Local homebuilders must wait to build
New legislation went into effect on June 1st requiring all building contractors to personally be licensed by the state. Previously, only their company needed to be licensed. Thousands sent in applications for licenses. And now there's a huge backlog of builders waiting to get those licenses.

Chopp's House holds up homeowners' rights
How does this jibe with the guy who received a "Schrammie" from KOMO/4 pundit Ken Schram for "leaving homeowners in a lurch" and blocking homeowners from being able to sue for negligent construction?Or the cuts aimed at Chopp from liberal Democrats and their allies in the legal profession who depict him as carrying water for the arch-reactionary Building Industry Association of Washington?... What recourse is there for a new homeowner whose basement floods because the builder has failed to waterproof a foundation wall? The builder blames the weather. Or what happens when floors haven't been leveled, or a builder fails to properly seal toilets. The it's-not-my-fault game can go on and on, with nobody offering to fix the house.

How fighting back enabled a family to keep its home
"Because mortgages were sold again and again and then to Wall Street where they were securitized and sold all over the world, I wonder how many homeowners have been foreclosed by a company that couldn't even show proof that they owned the mortgage." - Nancy Seats, president of Homeowners Against Defective Dwellings, speaking about the case of a homeowner who managed to stop a foreclosure on her home four times because the documentation on it was so flimsy and convoluted that lenders couldn't even prove they owned her home to have the right to foreclose on it.

Banks vs. Consumers (Guess Who Wins)
The National Arbitration Forum (NAF), a for-profit company based in Minneapolis, specializes in resolving claims by banks, credit-card companies, and major retailers that contend consumers owe them money. Often without knowing it, individuals agree in the fine print of their credit-card applications to arbitrate any disputes over bills rather than have the cases go to court. What consumers also don't know is that NAF, which dominates credit-card arbitration, operates a system in which it is exceedingly difficult for individuals to prevail.

Charlotte Observer foreclosure series awarded Loeb
"Sold A Nightmare" wins a top business journalism honor.The series, which ran throughout 2007, detailed the sales practices that contributed to housing foreclosures in the area and led to federal investigations of Beazer Homes USA, one of the nation's largest homebuilders. "Sold A Nightmare" has earned numerous accolades, including from the Pulitzer Prize board, which named the series a finalist for the 2008 Gold Medal For Public Service. It has also received the George Polk Award for Economics Reporting and honors from the N.C. Press Association, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and the National Association of Real Estate Writers.

Craig's New House

Typical unfinished home; leaks caused by unfinished and loose plumbing, unsecured tube and plumbing not installed properly, dents, unfinished drywall and paint. You Tube Video...

Builder Mortgage Fraud "The Making of Modren Day Ghost Towns"Top ten builders participated in mortgage fraud to sell homes.  Inflating appraisals and paying off packages: new car, paid credit cards, furnishings, and swimming pool. A Realtors got big bonuses and trip to Hawaii . Addendums were destroyed for hidden incentives.
See You Tube...

Builder Mortage Companies Creative Mortgage Fraud Part 1
Las Vegas Real Estate - Buildr Incentives...Fluf or Fraud: New homebuilders participated in massive mortgage fraud to sell new homes.  Insider Dana Ellis talks about builder fraud.  Builder paid off debt, credit cards and new cars for the buyer. See Part I You Tube Video more...  See more related videos... 

FROM THE HILL: It's so important to protect our right to a day in court
When students learn about our system of justice in civics class, they're told that every American has a right to his or her day in court. Yet, people from all walks of life often unknowingly sign away their right to a trial when they sign a contract...Sometimes consumers only find out they've given up their right to trial when a big company forces them to take a dispute to a private arbitration company instead of going through the court system. Arbitration has some serious downsides for consumers, including high administrative fees. It also lacks discovery proceedings and other due process protections, and meaningful judicial review of arbitrators' decisions...Arbitration should be a choice, not a mandate...Across every sector of our economy, Americans are being strong-armed into this consumer-unfriendly system.

Home Builders Hire Some Jumbo Lobbying Help
The National Association of Home Builders is bringing out the big guns for its lobbying battle on the housing bill. The association has hired former Republican Rep. Michael Oxley of Ohio and his lobbying firm, Baker and Hostetler, according to recently filed lobbying reports. It also has contracted with two other lobbying firms over the past month. In signing on with three new firms, the association doubled its roster of outside lobbying representatives to six. The association also has a stable of in-house lobbyists representing its agenda on Capitol Hill.

Homebuilders Get Demolished
If you think that homebuilding stocks are bottoming out, you may be overly optimistic: Florida-based homebuilder Lennar's second-quarter results are a good indicator that the industry still has a ways to go before turning around. In this quarter, which ended on May 31st, Lennar lost $120.9 million, or 76 cents per share. While this represents an "improvement" over the $244.2 million or $1.55 a share it lost during the comparable period last year, it's still substantially more than the 59-cent per-share loss analysts had been expecting.

Tom Hanks loses $2 million battle over Sun Valley home
Superstar Tom Hanks may not be accustomed to being told "no," but that's exactly what a Blaine County judge told him and his actress wife, Rita Wilson. The Hollywood couple's been fighting with a local contractor over construction of their Ketchum home and guest cottages in 2002. Hanks claims the work was defective, but four years ago a judge ruled against him and ordered that the builder be paid $2 million.

Shaky ground
Some say homeownership is at the heart of the American Dream "€” a symbol of family, success and security. For most people, buying a home is the biggest investment they'll ever make. Getting what they pay for is a value probably as important to Americans as homeownership. Unfortunately for dozens of homeowners in Hutto, expansive soil and questionable building practices have combined to create a perfect storm of discontented residents asking construction companies to right shaky foundations...Janet Ahmad, president of Homeowners for Better Building, a San Antonio-based organization devoted to defending homeowners' rights, said homebuilders Lennar and Centex did not sufficiently inform homebuyers of the possible problems.

The arrests took place over the past three months in about a dozen cities.
Over the past couple of months, federal agents have nailed hundreds of real estate wheeler-dealers, charging them with fraud in a crisis that has crippled the mortgage industry and left thousands of homeowners, particularly African Americans, cribless. Even as the FBI was announcing the arrests of some 400 alleged financial criminals – including housing developers, mortgage lenders and brokers, lawyers, real estate agents and appraisers – Washington Mutual, the nation's largest savings and loan association, was firing 1,200 people across the country. Many of WaMu's layoffs will be in its home loan business, Forbes.com reports, as the Seattle-based bank dissolves its riskier loans, such as sub-prime mortgages. The arrests, 60 of which occurred on Wednesday alone in a dozen or so cities, including Chicago, Houston and Miami , were part of a crackdown against fraud that has cost homeowners about $1 billion. "Mortgage fraud poses a significant threat to our economy, to the stability of our nation's housing markets and to the peace of mind of millions of American homeowners," Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip said at a news conference. The sting, known as "Operation Malicious Mortgage" has netted 406 people since it kicked off on March 1, he said. While there is a rainbow of Americans crushed under the weight of predatory lenders and their unscrupulous cohorts, nobody has felt the pressure more than African Americans. Studies have shown that Blacks are more likely to be targeted for high-risk loans than less credit-worthy Whites. These sub-prime mortgages, with interest payments that often balloon after reeling in borrowers with relatively low introductory rates, have triggered a cascade of foreclosures, particularly in Black and Latino communities.

Hundreds swept up in mortgage fraud arrests
More than 400 real estate industry players have been indicted since March - including dozens over the last two days - in a Justice Department crackdown on incidents of mortgage fraud nationwide that stem from the country's housing crisis... Law enforcement officials said their stepped-up focus on mortgage cases aims to combat problems that have grown out of the risky lending practices prevalent until the mortgage market collapse started last year. Officials have identified 10 "mortgage fraud hotspots" nationwide in California, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New York, Georgia and Florida...Those named in the cases include housing developers, mortgage lenders and brokers, lawyers, real estate agents and appraisers, said Sharon Ormsby, section chief in charge of financial crimes for the FBI.