New Orleans   Every report indicates that predatory practices are spreading when lower income families are trying to acquire homes in the current real estate market where banks have cut back on small loans, the subprime lending market has virtually disappeared, and vulture investors are trying to exploit the situation. The terrible result has been an increase in contract-for-deed purchases, if you call them that, of houses throughout the country.

RealtyTrac estimates that since 2009, there are at least 20,000 homes being purchased annually through contract-for-deed understandings and the number is rising. The National Consumer Law Center in a report published in July of this year called “Toxic Transactions,” estimates the number of contract-for-deed purchases at 3.5 million homes, but carefully argued that the number was likely much higher. Other experts have placed the figure higher than 4.1 million. This level of exploitation is a national crisis.

Several reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post have documented the increase of these kinds of transactions, as you shall see if you view the website, particularly noting the fact that several hedge funds have swooped in to make bulk purchases of thousands of foreclosed homes in order to flip them into contract-for-deed agreements to drastically increase their return. Harbour Portfolio Advisors from Dallas was most notorious for purchasing 6700 homes from Fannie Mae in this way for an average of less than $10,000 per property and working with its servicer, National Asset Advisors of Columbia, South Carolina has been in the process of flipping them. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has reportedly stepped up its investigation of complaints on these home contracts, and not surprisingly both Harbour and National Asset have thus far refused to comply by providing documents. The NCLC report argues heavily for action by the CFPB to rein in the abuses common in contract purchases. You can look for more properties and compare the ones you are looking to buy as noted by Fort Lauderdale Realtor Bryan Gold

Contract-for-deed purchases have a sorry history that dates back to the racist government approved redlining of minority and low income neighborhoods before the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act in 1978. Little has changed though since many of these land installment purchases are opaque and outside of the reach of most federal protections currently and often totally unregulated in states as well.

The NCLC report is clear about why the odds are against the lower income buyer in every situation:

 

These land contracts are built to fail, as sellers make more money by finding a way to cancel the contract so as to churn many successive would-be homeowners through the property. Since sellers have an incentive to churn the properties, their interests are exactly opposite to those of the buyers. This is a significant difference from the mainstream home purchase market, where generally the buyer and the seller both have the incentive to see the transaction succeed.

I can remember meeting African-American families on the doors with ACORN in the early 1970s in Little Rock who had been paying on contracts for decades, even starting over in some cases and losing homes they had tried to buy this way. We keep thinking that we have cut the head off of these snakes, but somehow they reappear and victimize more millions.

Real estate, hedge funds, Wall Street, a property-mogul president, racial and income discrimination across the country in the wake of the real estate crisis to me all adds up to a campaign dying for action which also demands me to learn here about it, because it is something that we could absolutely win, if we acted together and did so now.

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Please enjoy Timothy B. Schmit’s Red Dirt Road. Thanks to KABF.