Posts Tagged ‘Minnesota’

In almost every other state, a debt collector must file a lawsuit either immediately or within a short time after serving the summons and complaint. This means the court has an eye on the lawsuit, and the debt collectors must pay the “entry fee” if they want to use the considerable power of the court [...]

In a class-action lawsuit against Homecomings Financial, consumers alleged that Homecomings would charge borrowers for unnecessary homeowner’s insurance, fail to process payments on time, forcing borrowers to pay “Speedpay” fees of up to $12.50. One plaintiff says Homecomings charged him with six property-inspection fees in a 10-day period, apparently because Homecomings wanted to make sure [...]

The Minnesota legislature put the Subprime Borrower Relief Act on Governor Pawlenty’s desk last week. The Act would have put Minnesota home foreclosures on hold for a year to give homeowners a chance to sell, refinance, or negotiate a workout plan with their lenders.
It was, in all respects, a reasonable and fair compromise that would [...]

The Subprime Borrower Relief Act gives borrowers with subprime loans the right to defer a foreclosure sale of their residence for one year after the bill becomes law.

From the New York Times, a beautiful graph (seriously, look at that!) showing the impact of the subprime mortgage mess across the U.S.:

(Click for big.)
The Twin Cities is definitely one of the hardest-hit, but just look at Florida!
[via City Pages, The Blotter]

Maybe Senator Coleman reads this blog, maybe not. In either case, I just received a reply to my e-mail. While the Minnesota Financial Crimes Task Force is obviously a state organization, I wanted to alert my federal legislators to the newly-created void in mortgage fraud enforcement in case they wanted to address it at a [...]

When I write about an issue I tag “consumer activism,” I usually try to start the activism myself. So when I reported that Minnesota’s Financial Crimes Task Force is shutting down its mortgage fraud investigations, I went and fired off an e-mail to my state and federal representatives.
Usually when I do this, the response is [...]

Public interest lobbyist Ron Elwood and former Minnesota attorney general Mark Ireland recently started Consumer Rights Watch, a blog on consumer issues in Minnesota.
Other than a glaring omission in the links section, it looks like a great blog. Check it out.

CenterPoint energy estimates that about 5,200 homes are disconnected, and about 3,400 of those are occupied. That means that during the past three extremely cold weeks, 3,400 households have had no heat, or only what heat they can generate from space heaters (until Xcel shuts off their electricity, I would assume). CenterPoint says most were [...]