Posts tagged as:

default

Strategic Mortgage Defaults on the Rise

September 25, 2009

Strategic default—walking away from your home and mortgage—is getting more common. The interesting part is who is doing it: according to a recent study, people with good credit. For such consumers, strategic default may be the best of a range of bad options.
The same study found that 588,000 people walked away from their mortgages in [...]

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Link roundup, week of July 12

July 12, 2009

Lots of credit card news this past week, plus a few other highlights and great tips:

Credit card companies are jacking up fees (again) as consumers pay down debt | Alpha Consumer
Figure out how long you will be in debt (seriously, do it; you may be shocked) | Federal Reserve Board
Back on the wagon already, Morgan [...]

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Consumer loan defaults still rising, will probably lead to more abuse of consumers

July 7, 2009

More consumers are falling behind in their bills. 6.6% of all credit cards are more than 30 days late, and delinquencies tracked by the American Bankers Association are the highest since it began tracking them in 1974.
The rise in defaults—which is really not news, at this point—will inevitably lead to an increase in debt collection [...]

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Deal With Your Debt: Negotiate a Settlement

May 7, 2009

Once a debt is in default—meaning you stopped paying it—one option is to attempt to negotiate a settlement with the creditor. (You can try this before you go into default, but creditors are rarely willing to play ball until you prove your poverty—and before they rack up some more fees.)
You could just pay the full [...]

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Credit cards at the tipping point?

October 14, 2008

“Misleading practices by credit card issuers will come back to bite them, say report author Gregory Larkin and Laura Nishikawa, as uninformed consumers who wind up facing surprise interest rate hikes and fees will be more likely to default on their loans.” Credit cards at the tipping point? | The Red Tape Chronicles

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Chicago courts clogged with collection claims

June 11, 2008

Chicago joins California and Minnesota in the news, as its civil courts try to deal with moving more than 119,000 debt collection lawsuits through the system.

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Two consumer law CLE seminars coming up

May 18, 2008

I am teaching two continuing legal education seminars on consumer law in June. My presentations tend to be engaging (I don’t have the patience for boring presentations even when I am giving them), informative, and well-attended. Register early!

June 10th at 9 a.m. Offensive Defense: An Introduction to Protecting Consumers from Unscrupulous Debt Collectors, 1 hour [...]

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