According to a story in the RGJ, Nevada’s Attorney General, Catherine Cortez Masto, has created a working group involving the state’s largest banks, loan servicers, title and other real estate interests, as well as consumer representatives and lawmakers to discuss possible changes to AB284 in the next legislative session.
Neither lawmakers nor the banks are looking to have the law repealed; however, amending the law is on the table.
See the RGJ story here: Banks push to change Nevada law that crimped foreclosures
Related stories…
- from NVAR: Nevada’s Face of Foreclosure – an in depth look at Nevada’s Housing Crisis
- from the Las Vegas Business PressAB 284: help or hindrance?
Ronald
I work with a woman who has not made a mortgage payment on her house since late 2009. She actively brags about it and points out how she has taken two vacations and bought a new car with the money she has not paid her lender. She appears to be the kind of deadbeat that Sen. Segerblom is proud to claim as a consistuent.
Sully
Ronald, I think you meant “constituent”. I got the same impression when I read the article. His comment tells me we are in for more kicking the can down the road:
“I’m extremely reluctant to change anything that everyone agrees has raised property values in the state of Nevada.”
First off, AB284 did not rise property values, it raised the cost of property. Completely different story. With less inventory to compete with prices will naturally tend to rise.
He is probably banking on the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act to be extended indefinitely. When this Act finally terms out, people like you describe will be paying taxes on the forgiveness, by then the economy will probably have improved and there will be no recourse left for them. Too bad! 🙂
While I am the last person in the country to defend banks (haven’t used them since the mid 70’s) I am among the first to want to see this mess cleaned up. Apparently, I’m in the minority as the way these elections are going, the can kickers just keep getting re-elected. California even raised the ante, by voting in a super majority legislature this year. They promise to be good and not spend too much! Good luck with that California.
Matthew
Our esteemed state senator from Las Vegas is defending abrogation of property rights; how American….
Note that nobody is talking about “erroneous” foreclosures, as was the facade when this mess was rushed through. Now he seems to openly accept that the banks own the notes, but wants to “stick it to them” be obstructing them from reclaiming their property.
Messed up the paperwork? That isn’t what happened here. Nearly every mortgage in this country is tranched into collective portfolios. That isn’t “messing up”, it’s efficient asset allocation. Up until just recently, notes placed in electronic registrar were considered “lost documents” and foreclosure was disallowed.
Can we the people just stop pretending we support equality and property rights? This law’s life, from start to finish, has been a repugnant insult to American values.
BanteringBear
What’s most entertaining to me is how people, in this case the Senator, portray rising house prices as a good thing. Collectively, it seems that people have learned NOTHING from the economic meltdown. High house prices were the problem, with lower prices being the solution, yet this asswipe, and countless others, celebrate rising prices as if they are some magic elixir promising future prosperity. NEWSFLASH: High house prices = less discretionary income. In an economy based upon consumer spending, dwindling discretionary income is a death knell. High housing prices benefit precious few, and I mean precious.
guest
I agree it is soooo unamerican. the government intervening in markets to create artificial values stinks of communism to me…
Sully
Another article that fits in here is:
Have laws to aid defaulting homeowners hurt Nevada’s more-responsible majority?
http://www.npri.org/publications/have-laws-to-aid-defaulting-homeowners-hurt-nevadas-moreresponsible-majority
The author compares Phoenix to Las Vegas, where Phoenix is a leading area for recovery in the housing market versus Las Vegas which appears to be flat. See the home price charts at – http://www.homepricetrend.com/phoenix-az. However, these are based on asking prices not selling prices but the general trend is visible.
sljsljks
Sully I mostly agree with that article. However hindsight is 20/20 and it seems like people forget so quickly that even 2 years ago some economists were still thinking the entire housing market was capable of crashing and it was a very scary situation…our government did SOMETHING with ab 284 (usually a bad idea for the government to do ANYTHING) and now we do have to deal with the consequences…perhaps positive consequences will emerge that I don’t see clearly yet , but definitely negative consequences that I have already seen so far…I wonder though what exactly our market would look like right now if 284 never existed…like pheonix?…Too hard to tell for me…just saying.
Sully
sljsljks, It’s too bad Guy has to babysit the blog now to weed out people posting under other names – by the time a message is posted one tends to forget the original train of thought. 🙂
However the state AG said “the law (AB 284) is not preventing banks from foreclosing on delinquent homeowners, as long as they go about it properly.”
What is ‘properly’? AB 284 re-wrote the rules. It took the NV Supreme Court to knock down the anti – MERS provision. Now it will take an amendment to knock down the criminal penalties. So, in fact the law IS preventing banks from foreclosing, as they haven’t a clue on how to do it without someone actually witnessing the original document. It’s not all the banks fault as it was Wall Street that hid the documents in various investment instruments that were never tracked properly, so no one knows who owns what or what percentage, etc.
The national mortgage settlement pretty much ended robo signing, which the AG says was the intent of AB 284, so why a duplicate law? AB 149 created a mediation process which alone helped to slow down the foreclosure process.
As far as what the market would look like without 284, best guess would be the 40% gain in median price (since Jan 135,000) would probably be a lot lower and investors might not have come here like a swarm of locust to buy up all the available properties, rendering the supply unnaturally low. This created a false sense of demand (in addition to all time low interest rates), whereas if foreclosures kept up – the supply wouldn’t have been depleted so quickly.
I still maintain that government interference with the natural business process never works out right. In the end nothing changes, it just takes longer for it to happen. Hence, 284 hasn’t changed the end result, just pushed it down the road. This is the typical political agenda – “ We don’t know what to do, but we got to do something.” In the meantime the rest of us are wondering if this is ever going to bottom out.