More Monmouth County, NJ residents need flood insurance

Coastal residents of Monmouth County, New Jersey are facing a deadline for the purchase of homeowner's flood insurance.

The Asbury Press is reporting, "On Sept. 25, the Federal Emergency Management Administration's revised flood zone maps for 12 coastal Monmouth County municipalities become permanent."

Flood insurance has long been a staple of life at the Jersey Shore but the revised maps, based on laser technology, expand the "areas that have a 1 percent annual chance of severe flooding."

The impact on Monmouth County residents is substantial.

FEMA'S revised maps have expanded the Bayshore's municipal flood zone areas, adding an estimated 4,300 property owners to the Raritan Bay-Bayshore zone. The new maps, released March 2008, add 1,820 homes in Middletown; 1,810 homes in Keansburg; 640 homes in Hazlet; and 15 homes in Union Beach.

Most homeowners, as a condition of their federally insured mortgage, now will need flood insurance.

Combined, the added policies will cost coastal Monmouth residents hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One planning expert said such mandatory flood insurance will bring, aside from premium payments, other secondary economic costs. "It certainly will result in higher monthly housing costs," said James W. Hughes, Dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Public Planning & Policy, Rutgers University. "Even if the(operating) price stays the same, you've got an additional monthly insurance premium that you have to pay."

Not all the news is bad.

Bayshore residents can reduce their initial flood insurance cost, said FEMA executives, by purchasing a "preferred risk policy" before the maps take effect. PRPs are only issued for homes not currently in the flood hazard area.

Property owners are then locked into the policy rated by an insurance agent using a low risk zone upon renewal. The PRP rate remains in effect until the policy's first renewal date.

Flood insurance has long been required for federally related mortgage loans--just about all mortgages written in the United States--since the inception of flood insurance. It's a necessary evil, saving homeowners from many tens of thousands of dollars in out of pocket losses when floods strike.

Read the Asbury Park Press stories, FEMA maps expand zones and Time to buy insurance is now. For more about the go to http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/

For your next title order,
or if you have questions about what you see here,
contact Stephen M. Flatow
Vested Title Inc.
648 Newark Avenue, P.O. Box 6453, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Tel 201-656-9220 - Fax 201-656-4506
E-mail vti@vested.com - www.vested.com

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Notice re Hudson County Register

Notice re
Hudson County Register

The office of the Hudson County Register has moved from its 40+ year location at the Hudson County Administration Building at 595 Newark Avenue in Jersey City to the former Block Drug Company building located at 257 Cornelison Avenue in Jersey City.

Now called the Hudson County Center, the building also provides a new home for the Hudson County Sheriff’s Department. We understand the Hudson County Economic Development Authority, the County Board of Taxation, as well as the building’s owner, the Hudson County Improvement Authority which paid a reported
$13,000,000 for the 320,000 square foot building in 2005, and other Hudson County offices will be moving to the Center.

The Surrogate’s Court and County Clerk remain in their present locations which, frankly, makes it difficult for title searchers to complete a title examination without traveling back and forth between those offices in the Administration Building and Brennan Court House and the Center several times a day.

We are stymied by the lack of convenient or sufficient parking for visitors to the building. In addition, because the building is located on a curve at the midpoint of a steep hill we urge you to exercise caution when approaching by car.

Documents to be recorded may be mailed or sent by overnight service to:

Hudson County Register
257 Cornelison Avenue
Jersey City, NJ 07302

The Register’s telephone number is now 201-395-4760.

Vested Title Inc.
648 Newark Avenue, P.O. Box 6453, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Tel 201-656-9220 - Fax 201-656-4506
E-mail vti@vested.com - www.vested.com

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It's "no money down" that got us into this mess

Professor Stan Liebowitz, a professor of economics and director of the Center for the Analysis of Property Rights and Innovation in the management school at the University of Texas, Dallas, looks at the root cause of the mortgage foreclosure crisis and comes away with a new take on the subject.

[T]he single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected.

Liebowitz believes the statistics puts the lie to the belief that it was sub-prime lending that got us into the foreclosure pickle we are in now. It's not resetting of interest rates, either.

The analysis indicates that, by far, the most important factor related to foreclosures is the extent to which the homeowner now has or ever had positive equity in a home.

News reports over the past year of "jingle mail" where the homeowner mails the keys to the lender and walks away from his home and mortgage are on-line. These mortgages are usually of the 100% kind because the homeowner had no equity in the property, i.e., it's nothing more than a "rental" in the mind of the borrower. Let's face it--would you toss away something in which you had invested hard cash?

A person's home is supposed to be his castle, something we protect when the need arises, not a flop-house room we walk away from when the urge hits us.

Read the full article New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis.

Vested Title Inc.
648 Newark Avenue, P.O. Box 6453, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Tel 201-656-9220 - Fax 201-656-4506
E-mail vti@vested.com - www.vested.com

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FannieMae asked to take more risk? We're not kidding.

The Wall Street Journal leads off today with:

Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to "roll the dice" in the name of affordable housing. That didn't turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only accumulated more power. And now he is returning to the scene of the calamity -- with your money. He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers.

What's going on here? Mr. Frank wants Fannie and Freddie to take more risk in condo developments with high percentages of unsold units, high delinquency rates or high concentrations of ownership within the development.

While the taxpayers are footing the bill for FannieMae's and FreddieMac's loss of billions upon billions gambling of the mortgage market, more losses are on the way because their

"new "mission" has become to do whatever it takes to prop up the housing market. The last thing they need is lawmakers like Mr. Frank, who did so much to lay the groundwork for their collapse, telling them to play faster and looser with their lending standards.

Read "Barney the Underwriter. Telling Fannie Mae to take more credit risk. Now there's an idea."

Vested Title Inc.
648 Newark Avenue, P.O. Box 6453, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Tel 201-656-9220 - Fax 201-656-4506
E-mail vti@vested.com - www.vested.com

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Mortgage Modification Program a Bust - Ask this homeowner

The New York Times reports on what we have been reporting all along--the Obama administration's mortgage modification programs are not working. In Promised Help Is Elusive for Some Homeowners the Times relates the story of Arizona homeowner, Eileen Ulery, and her efforts to modify her mortgage. Her problem? She's current on her payments.

Yes, she was teetering toward delinquency. She was among millions of homeowners rapidly sliding toward danger for whom the Obama administration had devised an aid program — some already in foreclosure proceedings, others headed that way as they ran out of means to make their payments. But unlike those in imminent peril of losing their homes, Ms. Ulery had never missed a payment.

“I don’t know who this bailout is helping,” she said. “We’ve given these banks all this money and they’re not doing what they say they’redoing. Something’s not working right. They keep saying they’re doing all this, but we don’t see it down here at this level.”

More than three months after the Obama administration outlined a new program aimed at rescuing millions of distressed homeowners by compensating banks that modify mortgages, Ms. Ulery’s experience illustrates the mixture of confusion, frustration and limited assistance that now reigns.

Good luck to Ms. Ulery and the thousands of other homeowners just like her as they attempt to weather the financial storm. In fact, good luck to us all.

Vested Title Inc.
648 Newark Avenue, P.O. Box 6453, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Tel 201-656-9220 - Fax 201-656-4506
E-mail vti@vested.com - www.vested.com

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