Mike Bell’s Blog – Real Estate and Bank Owned Properties in Silicon Valley

As I once heard brilliant financial guru Steve Forbes say (paraphrase) “. . . we had a chance to fix the mortgage crisis back in ’07;  if we had just let it crash, it would have been painful, but we would have recovered in 6 months.”  A free economy tends to correct itself, but it’s just not the nature of government(s) to leave things alone.  That’s why we have to endure this mess for years instead of months, and why we have new government programs every time another one fails.  Whatever it takes to prevent economy from it’s natural course: stretch the band, kick the can down the road, etc.

Image via Wikipedia

Since 2008, when foreclosures finally got the nation’s attention, congress and the administration has been trying everything they can think of to keep the economy off its inevitable course.  So every few months we get another program:  TARP, Cash-For-Clunkers, HAFA, etc.  Not only are none of these programs working, they seem to be making the problem worse, and like all government programs are easy targets for fraud.

It gets even more frightening when you can’t tell if the fraud is intentional.  Case in point is HAMP, the Home Affordable Modification Program.  The evidence is pretty clear that one way or another, most loan mods fail.  So along comes the government (again) with another program trying to revive a dead animal.  Is it intended to assist borrowers, or abuse them?

“What people entering the HAMP modification process don’t understand, until they are out on the street, is that it wasn’t designed to limit foreclosures; it was intended to expedite them”  (Geroge W. Mantor, RISMedia 8/17/2010).

Sound incredible?  Check out these two links:

(1)  More And Better Predatory Loan Servicing Fraud.

(2)  Are Loan Modifications Causing Foreclosures?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Treasury Admits HAMP Was a Banker ‘Bust Out’ [Mike the Mad Biologist] (scienceblogs.com)
• TARP And HAMP Are Not Working (realestateradiousa.com)

Remember the First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit?   It was perhaps the only effective or successful federal economic program in the past five+ years.  Well, Even those rare government programs that actually work are fraught with fraud.  Go figure.

As early as last October, there were reports of fraud schemes and suspicious claims as the tax credit was set to expire and was being considered for extension (see DSNews 10/20/09).   That’s not so surprising, I guess.

What’s shocking is the recent report that prison inmates were able “to apply for and receive $9.1 million in homebuyer tax credits” (see DSNews 6/24/10).  This article refers to a Treasury audit report that further shows that 241 inmates serving life sentences received a combined $1.7 million in tax credits.

This sort of begs the question: what kind of income tax liability can you earn serving a life sentence behind bars?  Is there even any point in a federal tax credit?

Image by antonychammond via Flickr

The same Treasury audit also indicates that $17.6 million in claims were allowed for homes purchased before the tax credit program.  It gets better, though, with the reports of post-refund claims resulting in investigation, $785 million, or post-refund claims resulting in denial, $438 million.  The IRS seems to be catching a whole lot more fraud than they miss, but still . . .

Related articles by Zemanta

• Homebuyer tax credit audit shows fraud in the millions of dollars (agentgenius.com)
• Prisoners Cash In On the Homebuyer Tax Credit (hsh.com)
• Inmates, IRS Employers Among Those Found to Abuse Homebuyer Tax Credit (blogs.forbes.com)