Housing/Mortgage/Foreclosure Linkfest

Yet another of our brutal mortgage linkfests: Investors are beginning to sue, there are protest over HAMP, and foreclosure probes are happening.

Here’s our round up:

• COP Hearing on TARP Foreclosure Mitigation Programs:  On Wednesday, October 27 at 10:00 a.m., the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) held a hearing in room 138 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Archived video is available below. (Note: Karl Denninger picks out choice parts)

• Which Banks Have Mortgage Risk?: An Analyst Estimates

• The WTF headline! MERS casts its shadow on commercial mortgages (FT)

• Federal Reserve on Foreclosure Crisis (PDF)

• Brooklyn judge Arthur Schack is a local hero, decision casts light on fraudulent mortgage paperwork (NYPost)

• Why Did Banks Give Home Loans to People Who They KNEW Couldn’t Pay?

• To fix the economy, let bad banks die (LATimes)

• Home Builders Slash 2010 Construction Forecast

• U.S. probing foreclosure processing firms uses the criminal word…  (Washington Post)  Law enforcement authorities on both state and federal levels are probing whether individuals at these foreclosure companies and at the banks that hired them committed an array of possible crimes – mail and wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and racketeering. No charges have been filed. These officials say they are taking a well-tested approach in their investigations: press low-level employees to implicate higher-up executives. Already, investigators have obtained in sworn testimony detailed descriptions of what took place inside the foreclosure companies.

• Home Lenders May Meet With States Over Foreclosures This Week

• Bond Investors Will Complain to Trustees Over Paying Cost of Robo-Signing Mortgage-bond investors (with more than $500 billion of the securities) represented by Dallas lawyer Talcott Franklin will send letters to securities trustees complaining that they shouldn’t bear the costs of loan servicers’ so-called robo-signing. They are “pretty disturbed” that mortgage-bond trusts are being forced to pay penalties after loan servicers including Detroit-based Ally Financial Inc. filed affidavits in foreclosure cases that falsely said the signers reviewed documents, he said.

• Profile of foreclosure defense legend Max Gardner (Bloomberg)

• Allan Sloan: The real foreclosure mess: Lack of accountability for banks (Washington Post)

•  HAMP Protests

• Mortgage scandal boosts investors’ campaign to get banks to buy back securities: Once run by a loose group of hedge funds, the investors’ campaigns have bulged in size in recent weeks, turning them into a force that could recoup tens of billions of dollars from Bank of America and other large lenders and act as a major drain on their earnings. Previously, this group struggled to force the banking industry to hand over data critical to their lawsuits. Now with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the regulator of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and some of the world’s largest funds on board, the investors may be able to compel banks to reveal more about their lending practices

•  Washington Post: Economists: U.S. should remove top bank execs over foreclosure mess

•  Assured Guaranty Sues Deutsche Bank Over Mortgages:  Assured said more than 83 percent of 1,306 defaulted loans examined in one of the transactions, ACE’s Home Equity Loan Trust, Series 2007-SL2, breached Deutsche Bank’s representations and warranties. In the second deal, Home Equity Loan Trust, Series 2007-SL3, 86 percent of the 1,774 loans breached the agreements, Assured said.

• Faulty Foreclosures, by Adam Levitin

•  Bank of America Mulls Dividend Hike

• Homeowner says Stern sent retaliatory letter: A lawyer for a homeowner who went to Florida’s attorney general about a law firm’s conduct in a foreclosure case claims the firm sent his client a “discriminatory and racially degrading” letter to frighten him into dropping the complaint. The letter, which the homeowner asserts emanated from the Law Offices of David J. Stern in Plantation, was filed with a counterclaim to a foreclosure action brought by CitiMortgage in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.

Any thing else worth seeing?