COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on life as we know it. Little has been left untouched, including the mortgage market and foreclosure process.
At the federal level, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, is providing payment forbearance for up to 12 months to borrowers impacted by the crisis. FHFA also directed Fannie and Freddie to suspend foreclosures for at least 60 days. The Department of Housing and Urban Development also suspended evictions and foreclosures until the end of April.
Many state and local governments are also offering relief to borrowers affected by the crisis.
‘Enemy of the people’ rhetoric takes toll on public notice in statehouses
Bills have been introduced in at least seven states so far this year that would move most public notice from its traditional home in newspapers to lightly visited government websites. And at least of few of those bills were introduced by legislators who have had fraught relationships with the newspapers that cover them.
The states that appear at present to face the greatest potential peril — Florida, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri — have all been down this path before.
Foreclosure notices at issue in Midwestern states
Indiana Statehouse
A bill that would have eliminated the newspaper publication requirement for foreclosure notices in Indiana was narrowly defeated last week in a vote taken immediately following a committee hearing.
House Bill 1212 had passed the Indiana House 62-34 in January and was in danger of moving another step closer to passage when it was defeated by a vote of 5-4 in the Senate Local Government Committee.
Missouri, Indiana face high-stakes battles
As the new year dawned and state legislatures reconvened in January, two press associations in the Midwest found themselves in an existential battle to save newspaper notice in their states. The Missouri Press Association (MPA) and the Hoosier State Press Association (HSPA) are fighting several bills with serious prospects for passage that would move government and foreclosure notices to the web.
Alert reader helps save a family farm
Historical marker in Red Level, Ala.
(Photo by Lee Peacock)
For some people, reading public notices in the local newspaper is a matter of habit — and sometimes a matter of saving a family farm.
Lindel Foshee gets five newspapers at the home in Red Level, Ala., where she lives with her husband, Booster. She got in the habit of reading public notices during the years they ran the Peoples Bank of Red Level.
Foreclosure Bill on Move in Missouri; Some Notices Eliminated in Kentucky
A bill that would allow mortgage trustees in Missouri to publish foreclosure notices on websites rather than newspapers picked up momentum yesterday afternoon when it received a favorable vote in the House Legislative Oversight Committee. The next step is the House floor.
SB 909 is widely believed to be an effort by trustees in this nonjudicial foreclosure state to profit off the notices they are required to publish before auctioning delinquent properties to the highest bidders. Two of the largest trustee law firms in Missouri have been the primary proponents of the legislation.
This is How Public Notice is Supposed to Work
Sydney Henderson is a 100-year-old widow living in a small condo at Hacienda Carmel, a senior living community in Monterey County, California. If it wasn’t for a public notice published in a newspaper, she probably would have lost her home and been booted out on the street by a bank. Her story is a textbook example of why public notice advertising still belongs in newspapers and not on obscure government websites.
Wells Fargo held the reverse mortgage Henderson secured on her condo in 1998. According to Mary Duan’s recent column in Monterey County Weekly, Henderson mistakenly believed she had enrolled in a government program that automatically rolled the property taxes into her regular mortgage payments. So she owed $24,000 in back taxes when the bank began foreclosure proceedings.