Marc McCain Blog

1.  Know what leverage you have, if any.  If Arizona’s anti-deficiency statutes apply to your loan(s), use this fact to reject any lender demand for a seller/borrower contribution at close of escrow.  Most junior lenders will ask for a contribution from the borrower, sometimes a significant one.  If the loan is covered by Arizona’s anti-deficiency [...]

The Arizona legislature passed, and Governor Brewer signed into law on November 23, 2009, Senate Bill 1004 which returns Arizona’s trustee’s sale statute anti-deficiency clause to its form prior to passage of Senate Bill 1271.  The Bill includes a retroactivity clause, making the change retroactive to September 30, 2009, the day SB 1271 had gone [...]

More and more I am seeing lenders be aggressive and unreasonable in demanding money from borrowers during the short sale approval process.  Lenders are doing this even where AZ law prohibits them from waiving their security and suing on the note (i.e. where the loan is a purchase money loan on qualifying residential property).  As a result, I am stressing the [...]

Investors and second home owners in Arizona should NOT rest easy on the heels of the legislature’s recent repeal of Senate Bill 1271.  Recognizing bad law (SB 1271) and bad policy behind it, not to mention the certain backlash from consumers, one might have thought banks would take their defeat in stride and use their [...]

Bank lobbyists told Arizona’s legislators that our anti-deficiency statutes needed to be revised because spec builders were “gaming the system” by claiming they lived in their spec homes to get anti-deficiency treatment.  The Senate’s internal memo on the bill stated that investment properties were “NOT” protected by existing anti-deficiency laws.  No one paid attention to the [...]

A recent article in the Phoenix Business Journal titled “Mortgage modifications elusive” wrote of the failure of the Government’s mortgage modification plan given the sharp decline in property values in certain cities such as Phoenix, Arizona.  However, the article failed to distinguish between mortgage re-financings and mortgage modifications in the residential loan market, especially for [...]