phoenix foreclosure attorney
UPDATE ON ARIZONA’S ANTI-DEFICIENCY STATUTE
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 into effect, and a statement of legislative intent confirming that the intent of the change is to return the law to its status before SB 1271. The Bill also includes an emergency clause, meaning it goes into effect immediately (as opposed to there being a 90 day waiting period as there was with House Bill 2008).
You can read the bill at the following link:
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/4s/bills/sb1004s.pdf
The real estate industry and bankers are intending to continue work on an amendment to the law that would carve out certain speculative builders from anti-deficiency protections, but otherwise would leave existing protections in place.
Marc McCain, Esq.
McCain & Bursh, PLC, Attorneys at Law
LENDER’S IGNORING ARIZONA LAW IN SHORT SALES
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 need to be careful about agreeing to terms of a short sale that are not reasonable or contrary to Arizona law – read and understand your documents. Also understand that just because a lender may not have a right to sue on its note based on well settled AZ authority, they may try, whether out of ignorance, arrogance, aggressiveness, or who knows anymore.
What is needed in Arizona is a law that would prohibit lenders from receiving funds in a short sale (over the short sale net proceeds) that would not be permitted by our anti-deficiency statutes and our Courts’ interpretation of the law. Nothing short of a statutory restriction against the type of lender abuses we are seeing will work — we’ve already seen the debacle of the Federal Governments’ loan mod and refinance program. The support for such a bill would be tremendous, the question is whether any groups have the time and money to marshall the effort needed to raise the issue with our legislature and get it through the political process quickly enough to make a difference in this market . . .