Big Foreclosure Compensation, But Only For The Right Wrongs

Paul Kiel writes in ProPublica:

• Can you put a price on the damage caused by a wrongful foreclosure? Banking regulators have. And it’s $125,000. Or $60,000. Or $15,000. Or… it’s unclear.
  
  
• Last November, banking regulators launched a process to force the big banks to compensate homeowners victimized by their foreclosure abuses. Many crucial details remained unclear, including how much victims might receive.
  
  
• More than seven months later, regulators finally released a “framework” that shows some of the possible outcomes. It’s a list of thirteen mortgage servicing “errors,” each with its own associated form of compensation. In addition to fixing the bank’s errors, remedies include cash payments ranging from $500 all the way up to $125,000.
  
  
• It turns out that, for homeowners seeking compensation for those errors and abuses, it’s crucially important just how the servicer messed up. The logic for the differences in payment isn’t always apparent and in some instances seems to defy common sense.
  
  
• Two homeowners who each had their bid for a modification mishandled, for instance, could emerge with either $125,000 or $15,000 depending on just where in the process the error occurred.

For more, see Big Foreclosure Compensation, But Only for the Right Wrongs.