I commonly hear from clients that they were told by their loan servicer that they would not be considered for a loan modification because they were current on payments. They were either told, or it was implied, that they needed to miss a payment in order to be considered for…
Inevitably, a property or business owner has a problem when someone injures themself at their premises. The ordinary slip and fall involves a dangerous condition which causes someone to fall and hurt themselves. Usually, the property owner must have actual or constructive knowledge of the dangerous condition before they can…
My last post was about a California loan modification, where the borrower signed the modification documents and returned them to the lender, but the lender foreclosed anyway. The court decided that the there was a binding contract once the borrower signed and returned the modification agreement, even though the lender…
Loan modifications have been getting a bit more predictable recently, but several years ago it was a crap shoot of false hopes and unreliable loan servicers. Issues I often saw surrounded what happened when the borrower signed the loan modification documents, and make the trial payments, but was told that…
A California partition action is a legal procedure in which any co-owner can get a court order requiring the parties to split the property, buy each other out, or sell the property and split the proceeds. A statute allows the court to award payment of attorney fees incurred “for the…
Usually, residential lenders do not file judicial foreclosures. Rather, they prefer to hold a trustee’s sale to get the property back. This is a much faster, and streamlined, process which is governed by statute. In holding a trustee’s sale foreclosure however, the lender gives up any rights to a deficiency…
There are many different types of interest is real property; outright ownership, easements, life estates, co-ownership, prescriptive rights, etc. Often there is a dispute between parties with conflicting claims as to property rights. Usually it is the case of someone with title and possession denying the rights of someone else…
It is a given under California law that a seller financing a purchase money loan in the sale of real estate may not get a deficiency judgment against the borrower, but is only entitled to foreclose the property. CCP section 580b provides that, when the buyer purchases property, if buyer…
California has a number of statutory provisions that provide borrowers with protection from deficiency judgments- personal liability for the loan balance remaining after a foreclosure sale. There is protection if the seller takes back the note, or, in the case of a standard third party loan, if it is a…
I wrote last about a Sacramento developer who demolished the building on a property to build a mixed-use development. But, the market crashed, the developer defaulted, and the property was foreclosed by trustee’s sale. The lender than sued; in the last post I discussed the claim for bad faith waste.…