Federal bank regulators from the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Office of Thrift Supervision have announced a measure that might mean compensation for millions of families who have lost homes to foreclosure.

According to an announcement released in early November, a newly instituted program will allow certain homeowners to collect compensation for mistakes their loan servicers made during the foreclosure process. Specifically:

• Qualified homeowners will be mailed letters about their eligibility to participate. Homeowners should expect to receive their letter by the end of the year; those who wish to find out if they are qualified can visit the website IndependentForeclosureRview.com.
• To be eligible, a mortgage must have been handled by one of the mortgage servicers participating in the program.
• To determine whether mistakes were made in the processing of your foreclosure, you must apply for an independent review of your mortgage and foreclosure documents. Your application must be sent in by the end of April 2012.
• If the reviewer finds that there were mistakes in your foreclosure or mortgage documents, you may be eligible to collect compensation.

Some analysts estimate that as many as four million homeowners might be affected and eligible for compensation.

Problems in Mortgage Documents

This announcement is not the first to highlight the problems that plagued the mortgage market during the housing boom whose collapse led to the Great Recession. In addition to the robo-signing scandal and several lawsuits against mortgage servicing company MERS, lawyers and judges have found many individual foreclosure cases that did not hold up to scrutiny.

This latest iteration of the problematic foreclosure theme highlights just how troubled all components of the U.S. housing market really are.

Sources note that mistakes or misrepresentations in foreclosure or mortgage documents that could make a homeowner eligible for compensation might include the following:

• Fees that were unwarranted or calculated incorrectly;
• Foreclosures that were carried out while the homeowner was protected by bankruptcy’s automatic stay; and
• Foreclosures carried out while the homeowner was in talks with a lender about the possibility of a mortgage modification.

Who’s Paying for All This?

The independent review firms will be compensated by the mortgage loan servicers targeted by the federal investigation. As part of the terms laid out in the investigation’s findings, regulators required those mortgage servicers to hire review agencies unrelated to them to conduct the review of mortgage documents.

In other words, homeowners who apply to have their mortgages reviewed will not be responsible for paying the fees associated with the independent review process.

On September 2, the Federal Housing and Finance Authority (FHFA) sued 17 companies over sales of toxic mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Among those named in the suit were many of the country’s largest banks, including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, and Morgan Stanley.

The suit does not currently request a specific amount of money in damages, but according to the Associated Press, Fannie and Freddie bought $196 billion worth of toxic securities during the housing boom. Here’s a closer look at the suit and what might happen.

FHFA: Financial Firms Broke State & Federal Laws

One of the suit’s allegations is that the financial firms violated federal and state laws by selling the securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored companies that help make mortgages more affordable to Americans. Specifically, the lawsuit claims that the banks and other lenders:

• Sold mortgage-backed securities that had “materially false or misleading” statements and omissions of critical information;
• Falsely indicated that the mortgages met legal underwriting guidelines and were all thoroughly reviewed; and
• Substantially overstated borrowers’ ability to make mortgage payments on their loans.

At its core, the lawsuit claims that the 17 sellers lied to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get them to buy loans that they knew were toxic, yet sold them as low-risk to the government agencies.

Housing Market Bubble, Burst & Fallout

The housing boom allowed millions of Americans to get mortgage loans. Many of those loans were sub-prime, had adjustable rates or were ultimately unaffordable to the borrowers. When interest rates reset a few years after the loans were originated, many borrowers were unable to make payments and defaulted.

While those borrowers faced the problem of foreclosure and perhaps filed for bankruptcy to help ease their debt burden, they were not the only ones affected by their inability to pay.

Investors that bought their mortgages (often after the loans were pooled and sold off in sections in a process called “securitization”) stopped earning money on their investments. Because Fannie and Freddie were big investors, they stood to lose a lot of cash – which put into question their ability to continue supporting the U.S. housing market by buying mortgage debt.

The FHFA (which oversees Fannie and Freddie) is taking legal action in part because of the devastating financial consequences the two companies faced. In July 2008, the federal government had to take action to make sure the two enterprises didn’t fail because, at the time, they guaranteed or owned about half of the residential mortgages in the U.S. (worth about $6 trillion).

Theoretically, the lawsuit could help recover losses that Fannie and Freddie suffered from the collapse of the housing bubble. It might also serve as a warning and/or deterrent to other financial institutions and could prompt legislative change to regulate how residential mortgages are originated, securitized and sold.

The lawsuit was filed in New York and Connecticut.

Seven fraudulent mortgage modification services are facing cease and desist orders from the state of New Jersey, according to reports from NJ.com. The legal action comes from the state’s Department of Consumer Affairs and includes steep civil penalties against the firms.

Unfortunately, mortgage scams are nothing new and in fact have been fairly common since the housing market collapsed and adjustable-rate mortgages began to reset en masse. Here’s a look at how these particular companies allegedly scammed New Jersey residents:

• Promise for negotiation: Scammers apparently piqued victims’ interest by offering to negotiate with their mortgage lenders on their behalf. This offer is understandably attractive to those homeowners struggling to make mortgage payments, who might be in danger of foreclosure or considering a bankruptcy filing to help ease their debt burden.
• Collection of fees: Naturally, the scammers insisted on collecting payment for their work up front, before actually delivering on their promises. In many cases, consumer protection laws prohibit companies from collecting fees before performing any services.
• Failure to follow through: Unsurprisingly, the scammers did not actually help victims adjust their debt. In fact, the seven companies weren’t even registered as debt-adjustment services, as the state requires, according to reports.

Debt Negotiation as a Bankruptcy Alternative

While New Jersey’s attorney general has now taken action to repair some of the damage these fraudsters caused, it’s likely that at least some victims endured serious financial hardship because of the scam.

On the (mildly) positive side, the scam provides an excellent opportunity to review some of the differences between debt adjustment services and personal bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy alternatives:

• Are not regulated as strictly as bankruptcy: At both the federal and state level, there are laws designed to protect consumers from scammers like the ones that struck in New Jersey. But, as this mortgage scam shows us, it’s fairly common for fraudsters to break those laws. Bankruptcy, on the other hand, follows the same set of laws no matter where in the country a filer lives. Those laws are published online where filers can easily access them.
• May affect credit differently than bankruptcy: One reason many people seek non-bankruptcy alternatives to eliminating or reducing debt is because of the negative perceived impact that bankruptcy can have on a credit score. But assuming your credit won’t be hurt by debt settlement or debt negotiation is a gamble: if you work with a less-than-trustworthy company, you may end up losing money and hurting your credit.
• Do not offer the legal protections that bankruptcy does: One major benefit of bankruptcy is that filers know that they can expect certain protections (e.g. from creditor contact and collections) after they file their case. No such legal protections exist for bankruptcy alternatives.

Bankruptcy is not right for everyone, but it’s an important and powerful debt-relief option to consider for those in financial distress.