services help you work though these tough times, lower your payment and keep your home ? CALL (718) 233-9087 or fill out the form below.

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and fellow mortgage servicers are more likely to dodge a threatened $20 billion in penalties for faulty foreclosures after U.S. agencies cut ahead of the states by signing deals without fines.

A task force of 50 state attorneys general already was arguing internally over proposed sanctions when people familiar with the talks said the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. began making the deals. While the U.S. watchdogs may yet seek fines, the pacts ease pressure on the banks and erode states’ leverage, said Gilbert Schwartz, a former Fed attorney.

“This puts the attorneys general in an uncomfortable position,” because it reduces the list of outstanding demands and helps firms show progress in fixing lapses, said Schwartz, a partner at law firm Schwartz & Ballen LLP in Washington who is not involved in negotiations. “By settling with the banking agencies, it sets the upper limit on what the banks would be willing to do. This seems to have drawn a line in the sand.”

The first of as many as 14 mortgage servicers signed accords this week agreeing to improve internal controls, communications with borrowers and other processes, said two people familiar with the matter. They are the first sanctions to arise from last year’s probe into so-called robo-signing, in which mortgage firms and their contractors vouched for thousands of foreclosure documents without verifying their accuracy.

Financial Penalties The U.S. agreements proceeded without the backing of the attorneys general, led by Iowa’s Thomas J. Miller, who undertook a joint probe last year and have sought to change servicers’ behavior and extract financial penalties. In early March, the group circulated a 27-page settlement “term sheet” outlining future rules on mortgage servicing and conditions for possible mortgage modifications.

Miller, in an April 4 statement, said he’s “disappointed” to see reports that some U.S. watchdogs may pursue their own accords. Miller said he had hoped the agencies would cooperate because “to work closely with all of us would protect the public interest to the fullest.”

Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for Miller, said yesterday that the actions of U.S. regulators won’t affect the efforts of the attorneys general.

“We see any settlement they may reach as a floor, not a ceiling,” Greenwood said. “We still don’t know what their agreement would say because we haven’t been notified.”

$20 Billion The attorneys general previously suggested a $20 billion penalty as part of any deal, a figure cited by Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which said in a Feb. 14 presentation that banks had saved more than that amount by cutting corners during foreclosures. A $5 billion penalty would be “too low,” and banks can afford more, the agency wrote in the document.

Lenders countered with a March 28 draft proposal that didn’t include principal reductions or fines, and after a March 30 meeting with servicers, state officials and federal agencies, Miller said there’s “a long way to go” to reach an agreement.

Spokesmen for the FDIC, Fed, OCC and OTS declined to comment, as did representatives of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo and Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Writing down principal and imposing fines has been “more of a sticking point with the AGs, and it’s going to be more difficult to come to a resolution with that constituency than it would be with the banking regulators,” said Jason Goldberg, an analyst with Barclays Capital in New York.

Short Sales The states and the Obama administration are trying to help the almost 25 percent of U.S. mortgage holders who are underwater, meaning the debt is more than the home is worth. Banks have been reluctant to write down principal, and so-called short sales, where a home is sold for less than the loan balance, have lagged home seizures as a lengthy consent process by loan holders deters potential buyers.

Foreclosure filings reached a record 2.9 million in 2010, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based data company. After a rebound in the second half of last year, home sales have resumed their decline as foreclosures expand the inventory of unsold properties and push values lower.

‘Good Outcome’ “There appears to be a divergence between the federal agencies and the state attorneys general as to what they consider to be a good outcome,” said Patrick McManemin, a Dallas-based partner at Patton Boggs LLP, a law firm that represents banks, loan servicers and financial institutions.

There’s also a split among the states, with the attorneys general of Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alabama, Virginia, Texas, Florida and South Carolina writing letters to Miller last month voicing their displeasure. Republican lawmakers complained about the proposed settlement and questioned whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has authority to take part in the talks.

“In that initial draft it really did seem like the state AGs were overstepping,” said Stephen F.J. Ornstein, a Washington partner of the law firm SNR Denton LLP. The scope of the original proposal may have delayed any settlement the AGs could have reached, he said.

Acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh said in February that the OCC and other U.S. bank regulators were “in the process of finalizing actions” to impose “remedial requirements and sanctions” on mortgage servicers. The OCC sent cease-and-desist orders to servicers that month, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Imposing Penalties This week’s agreements don’t prevent federal regulators from imposing financial penalties later, and are simply an effort to give near-term relief to borrowers trying to work out loan modifications or avoid foreclosures, said one person familiar with the process.

Virginia’s Attorney General, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, favors regulators reaching separate settlements on federal matters, while the states focus on issues within their purview, according to spokesman Brian Gottstein.

“We do not have to wait for some joint federal-state settlement,” Gottstein said in an e-mail. “The quicker all this gets resolved, the better for consumers and the economy.”

Regulators continue to be part of negotiations with attorneys general, the Justice Department and banks, and are expected to be a party to any global settlement if one is reached, said three people with knowledge of the process who did not want to be named because the negotiations aren’t public.

Issues in ‘Play’ “Issues such as principal reduction, treatment of second mortgages, state and federal fines all continue to be in play,” McManemin said.

Banks likely will try to use the agreements with regulators as leverage to undermine the efforts by state attorneys general to reach a universal settlement, Alan White, a law professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana, said in a telephone interview.

The banks might argue that any state investigation is preempted by the actions of their federal banking regulator, and may be backed in that claim by the OCC, which has taken a “very aggressive” position in the past arguing that federal banking laws preempt state laws, White said.

This settlement “is turf protection, but it’s also a way of supplanting the attorneys general as the people’s representative who can speak and act,” said Ellen Marshall, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP in Costa Mesa, California. Regulators “have the sweep of the whole nation and so they can reach an agreement.”

One interpretation of the financial penalties imposed by the attorneys general was that it would “undermine safety and soundness at a critical time” for the banks, Ornstein said.

Capital Levels That was countered by Brian Foran, an analyst with Nomura Holdings Inc. in New York, who said any principal reductions wouldn’t have a large impact on banks’ capital levels since profits over the next two quarters would likely offset any hit. The CFPB presentation showed that a penalty based on the billions of dollars in servicing costs avoided by the banks would reduce Tier 1 capital by 47 basis points at Wells Fargo and 30 basis points for Bank of America. A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.

“The problem is that a lot of the rhetoric is ‘The banks can afford this, therefore it must be fine to do,’” Foran said in a phone interview. “People would become very worried about what’s next, the banks will probably continue to tighten their mortgage underwriting standards, which is counterproductive, and it leads down a slippery slope.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Dakin Campbell in San Francisco at dcampbell27@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net.

 

Elviston Ramasir, 27, Manorville, New York, the former president of Home Free Realty, Inc., a Long Island real estate services company, pled guilty in Manhattan federal court to committing two separate real estate fraud schemes. In one of the schemes, Ramasir stole over $1.5 million from investors by promising them huge rates of return on investments in properties that he promised to buy, but never did.

In a second scheme, committed while he was out on bail in this case, he used Craigslist to solicit renters for two properties he owned, and then defrauded those potential renters by keeping their money.

According to documents previously filed in Manhattan federal court, statements made during the guilty plea proceeding, and other information in the public record:

THE REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT SCHEME

Home Free Realty, Inc., provided foreclosure-related real estate services. While serving as its president, Ramasir obtained money from a victim investor on the pretense that Ramasir would use the money to purchase foreclosed real estate properties, and subsequently resell them at a profit. Ramasir falsely represented that these sales would yield a 40 percent profit on the initial investment, typically within 90 days. From June 2008 through December 2009, the investor gave Ramasir
approximately $2,048,850 for purported investments for himself and several other victims who had given the investor money to invest with Ramasir.

Ramasir also falsely represented that he had obtained ownership of approximately 38 properties in Brooklyn and Queens for the investor's benefit. All but one of these 38 properties either did not exist or were owned by others who had no affiliation with Ramasir. Additionally, Ramasir created false documentation, including a forged check, fake deeds of sale, and a document purporting to be a freeze order issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to make the investor believe that his
and the other victims' funds were in fact being invested in real estate. Ultimately, Ramasir used over $1.5 million of the investor's funds for his personal use, including for, among other things: transfers of over $600,000 to an E*Trade bank account; payments of nearly $200,000 in credit card debt; student loan payments in excess of $40,000; payments of approximately $29,852 for a Mercedes-Benz; air travel; luxury hotels; and cosmetic surgeries for himself and others.

THE RENTAL PROPERTIES SCHEMES

While free on bail in this case, from June 2010 through October 2010, Ramasir stole thousands of dollars from individuals who sought to rent two properties - in South Ozone Park, New York, and Long Beach, New York - both of which were controlled by Ramasir. Ramasir posted an advertisement on Craigslist for each
property, using an alias of "Ryan Rameriz." Ramasir collected payments from several prospective tenants, with no intention of ever providing use of the
properties to these victims. After fraudulently collecting this money and being confronted by the victims, Ramasir falsely promised repayment of the fraudulently collected funds. Several of these victims never recovered the money stolen from them by Ramasir. 

Ramasir faces a maximum sentence of 70 years in prison on the charges to which he pled guilty. Ramasir also admitted the forfeiture allegations in the Superseding Indictment and the Information, and has agreed to forfeit up to $1,523,949. Ramasir also agreed to forfeit his ownership interests in the South Ozone Park and Long Beach properties involved in the fraudulent schemes. He is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin on March 29, 2011.

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the guilty plea.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Bharara said: "Elviston Ramasir is a recidivist of the first order. He took advantage of innocent people who thought they were investing in real estate and lined his pockets with more than $1.5 million of their money. Now he will be punished for his crimes."

Mr. Bharara praised the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Postal Inspection Service in the investigation of this case. He also thanked the Nassau County District Attorney's Office and the Nassau County Police Department for their assistance.

The case is being handled by the Office's Complex Frauds Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Feingold is in charge of the prosecution.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) gave Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon a 51 percent raise in 2010 as the bank resumed paying cash bonuses following two years of pressure from regulators and lawmakers to curb compensation.

Dimon’s $23 million compensation package makes him the highest-paid chief executive among the top six U.S. banks since 2007, according to the banks’ proxy statements. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein, 56, received the next-highest payout for 2010 at $19 million, followed by Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) head John Stumpf, 57, at $17.5 million.

Morgan Stanley, which hasn’t filed its statement yet, is not going to pay CEO James Gorman more than the $15.1 million he received for 2009, a person familiar with his pay package said in January.

Dimon’s pay included a $5 million cash bonus, his first since 2007, the New York-based company said yesterday in a regulatory filing. His base salary remained at $1 million and his restricted stock payout increased 20 percent to $17 million. That helped boost total compensation by more than half from $15.2 million in 2009, according to the bank’s calculations.

JPMorgan, the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, reported a record $17.4 billion profit for the year, buoyed by $7 billion in pretax reserves that were added back to earnings as credit quality and the U.S. economy improved. Wall Street firms are reinstating bonuses for top executives as earnings rebound from the 2008 financial crisis.

Dimon received restricted shares valued at about $12 million, according to yesterday’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He also received options valued at about $5 million, according to the company. That compares with restricted shares and options valued at $14.2 million awarded last year for his work in 2009, according to disclosures by the company. He additionally received $579,624 in benefits attributed to his personal use of company aircraft, cars and real estate fees to sell his home in Chicago.

Far From 2007 Dimon, 55, took a salary of $1 million for 2009 and gave up bonuses that year and in 2008 after receiving $49.9 million in total compensation for 2007, which included cash and restricted stock bonuses of $14.5 million each. The board raised Dimon’s base salary for 2011 to $1.5 million.

Blankfein’s pay package, which doubled from the prior year, is less than the $68.5 million record compensation he received for 2007. Blankfein’s 2010 pay included a cash bonus of $5.4 million and $12.6 million in restricted stock.

JPMorgan’s shares rose 1.8 percent last year, outperforming competitors including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley. (MS)

JPMorgan awarded Dimon’s top 15 executives more than $73 million in restricted shares, plus stock options, for their performance in 2010, according to Jan. 21 SEC filings. That compares with $64.2 million in stock granted to his top 16 executives a year earlier, filings at the time show.

A majority of Dimon’s wealth is in JPMorgan stock. He and his wife owned directly or through trusts and retirement plans more than 5 million shares valued at more than $221 million as of Jan. 19, when his total holdings were last disclosed.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dawn Kopecki in Washington at dkopecki@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What cute-sounding names. They suggest adorable siblings, not twin financial disasters that may cost $1 trillion when we get the final bill.

According to Edward Pinto, Fannie Mae’s former chief credit officer, in 2008 the two government-supported mortgage finance companies, along with the Federal Housing Administration and other U.S. agencies, were holding or guaranteeing some 19 million subprime home loans, or about 70 percent of all such debt.

Much of these toxic assets, as well as many of Fannie and Freddie’s prime mortgages, aren’t performing or will likely default. Nationwide, 8 million mortgages -- or one in 10 -- are under water, with the property’s value at least 25 percent below what’s owed.

The Federal Housing Financing Agency puts Fannie and Freddie’s losses at about $300 billion. But industry experts, like Janet Tavakoli, suggest the real number is closer to $700 billion. And if home prices fall another 20 percent to return to their long-term trend, the tab might climb to $1 trillion.

The asset-level data needed to get a more precise handle on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s losses aren’t available. U.S. taxpayers, who now own both companies lock, stock, and barrel, and have to cover their losses, can’t, it seems, be trusted with these details. Taxation without representation is a no-no, but taxation with misrepresentation is just fine.

Government’s Role

Where does the Constitution instruct Uncle Sam to act as the people’s inept investment banker? Where does it tell him to borrow gargantuan sums to make subsidized loans to dicey borrowers whose credit, collateral and employment he can’t be bothered to check?

It’s one thing for the government to assist deserving first-time homebuyers by paying, in broad daylight, a share of their home price. It’s another thing for the U.S. to induce people, whether deserving or not and whether first-time homebuyers or not, to go into debt. Incredibly, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA are still making a significant number of subprime mortgages with extremely low down-payments.

It’s time to get the government out of the mortgage business before it loses more of our money and induces more people to borrow beyond their means. If Uncle Sam wants to help the housing sector as opposed to the borrowing sector, let him restore the First-Time Home Buyers Tax Credit that expired last April.

But, hold on!

New System

We can’t rely on the same private mortgage system, which specialized in the production and sale of fraudulent securities and almost vaporized the global financial market. The Dodd-Frank law notwithstanding, credit-rating companies are still on the take, regulators are still on the make, and boards of directors are still on a break. They won’t protect us from Wall Street’s sale of snake oil.

We need a new limited-purpose mortgage system, which confines banks and other mortgage makers to doing just one thing -- connecting lenders with borrowers, not leveraging the taxpayer. And we need the government to directly oversee the mortgage initiation process, organize a competitive market in home loans, and fully disclose all the details of mortgages on the Web so investors in these loans will know what they are buying.

This is remarkably easy to accomplish.

Step 1: Set up a new government agency -- the Federal Financial Authority. The FFA would hire companies to verify, rate, appraise and disclose mortgage applications. These contractors would work exclusively for the FFA, eliminating any conflict of interest. Liar loans and no-doc loans would be history.

Mutual Funds’ Role

The government would neither endorse nor accept responsibility for appraisals and ratings, and would let borrowers add privately purchased appraisals and ratings to disclosures.

Step 2: Limit buyers of home loans to doing so only through closed-end mortgage mutual funds. If a fund manager chooses poor mortgages, the value of his fund’s shares will fall, but the fund itself won’t go broke. Mortgage defaults will never again lead to financial-sector collapse.

The mutual funds would sell shares up to a closing date, use the proceeds to buy mortgages of the type in which they are specializing, and pay out the cash flow to stockholders. The funds would terminate when the loans mature.

Step 3: Establish an electronic mortgage auction and require mutual funds to purchase loans at this market so borrowers receive the best price (lowest interest rate).

Liquid Market

While mutual funds would buy and hold mortgages, their shares would sell in a secondary market so investors would have liquidity even though their funds’ assets were illiquid. For this secondary market to operate well, it would need to maintain real-time disclosure of all information relevant to the valuation of a given loan.

The mutual funds would, themselves, represent securitizations. But unlike yesterday’s complex mortgage securities, investors would know what they were buying.

Investors seeking safety would purchase funds specializing in loans with larger down payments and shorter maturities. Investors seeking higher returns at the price of more risk would buy funds focused on mortgages with low down payments and longer maturities.

It’s time for the government to move from making home loans to making a mortgage market that works. The limited purpose mortgage system does both.

Laurence Kotlikoff is professor of economics at Boston University, president of Economic Security Planning Inc. and author of Jimmy Stewart Is Dead.” Richard Field is managing director of TYI LLC, a disclosure compliance database and risk- management firm. The opinions expressed their own.)

To contact the writers of this column: Laurence Kotlikoff at kotlikoff@bu.edu; Richard Field at tyillc@comast.net

To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

At a time when some homeowners are struggling to pay their mortgages, so-called mortgage relief services have been more aggressive in offering loan modification help. Homeowners are warned of the pitfalls of these offers and a consumer alert was issued to make homeowners aware of new protections from the Federal Trade Commission.

Mortgage "rescue" services or load modification services often promise to deliver lower monthly payments and lower interest rates, aid in short sales, and offer other relief from foreclosure. However, these services also typically require an upfront fee from a homeowner prior to performing any services. That is the catch.

In most cases, the offers of assistance are empty promises given only to extract the advance fee. Some services offer "guaranteed" results and full refunds to disappointed customers, but those promises are not often honored. Some services claim strong relationships with the servicing and lending community and tout past successes in rescuing consumers from foreclosure. Others suggest an affiliation with federal government programs. Most of these claims are false.

These scams are promoted through direct contact with distressed homeowners, either by phone, a personal visit, or a card or flyer at the door. Homeowners are told to stop contact with their lenders, credit counselors, and lawyers, and let the "rescuer" handle the details. This cuts off the homeowner from legitimate opportunities to achieve a financial solution.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a new rule that bans the acceptance of an advance fee by mortgage relief/loan modification services until the homeowner has a written offer from their lender or servicer that they decide is acceptable. The Mortgage Assistance Relief Services (MARS) Rule is designed to protect homeowner from mortgage relief scams that have persisted during the current mortgage crisis.

Most parts of the rule went into effect on December 29, 2010. The full rule will be implemented on January 31, 2011.

According to the MARS Rule, mortgage relief companies must disclose that they are not associated with the government and that their services have not been approved by the government or a consumer's lender; that the lender may not agree to change loan terms; and that consumers could lose their homes or damage their credit ratings if told to stop paying their mortgage.

The MARS Rule will also prohibit several common advertising tactics used by mortgage relief services and requires companies to have reliable evidence to support any claims about the benefits or effectiveness of the services they provide.

For more information regarding the MARS Rule, visit www.ftc.gov. In addition, information on the federal government's Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, can be found at www.hud.gov.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel issued a consumer alert to advise Arkansas homeowners of the new laws.  "The good news for homeowners facing foreclosure is that legitimate avenues for relief exist," McDaniel said. "If a homeowner is having difficulty keeping up with mortgage payments, that homeowner should contact his or her lender to negotiate a modified payment plan. All lenders and servicers have a legal obligation to offer remediation services."