Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

By JEFF HORWITZ Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Companies overseeing millions of mortgage loans appear to be skirting new federal regulations and legal settlements intended to stop them profiteering at the expense of troubled homeowners.

They are selling or have sold nearly nonexistent insurance agencies - in some cases with no offices, no websites and only a single registered agent - in multi-million dollar deals, as new rules prohibit them from collecting commissions on insurance they force homeowners to buy.

The deals illustrate how regulators are still wrestling with messy banking practices more than six years after the housing market's collapse. They also mean that newly sold insurance agencies have an incentive to compel struggling homeowners to buy costly policies, to justify the high sales prices commanded when the insurance agencies were sold.

The deals involve "force-placed insurance," a type of backup property insurance meant to protect mortgage investors' stake in uninsured properties. Standard mortgages require borrowers to maintain homeowners insurance and authorize the loan's servicer to buy coverage when borrowers don't. If the borrowers don't pay for the new insurance, servicers foreclose on their properties and stick the bill to mortgage investors.

Even before the housing boom, mortgage servicers found ways to profit from buying insurance with other people's money. Insurance carriers paid banks including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup to buy policies at inflated prices, according to an investigation by New York's Department of Financial Services. To hide this "kickback culture," as New York regulators described it, some servicers created virtual insurance agencies and disguised illicit payments as commissions.

New rules by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, investigations by state regulators and class-action settlements now prohibit servicers from collecting commissions on such insurance policies, and the country's biggest brand-name banks have renounced the practice.

But some of the largest subprime mortgage servicers in the country - companies that handle the troubled loans most likely to be subject to the insurance policies - appear to skirt those rules or have already made profitable business arrangements that comply with them.

Because people tend to stop paying insurance when they're struggling to keep up with their mortgage, the collapse of the housing market after 2007 turned the practice into a multi-billion dollar industry. In many ways, force-placed insurance's rise reflected the behavior that fed the housing bubble: After profiting from putting borrowers in homes they couldn't afford, mortgage companies were profiting from inflated insurance bills they assigned to homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

The country's second largest non-bank mortgage servicer, Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc., has been trying to sell an insurance agency for roughly $100 million, according to people familiar with the deal who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sale.

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$100 million for firm without offices, 1 agent?

By TIM BOOTH AP Sports Writer

RENTON, Wash. (AP) - Marshawn Lynch's holdout is over, ending one distraction so far for the Super Bowl champions.

Lynch arrived at the Seattle Seahawks practice facility on Thursday afternoon following the team's morning practice. The team confirmed Lynch had reported for camp, ending a holdout that spanned a week.

Lynch was caught by television cameras talking on his phone out near the Seahawks practice fields wearing a hooded "Beast Mode" sweatshirt and knit cap on an 85 degree day. He was later hanging out in the lobby of the facility.

ESPN reported earlier Thursday that Lynch was expected to end his holdout. Seattle coach Pete Carroll said after practice that he did not know if Lynch was on the verge of reporting.

"Hopefully he's here," quarterback Russell Wilson said after practice. "He's such a good football player we would love to have him here and he's done a tremendous job for us since I've been here. I know that. He's had some unbelievable runs for us."

Lynch must still pass his physical and be added to the active roster. Seattle's roster is currently at the 90-man limit.

Lynch missed the first week of training camp unhappy with his contract status. Lynch is scheduled to make up to $5.5 million this season in base pay and roster bonuses. It's the third year of a four-year deal Lynch signed before the 2012 season.

Seattle made clear on the first day of training camp that it had a plan in place before Lynch signed his extension and it was not inclined to stray from those plans.

"We've had a substantial plan working for us for years now and Marshawn was a big part of this plan," Carroll said on the opening day of camp. "Just a couple of years back we made a big statement and made a big effort for him and we wish that he was with us now."

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Lynch ends holdout, arrives at Seahawks camp

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Larry West is our readers' choice as Best Decorator, so we decided to test his mettle with perhaps the greatest challenge of his 20-year career: re-imagining the Arkansas Times office. If you have never paid a visit to our humble home base, I will briefly paint a picture. The walls veer between drab grey, mustard-beige and off-white imagine a variety of skin tones of sickly men near death. There are stacks of papers and boxes close to the tipping point at every corner; dozens of unused dilapidated chairs; entire walls unadorned by decoration of any kind; a patchwork of well-stained carpets perhaps older than the Times itself; entire rooms used to store things that no current employee claims; fluorescent lights flickering between those familiar middle-school-classroom ceiling tiles. Everywhere: a faint muskiness.

When told of the idea to get an interior design consult from the Best Decorator winner, Times publisher Alan Leveritt said, "That's like taking a city planner to Berlin in 1945."

Upon arriving at Times HQ, West noted that the office environment seemed to be an odd fit with the spirit of the publication.

"When I think of the Arkansas Times, I think of fun, I think of interesting, I think of out of the box," he said. "When I walk off the elevators, that's not what I get. I feel like I'm maybe at the back office at Home Depot."

West noted that, but for one hallway with framed past issues of the Times (more of that, he suggested), the office had mostly blank walls. Meanwhile, he questioned what actually had been put up. A giant calendar ("boring," he said) was tacked to one wall in the meeting room, but was completely blank. "Do you need that?" he asked. I didn't have a good answer. Meanwhile, in our newsroom, West asked about a 4-by-7-foot white poster board, blank, attached to the wall with a mish-mash of tacks and packing tape. After some investigation, it turns out that Times editor Lindsey Millar put it up a year ago in order to project a power point presentation. It hasn't been used since.

"It's called editing," West said. "That's what we call it just like you would call it. Get all that riff raff out. Use the space that you have."

That also means getting rid of what has affectionately become known around the office as the "furniture graveyard": shabby chairs from various decades, the majority of them broken, most of them without owners.

"It just seems gloomy," West said. "Isn't it gloomy to y'all? You can admit it it's boring in here. I would want to work in a place that makes me excited."

For the walls, West suggested framed images classic Times covers, notable photographs from our archives. "I'd have pictures all over the place," he said. "Stuff that's fun. Stuff that's got Arkansas Times written all over it." One staffer's office features a dress that was made out of issues of the Times West heartily approved.

The whole place would get a paint job, West said. "The color is boring in this whole entire space, that's the first thing I think we should change," he said. West sent over suggestions, a vibrant array of oranges, purples, greens and pastel blues. "Something bright and fun and cheery not depressing. I feel like I'm going to jump out a window into the river."

Link:
Extreme makeover for the Arkansas Times

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by Jennifer Thomas

Video report by Karen Brown

Posted on July 31, 2014 at 4:06 PM

Updated yesterday at 9:38 PM

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. Two firefighters sustained minor injuries after responding to a fire in North Scottsdale Thursday afternoon.

Scottsdale and Phoenix fire departments were dispatched to a house fire near 117th Street and Parkview Lane at about 3 p.m.

Scottsdale Fire Department Division Chief Jay Ducote said plumbers who were working on the exterior of the home called 911 to report the fire.

"When we got in here, we couldn't see anything. We had smoke all the way to the floor," said Scottsdale Fire Capt. Sean Cooney, who was one of the first firefighters to enter the burning home.

The fire got into the wall and attic. Crews aggressively pulled ceiling in the home to prevent the fire from spreading.

"The fire started at the west end of the house and within 10 minutes it was moving across the rafters of the roof at a very quick rate," said neighbor Vic Flanigan.

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Plumbers report Scottsdale house fire; 2 firefighters injured

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