Did I hear Senator McCain correctly at the last debate? I think he is now proposing for the first time to have the government buy up $300 million in bad mortgage loans and rewrite them/modify them based on the current decreased market value. I doubt that this will happen but it did seem like a very un-Republican stance for him to take. It seemed to come out of nowhere and appears to be an attempt to appeal to middle class voters. For the moment, there appears to have been very little done to actually help homeowners. Chapter 13 remains the best option for many.

Here is a good blog post on msnbc.com called “Bailout ignores all the empty houses”

I have blogged on this topic before but it appears to be a continuing problem nationwide. Too many homeowners misplace their trust with unlicensed and unregulated rescue companies. These companies promise the world, offer incorrect legal advice (or omit the parts of the law that they don’t understand or cannot assist with such as litigation defense and bankruptcy), practice law without a license, and sometimes commit outright scams to steal equity. The companies have innocent sounding names and appear to be quite helpful to the layperson but the consequences of dealing with them are often disastrous. New York State was so concerned about this that it passed the Home Equity Theft Prevention Act in 2007 which placed strict limitations and requirements on certain types of foreclosure rescue transactions.

If you want to read my past posts on rescue scammers, use the “Find” tool on the right side of this page and search under “rescue.”

Here is a new article from MSNBC.com on the subject.