The former financier is serving a 150-year prison sentence in Butner jail in North Carolina for running a fraud scheme that cost investors billions of dollars.

The attack reportedly happened in December and Madoff was transferred to the prison’s low-security medical centre for treatment.

The disgraced financier was treated for a broken nose, fractured ribs and cuts to his head and face, according to a fellow inmate, currently serving time on drug charges.

Another inmate, who was recently released from Butner after serving time on drug charges, confirmed the assault, as did a third person described as being familiar with the situation.

The former inmate said the dispute centred on money the assailant thought he was owed by Madoff.

One report said Madoff’s assailant was a “beefy” man serving time for a drug conviction.

At the time of the alleged assault, the Bureau of Prisons said the rumours were false and Madoff had suffered from dizziness and hypertension.

It said it had investigated the incident and interviewed Madoff himself.

“In December he told staff he was not assaulted, and an investigation was completed following his statements, which corroborated his statements,” said spokeswoman Traci Billingsley later.

“Not one inmate has told staff he was assaulted.”

Madoff, 71, has since returned to the medium-security facility where he was originally housed.

The Landlord and Tenant Board (the Board) resolves disputes between tenants and landlords. It is similar to a court.

Either a landlord or a tenant can apply to the Board. Their disputes can be worked out through mediation or adjudication.

In mediation, a Board Mediator helps a landlord and tenant reach an agreement they are both satisfied with.

In adjudication, a hearing is usually held. A Board Member makes a decision based on the evidence the landlord and tenant present, and then issues an order. An order is the final, written version of the Board Member’s decision.

The Board also provides landlords and tenants with information about the rights and responsibilities they have under the Act.

To contact the Board, see the section For More Information at the end of this brochure.
About tenancy agreements

The landlord and tenant can sign a written agreement when a new tenancy is entered into, or they can have an oral agreement. A tenancy agreement is often called a lease. The landlord must give the tenant a copy of any written lease.

The lease should not contain any terms that are inconsistent with the Act. If the lease does contain a term that is inconsistent with the Act, that term will not be enforced by the Board.

The landlord must also give the tenant the landlord’s legal name and address so that the tenant can give the landlord any necessary notices or documents.

Whether there is a written or oral lease, landlords must provide new tenants with information about the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants and about the role of the Landlord and Tenant Board. The landlord must give this information to the tenant on or before the start of the tenancy, in a form approved by the Board. The Board has a two-page brochure that landlords should use for this purpose.
About Rent
Rent for a new tenant

When a new tenancy is entered into, the landlord and tenant decide how much the rent will be for a rental unit and which services will be included in the rent (for example, parking, cable, heat, electricity).

In most cases, the rent cannot be increased until at least 12 months after the tenant moved in.
Rent deposits

A landlord can collect a rent deposit from a new tenant on or before the start of a new tenancy. Where the tenant pays rent by the month, the deposit cannot be more than one month’s rent; where the tenant pays rent by the week, the deposit cannot be more than one week’s rent.

The rent deposit can only be used as the rent payment for the last month or week before the tenant moves out. It cannot be used for anything else, such as repairing damage to the rental unit.

If the landlord gives the tenant a notice to increase the rent, the landlord can also ask the tenant to increase the rent deposit by the same amount.

A landlord must pay the tenant interest on the rent deposit every year. Under the Act, the interest rate is the same as the rent increase guideline (see the section Rent Increase Guideline).

Exception: For the first interest payment that the landlord has to give the tenant after January 31, 2007 (this is the date the Residential Tenancies Act became the law), a 6% interest rate applies for the months up to January 31, 2007.

But when a landlord looked her in the eye and coldly said he didn’t rent to teens with babies, the truth hit like a slap in the face. As a young, black, single mom on welfare, nobody wanted to rent to her.

And she is not alone.

A groundbreaking study, to be released today, estimates that about one in four black, single parents and households on social assistance face moderate to severe discrimination in Toronto’s tight rental market. The same is true for South Asians.

For those with a mental illness, more than one-third face discrimination when they inquire about available apartments, the study found.

“Even when rental housing is available, thousands of marginalized individuals and families cannot make it through the door,” says the report by the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation.

“Any strategies to address homelessness and housing insecurity must address this reality.”

The study, one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in Canada, was funded through a $90,000 grant from the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, established by former Toronto Star publisher Joseph E. Atkinson.

Ontario’s Human Rights Code protects renters from discrimination on a variety of grounds, including family status, age, disability, colour, ethnic background and reliance on social assistance.

To test landlord compliance, the centre created five “renter profiles” – a single mother with one child; a black single mother with one child; a single South Asian man, a single man with a mental illness and a married woman on provincial disability benefits.

Volunteers posing as these vulnerable renters made telephone inquires about 982 apartments listed for rent across Toronto last summer. Each call was followed up within 1 1/2 hours by another volunteer with no discernable grounds for discrimination.

Each pair asked the same 12 questions and the landlords’ responses were recorded and analyzed for mild, moderate or severe differential treatment.

For example, to gauge discrimination against the South Asian man, one caller used a distinct South Asian accent and name, while the second caller had no accent and used a Western European name.

Discrimination against the South Asian man ranged from not having his call returned to being told the unit was already rented when it was still available.

The South Asian man also faced extra application requirements such as being asked for postdated cheques. And 31 per cent of the time, he was offered fewer move-in incentives such as free cable TV, the study found.

“In some cases, the landlord makes the unit so unappealing that he doesn’t have to turn the person down,” said John Fraser, the centre’s program director.

The centre’s results are similar to those from studies in the United States, where community-based organizations regularly monitor discrimination in rental housing, Fraser said.

He hopes Queen’s Park will fund local groups to use the centre’s model to track the situation.

The centre is also calling on the province to fund more human-rights cases based on housing discrimination and to beef up support for local agencies that help households facing these barriers.

Education is also key, says Barbara Hall, chief of Ontario’s Human Rights Commission, which held consultations on housing discrimination last year and will release a related policy document this summer.

“I think it’s fair to say most people are not aware there is a human rights component to housing,” Hall said in an interview.

“The commission has never focused on this issue and it’s something we and other commissions in Canada are just beginning to investigate.”

The study’s findings translate into tens of thousands of Torontonians potentially facing discrimination, including about 6,000 single parents, 2,000 of whom are single black parents like Stewart.

About 10,000 South Asians and nearly 15,000 Torontonians receiving Ontario Works or Ontario Disability Support Program benefits and more than 8,000 people with schizophrenia in Toronto experience significant discriminatory barriers every year, the study says.

And the numbers likely are low because those who don’t face discrimination during the initial phone call could be treated unfairly when they view the apartment or fill out an application, it adds.

The refinancing program is part of the Obama administration’s massive housing program, known as Making Home Affordable, which has a goal of helping 5 million borrowers over three years. It is aimed at borrowers who could not qualify for traditional refinancing because they had less than 20 percent equity in their home, something that has been exacerbated by plummeting housing prices throughout most of the country. The report comes as new data show that about one-third of borrowers owe more than their home is worth, putting them at a higher risk of falling into foreclosure.

Since the program was initiated in April, 60,484 borrowers have been able to refinance. About half of the deals, 30,192, were completed in July, according to the government data.

“We are seeing significant results” from the programs, James B. Lockhart III, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said in a statement. But “much more work needs to be done.”

The program is limited to borrowers with loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-controlled financing companies. Initially those homeowners were eligible to refinance as long as their mortgage did not exceed 105 percent of the current value of their property.

For example, if the value of a property is $200,000 but the owner owes $210,000, he or she could qualify. But last month, the government announced it would expand the program to borrowers’ whose mortgage do not exceed 125 percent of the current value. So the mortgage on that house could be as much as $250,000 and still qualify for refinancing.

The refinancing program is separate from a high-profile government loan modification plan, which targets distressed borrowers at risk of losing their home and attempts to lower their payments to affordable levels. The refinancing program is aimed at borrowers who have not missed any payments but who would benefit from a cheaper mortgage. The effort is seen as a way to potentially generate more spending cash for financially strapped consumers.

Government and industry officials have said the refinancing program was hampered early on by difficulty determining which borrowers were eligible and a lengthy process to determine the proper value of a home. Also, some borrowers were scared away by a creep in historically low mortgage rates, they said.

The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage had an interest rate of 5.29 percent this week, according to a weekly survey released by Freddie Mac. That is up from 5.22 percent the previous week but still down significantly from last year when rates averaged 6.52 percent around this time.

About 32.2 percent or 15.2 million mortgages were “underwater” by the end of June with the homeowner owing more than their home was worth, according to a report issued Thursday by First American CoreLogic, which studies the mortgage market.

Borrowers in Nevada (66 percent) and Arizona (51 percent) were the most likely to be underwater. Locally, the problem was not as severe. In the District, about 23.8 percent of borrowers are underwater, compared with 28.6 percent in Maryland. Virginia has the highest percentage of underwater borrowers locally, 33.1 percent.

Underwater borrowers are considered to be at higher risk of falling into foreclosure. Overall, the figures were flat compared with March and indicate that the country might be at “the peak” of a cycle, Mark Fleming, chief economist for First American CoreLogic, said in a statement. But until “negative equity recedes and unemployment declines, mortgage risk will continue to be very elevated,” Fleming said.

After record declines over the past year, home prices have begun to stabilize in some parts of the country, according to recent data. But economists have said nationwide prices are likely to continue to fall through this year as more foreclosed properties weigh on the market and drag down prices.

Sandy Hutchens is happy to see the positive affects of this government program, but he is still very conserned about the growing numbers of foreclosures that are being reported.

U.S. mortgage fraud reports jumped 36 percent last year as desperate homeowners and mortgage industry professionals tried to maintain their standard of living from the boom years. U.S. authorities have described the resulting fraud as rampant and growing.

California, which saw home values soar during the boom and now has one of the nation’s top foreclosure rates, is struggling with an explosion of scams by fraudsters who take upfront fees and promise to work with lenders to modify home loans but do little or nothing.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said on Wednesday the fraud was so rampant that he had ordered nearly 400 foreclosure consultants to register with the state and post $100,000 bonds within 10 days. Two dozen companies were ordered to prove “suspicious” claims made in advertising.

“It’s out of control. It’s huge. It’s unprecedented,” Brown told reporters at a news conference in Los Angeles.

The regulatory action comes a month after Brown and other states attorneys general and the U.S. government filed dozens of lawsuits against dozens of individuals and companies in nationwide crackdown on loan modification scams.

He said then that the growth of the scams was outpacing the state’s resources to combat them all.

The state Department of Real Estate and the State Bar of California also announced efforts on Wednesday to pursue real estate agents and lawyers caught scamming homeowners.

Loan modification complaints to the state Department of Real Estate have increased 10-fold over the past year — more than half originating in Los Angeles county. Complaints against lawyers have spiked to 400 so far this year, from seven last year, authorities said.

The agencies have begun a public service campaign to urge homeowners to try free, government sponsored options, such as the Hope Now Alliance, at hopenow.com, and have unveiled a web site to field complaints and verify licenses.

Applications for loans to buy homes, an early indicator of sales, rose slightly. Tepid interest in purchase loans does not bode well for the hard-hit U.S. housing market, which has been showing signs of stabilization.

The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications, which includes both purchase and refinance loans, for the week ended August 7 decreased 3.5 percent to 499.0.

Celia Chen, senior director of housing economics at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said higher interest rates on mortgages tend to depress home buying, but that demand is not as sensitive to changes in rates as it is in refinancing activity.

“Even though mortgage rates are rising, they still remain quite affordable,” she said.

“The bigger obstacle to home buying is job losses and tight qualifying conditions for borrowing,” she said.

With the U.S. unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, many potential home buyers who have lost or who fear they may lose their jobs remain sidelined even though home affordability has improved significantly.

Borrowing costs on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, excluding fees, averaged 5.38 percent, up 0.21 percentage point from the previous week. It was the highest rate since the week ended June 19 and significantly above the all-time low of 4.61 percent set in the week ended March 27. The survey has been conducted weekly since 1990.

Interest rates a year ago were at 6.57 percent.

Mortgage rates were above 5 percent for an 11th straight week. Some experts say rates at 5 percent and below are needed to make a significant impact on home loan demand.

The MBA’s seasonally adjusted purchase index rose 1.1 percent to 267.2, the third, albeit small, gain in the last four weeks.

The four-week moving average of mortgage applications, which smooths the volatile weekly figures, was down 0.7 percent.

LOOMING FORECLOSURES TO PRESSURE HOME PRICES

Chen said the biggest obstacle for the U.S. housing market is foreclosures.

Moody’s Economy.com is expecting 3.85 million defaults this year compared to 2.7 million last year, she said. First mortgage defaults are the first step in the foreclosure process; not all defaults turn into foreclosures.

Although the housing market has been showing signs of stabilization, with sales rising and home price declines moderating in many regions, Chen said prices likely will fall again.

“There are a large number of foreclosures in the pipeline and once they hit the housing market, they will pull house prices down again,” she said. “I expect house prices to continue falling until mid-2010.”

WEEKLY REFINANCING ACTIVITY REVERSES

The Mortgage Bankers seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications decreased 7.2 percent to 1,853.8, following an increase of the same amount the previous week.

The refinance share of applications decreased to 52.3 percent from 54.2 percent the previous week, significantly lower than the peak of 85.3 percent in the week ended January 9. The adjustable-rate mortgage share of activity increased to 5.8 percent in the latest week, up from 5.4 percent the previous week.

Research carried out for The Times by Savills, the estate agent, suggests that many people who need a mortgage may have to abandon hope of ever owning a home.

The research shows that in the post-downturn housing market, the sort of new-build flats snapped up by first-time buyers and small buy-to-let investors before the credit crunch will fall into the hands of cash-rich investors and young people in receipt of big parental handouts. At every stage of the new-model housing ladder, equity-rich buyers will dominate, Savills said. The number of people who own their home outright has been growing steadily for the past 15 years and stands at 6.35 million, or 45 per cent of homeowners, against 7.98 million who have bought with a mortgage, according to the Survey of English Housing.

This shift will also skew the speed and scale of recovery for different types of property in different locations. Savills expects the average house price in the UK to fall 7.2 per cent in 2009 and 3.1 per cent in 2010, before returning to growth and rising by 26.7 per cent by the end of 2014. But prices at the bottom of the market are forecast to recover by only 10 per cent by 2014, compared with 43.6 per cent for five-bed family homes in London.

Yolande Barnes, head of research at Savills, said: “In places where there is a lot of equity, we will see a lot more growth. Where there is more job uncertainty and reliance on mortgages, there will be less.”

Cash-strapped would-be buyers are already being squeezed out of the running by an acute shortage of homes for sale. They are being beaten in bidding battles by buyers with more cash to put down, as sellers see them as safer. Ms Barnes added: “In the equity- starved areas, where 20 years ago people on lower incomes were able to buy and work their way up the ladder, you will find that this won’t be able to happen any more as equity-rich investors will buy homes and let them.”

The predictions come amid claims that lenders are dragging homeowners deeper into debt by forcing them to pay extra charges. The Commons Treasury Select Committee has demanded that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) cracks down on the “intolerable” fees imposed on borrowers who are struggling to meet their repayments. It also reported that, so far, only six households have been helped by the Government’s Mortgage Rescue Scheme.

The Committee said the City regulator must take a tougher stance on charges for those in mortgage arrears of up to £35 for a letter and £150 for a visit from a debt counsellor. It also accused the FSA of putting the interests of lenders above those of consumers by failing to name the firms that are under investigation.

John McFall, chairman of the committee, said: “I am shocked at the length of time it is taking the FSA to complete enforcement action against firms it suspects are breaking the rules. Many thousands of consumers will have suffered and some will have lost their homes.”

Sandy Hutchens is very concerned about this, it is not good for the general public.

Prior to the credit crisis, the Government was proposing to help lenders offer more affordable long-term fixed-rate products, which at the time were common in the US, Germany and Denmark.

Lenders were sceptical and pointed out that borrowers had concerns about being locked into loans that could prove costly.

Two years on and Moneyfacts.co.uk has reported that the eight lenders offering 25-year deals at the beginning of 2008 have all withdrawn from the long-term market.

According to the financial website, Britannia Building Society is the only lender still to offer 15 year deals, but with rates starting at an unattractive 6.49%.

The research also shows only nine lenders currently providing ten-year deals, with the majority of the market offering a maximum of five years.

Spokesman, Darren Cook, explains: “With so little funds available, lenders are concentrating on their core business of shorter term deals.”

He adds: “Borrowers currently do not want to be tied in to long term deals and instead prefer stability in the short-term, with the freedom to make crucial changes afterwards.”

I like the options for longer terms, for some people it means they can sleep better at night, knowing what they got is what they got.

Bringing you more news,

Sandy Hutchens

Posted by Sandy Hutchens
As Bear Stearns careened toward its eventual fire sale to JPMorgan Chase last weekend, the cost of protecting its debt, through an instrument called a credit default swap, began to rise rapidly as investors feared that Bear would not be good for the money it promised on its bonds. Not familiar with credit default swaps? Well, we didn’t know much about collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) either — until they began to undermine the economy. Credit default swaps, once an obscure financial instrument for banks and bondholders, could soon become the eye of the credit hurricane. Fun, huh?

The CDS market exploded over the past decade to more than $45 trillion in mid-2007, according to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. This is roughly twice the size of the U.S. stock market (which is valued at about $22 trillion and falling) and far exceeds the $7.1 trillion mortgage market and $4.4 trillion U.S. treasuries market, notes Harvey Miller, senior partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. “It could be another — I hate to use the expression — nail in the coffin,” said Miller, when referring to how this troubled CDS market could impact the country’s credit crisis.

Credit default swaps are insurance-like contracts that promise to cover losses on certain securities in the event of a default. They typically apply to municipal bonds, corporate debt and mortgage securities and are sold by banks, hedge funds and others. The buyer of the credit default insurance pays premiums over a period of time in return for peace of mind, knowing that losses will be covered if a default happens. It’s supposed to work similarly to someone taking out home insurance to protect against losses from fire and theft.

Except that it doesn’t. Banks and insurance companies are regulated; the credit swaps market is not. As a result, contracts can be traded — or swapped — from investor to investor without anyone overseeing the trades to ensure the buyer has the resources to cover the losses if the security defaults. The instruments can be bought and sold from both ends — the insured and the insurer.

All of this makes it tough for banks to value the insurance contracts and the securities on their books. And it comes at a time when banks are already reeling from write-downs on mortgage-related securities. “These are the same institutions that themselves have either directly or through subsidiaries invested in the subprime market,” said Andrea Pincus, partner at Reed Smith LLP. “They’re suffering losses all over the place,” and now they face potentially more losses from the CDS market.

Indeed, commercial banks are among the most active in this market, with the top 25 banks holding more than $13 trillion in credit default swaps — where they acted as either the insured or insurer — at the end of the third quarter of 2007, according to the Comptroller of the Currency, a federal banking regulator. JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Wachovia were ranked among the top four most active, it said.

Credit default swaps were seen as easy money for banks when they were first launched more than a decade ago. Reason? The economy was booming and corporate defaults were few back then, making the swaps a low-risk way to collect premiums and earn extra cash. The swaps focused primarily on municipal bonds and corporate debt in the 1990s, not on structured finance securities. Investors flocked to the swaps in the belief that big corporations would seldom go bust in such flourishing economic times.

The CDS market then expanded into structured finance, such as CDOs, that contained pools of mortgages. It also exploded into the secondary market, where speculative investors, hedge funds and others would buy and sell CDS instruments from the sidelines without having any direct relationship with the underlying investment. “They’re betting on whether the investments will succeed or fail,” said Pincus. “It’s like betting on a sports event. The game is being played and you’re not playing in the game, but people all over the country are betting on the outcome.”

But as the economy soured and the subprime credit crunch began expanding into other credit areas over the past year, CDS investors became jittery. They wondered if the parties holding the CDS insurance after multiple trades would have the financial wherewithal to pay up in the event of mass defaults. “In the past six to eight months, there’s been a deterioration in market liquidity and the ability to get willing buyers for structured finance securities,” causing the values of the securities to fall, said Glenn Arden, a partner at Jones Day who heads up the firm’s worldwide securitization practice and New York derivative.

The situation is already taking a toll on insurers, who have been forced to write down the value of their CDS portfolios. American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, recently reported the biggest loss in the company’s history largely due to an $11 billion writedown on its CDS holdings. Even Swiss Reinsurance Co., the industry’s largest reinsurer, took CDS writedowns in the fourth quarter and warned of more to come in the first quarter of 2008.

Monoline bond insurance companies, such as MBIA and Ambac Financial Group Inc., have been hit the hardest as they scramble to raise capital to cover possible defaults and to stave off a downgrade from the ratings agencies. It was this group’s foray out of its traditional municipal bonds and into mortgage-backed securities that caused the turmoil. A rating downgrade of the monoline companies could be devastating for banks and others who bought insurance protection from them to cover their corporate bond exposure.

The situation is exacerbated by the heavy trading volume of the instruments, the secrecy surrounding the trades, and — most importantly — the lack of regulation in this insurance contract business. “An original CDS can go through 15 or 20 trades,” said Miller. “So when a default occurs, the so-called insured party or hedged party doesn’t know who’s responsible for making up the default and if that end player has the resources to cure the default.”

Prakash Shimpi, managing principal at Towers Perrin, downplays this risk, noting that contractual law requires both parties to inform and get approval from the other before selling the CDS policy to someone else. “These transactions don’t take place on a handshake,” he said. Still, being unregulated, there is no standard contract, no standard capital requirements, and no standard way of valuating securities in these transactions. As a result, Pincus said she wouldn’t be surprised to see a surge in litigation as defaults start happening. “There’s a lot of outcry right now for more regulation and more transparency,” said Pincus.

A meltdown in the CDS market has potentially even wider ramifications nationwide than the subprime crisis. If bond insurance disappears or becomes too costly, lenders will become even more cautious about making loans, and this could impact everyone from mortgage-seekers to municipalities that need money to fix roads and build schools. “We’re seeing players in all of those spaces being more circumspect about whose credit they’re going to guarantee and what exactly the credit obligation is,” said Ellen Marshall, partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP.

Shimpi admits a meltdown or even a slowdown in the CDS market would affect the amount and cost of liquidity in the market. However, he dismisses concerns that municipalities and others seeking capital could be left in the dust. “Even if the U.S. takes a hit, there are other markets in the world that have different dynamics, and capital flows are international,” he said.

Still, most agree the potential repercussions are far-reaching. “It’s the ripple effects, the domino effects” that are worrisome, said Pincus. “I think it’s [going to be] one of the next shoes to fall” in the credit crisis. Miller said the subprime debacle, rising unemployment, record-high oil prices, and now CDS market troubles “have all the makings of the perfect storm…. There are some economists who say this could be another 1929 — but I don’t believe it,” he said. “We have a lot of safeguards built into the system that did not exist in 1929 and 1930.” None of them, though, are directly targeted at CDS. On Wall Street, innovators are always ahead of regulators. And that can sometimes have a very steep price.

Imagine a 7,900-square-foot lakefront mansion in Las Vegas with six bedrooms, an in ground pool and an illustrious landscape available for purchase at a meager one million dollars. Sound impossible? Not if you look into foreclosure properties for sale. Homes like these million dollar mansions can be found all over the country through local banks after the owners have defaulted on their mortgage. Buying a million dollar or more home that is in the foreclosure process will not only save a great amount of money, but some investors agree that buying a home in foreclosure is a much easier process than a normal home sale. This way there are no prices to haggle over or move in dates to set. When you buy it, it’s yours.

With foreclosures running up to 1.27% of all mortgage loans, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the best place to look for a million-dollar mansion to buy may be a bank or on the court house steps. In the first five months of 2004, over 113,000 million dollar mansions came onto the market as foreclosures. This is an increase of 37% from the previous year, according to Foreclosure Free Search.

As interest rates rise, mortgage rates are more likely to inflate, thus putting pressure on financially exhausted homeowners that are barely making ends meet already. More people have been taking out loans that have been more than they could possibly afford, while maintaining a certain lifestyle, or by trying to maintain a certain lifestyle. While the lender will calculate the amount that the borrower should be able to repay, according to the borrowers yearly income, this amount can often be more than the borrower can actually afford.

A million dollar mansion foreclosure can happen to the best of people, in the best neighborhoods, in any price range. These foreclosures can and do occur in the same proportions as do other homes. A million-dollar mansion foreclosure can sometimes be a surprising steal, mostly because some lenders don’t want to price their properties to move fast. There are deals out there for those that are patient enough to look for them.

There are also disadvantages of buying a million-dollar foreclosure property as well, because most of these homes come onto the market due to a financial hardship. Sometimes the former owners become bitter from the loss of their home and sabotage the home by damaging or removing doors, appliances or light fixtures. Some of these homeowners may go as far as pouring concrete down the toilets or punching holes into the walls of these million dollar homes. Sometimes the financially strapped homeowners allow the homes to fall into disrepair, because the basic foreclosure can take about four months. This allows ample time for the lawn to become seriously overgrown and a slimy green pool to grow.

There are many ways to buy a million-dollar mansion in foreclosure. On average, at least 10 properties priced $1 million and more, will fall into default every year, but only a fraction of these properties will be sold at auctions. Most of these million dollar mansions are actually sold in a pre-foreclosure sale to buyers who search legal postings for Notices of Default. All buyers will need to be financially prepared to make an offer on the pre-foreclosure home immediately and have the down payment already in hand. These buyers also need to be prepared to deal with the emotional property owners who are losing their homes and who may not want to leave willingly. There may also be furious tenants to evict, which the buyer should be readily prepared to do.

Laws can vary from state to state, but home owners normally have up to four months to pay their debts to avoid foreclosure on their property. If the homeowners can’t pay their debt in this time frame, then the lien holder of their property can force their home to be auctioned off, normally on the steps of the courthouse. These auctions are advertised in newspaper classifieds and are available for anyone to buy, so long as those buyers show up with a check of at least 10% of the anticipated purchase price. If buyers don’t have this kind of money readily available, then most often a bank will be the successful bidder. Million dollar or more foreclosure properties can be also be found through brokers who specialize in Real Estate Owned properties, or REO’s. These properties can be found by visiting the offices of these brokers or by searching the internet.