Mike Jacka | Real Estate Investing Blog

Get Off Your Butt and go Buy a House.

Mike Jacka — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:34:52 GMT

“Get Off Your Butt and go Buy a House.” This is a statement I had heard years ago from an old friend when I was complaining about being a broke struggling want to be investor, so I listened to her and did it. That was back in the late 90’s and it was a good ride for many years. But the last few years have been tough on a lot of real estate investors, me included. Many of us had to hunker down, retrench and then recover from our battle wounds. The length of recover was/is directly proportional to the magnitude of your original symptoms. Some people unfortunately didn’t have the financial or emotional strength to weather the storm which I completely understand as I was almost one of them. But now it is time to look forward and plan for the future rather than having to deal with repercussions from the past.

I understand that there will still be a few things we all need to deal with from the past few years as we move forward, but move forward we must, and this is the year to do it. Even though last year was a relatively good year for real estate investing, it was still a tough year for many investors because of all the competition and the lack of inventory on the market. I personally struggled finding rehabs as well. Between my partner and me, we looked at over 400 properties, make close to 200 offers and only got one MLS offer accepted. Looking back, off all the properties that we made offers on that sold, they were all in multiple offer situations. Even though we had plenty of cash to buy and always offered quick closings without contingencies, we were always out bid with very similar offers. Many of those other properties that didn’t sell are still on the market and still overpriced.

So why is this year going to be different? Because we are determined to make it different. I don’t expect the MLS inventory situation to change much this year even though the shadow inventory is still high. The Federal Reserve announced last month that they plan on spending aka printing nearly $45 Billion dollars a month to support the mortgage industry so that they won’t flood the market with inventory. Now that we know and understand this, we need to look at other alternatives aka get back to the basics.

Real Estate Values have probably hit bottom last year and I expect them to stay stable or maybe even improve slightly this year. The economy is not improving, and today it was reported that the economy actually shrunk by 1/10 of a percent last quarter. However, from doing direct mail marketing, networking and other forms of marketing, we have been getting a lot of calls from motivated sellers and they are finally realizing the situation of the market and are willing and able to work with us.

The properties that we have been buying recently are coming from wholesalers who are finding their leads from sources other than the MLS. And those wholesalers are doing very well. Talking to one of our wholesalers this morning, and he just closed his forth lease option deal this month and has made a minimum of $4,000 on each one as a net profit. And we are half way through a rehab that we got from this same wholesaler that will net us over $40k when it is all said and done, and it could even be more, as it looks like the comps are even stronger now, than they were when we originally closed on it.
So I am telling you the same thing my friend told me over 10 years ago, Get Off Your Butt and go Buy a House.

The New 3.8% Tax on Real Estate for Obama Care

Mike Jacka — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:04:48 GMT

Beginning on January 1, 2013, a new real estate capital gains tax will take effect to pay for Obama Care. When Obama Care was passed back on March 23, 2010, one of the funding measures was to take from Medicare.

“Bet you didn’t know that, did you?”

So how are they going to recover those costs for Medicare that they stole for Obama Care? Simply increase taxes on real estate and other interest and dividends. This new 3.8% tax is expected to raise $210 billion over the next 10 years.

The new 3.8% Tax Rate applies to:

Individuals with adjusted gross income (AGI) above $200,000
Couples filing a joint return with more than $250,000 AGI

Types of Income:

• Interest, dividends, rents (less expenses), capital gains (less capital losses)

The new tax applies to the LESSER of:

Investment income amount
Excess of AGI over the $200,000 or $250,000 amount

Example:
	AGI before Sale	$275,000

	Sales Price of Rehab	$150,000
	Basis	$120,000
	Gain	$30,000

	New AGI	$305,000

	3.8% Tax on Gain
	($30,000 x 3.8%)	$1,114

That’s an extra $1,114 you would owe the IRS just to pay for Obama Care, per property if your AGI is over $200k/$250k.

The National Association of Realtors has created a brochure (pdf) with a few examples that I found very helpful in understanding the different taxable events and how they affect us.

Are you sick of all the Infomercials?

Mike Jacka — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:06:49 GMT

When I first started real estate investing back in the early 1990’s, it was a struggle to find good training for beginners. So I eventually got my real estate license and through marketing, I found a few local and successful investors who took me under their wings and that is where I got most of my training, but it was still very limited, because those investors only did one thing, but they were good at it. However, for me to get out on my own and do things their way would require me to have a rich uncle who died and left me a fortune to invest with. But I didn’t have a rich uncle so I had to learn something different.

That is when I started looking for alternative training sources, and in my state, there was no local resource. That is when I started seeing a rise in infomercials and I started buying their training courses, and I got upsold to their seminar, and then their coaching programs. And slowly, I started to do a few deals that I never even knew could be done before I bought those courses. I started creating seller carry back notes, selling those notes to raise the down payments. We did substitutions of collateral, wrap around mortgages and then I learned how to buy pre-foreclosures. I was doing short sales for years before the term short sale was first used outside of the loss mitigation departments. I was rehabbing and then I learned how to Wholesale, which I said couldn’t be done, until I bought a course on wholesaling and I made it work J

I learned all that because of infomercials. However, these days, our inbox is loaded with infomercials. And finding resources to learn real estate investing is easier than ever before, thanks to the internet, emails and webinars. It seems like no matter where you turn, there is another infomercial in your inbox, on your smart phone, on the TV and everywhere you look.

I even started a local REIA (Real Estate Investors Association) here in Minnesota called www.MnREIA.com. At our local REIA, we try to bring in as many local experts as we can, but we also have to bring in some national speakers for a couple of reasons. One reason is because many of the members want to see them. The second main reason is because many of the topics that they teach are way more advanced than most local experts are able to.

That brings me to the point of this blog post… When we first get new members or guests to MnREIA, they often ask me after only one or two meetings, “Are all your meetings just an infomercial, where I am going to get upsold something?” That is a hard one for me to answer because I don’t want to lie to them and say no, and I don’t want to turn them away by saying that is just the way it is.

Then I got an email today from someone who has been to only two of our www.MnREIA.com meetings in response to an email that I sent out promoting a webinar training that is not part of our regular trainings, but a topic that I know our members need to at least hear about, and I thought I would share her question, and my response.

Question:

Thank you, Mike.

I have attended my two free meetings of yours and am happy to have done so, but also, both topics ended in sales pitches to buy more (the wholesaling guest speaker, and your presentation that you could upgrade membership on to get the app and etc. for rehab estimates).

So, my question is, is this free information or is this webinar an infomercial to then pay more money to get more details?

Thank you for your time in answering this.

My best,

My Answer/Response:

Yes there will be an upsell at the end of this webinar.

With all national speakers, you will get a basic training for the topic they are talking about, and then an offer to get a course or seminar to learn even more. That is how they cover their costs and make a profit.

Your goal is to learn as much as you can from their free training, even if it is an infomercial. You will either learn something new and/or, like myself, get motivated and remember old strategies that you had forgotten about or didn’t fully understand until the speaker said something that finally made sense to you. That happens to me all the time… lol

With local speakers, such as myself, you will get the same level or even more detailed training, and if the speakers can’t offer their services, then what is their incentive to share with all of us their knowledge which cost them tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their time learning?

So with that in mind, the wholesaling speaker gave you some great training/ideas and then offered us the opportunity to take that training to the next level with his system. Only a small percentage of people are/were ready for that, but the rest of the people at least learned more than they could have anywhere else basically for free.

As far as when I talked about Estimating repairs, I gave you everything you needed to go out and estimate repairs, including the Estimating Repair worksheet which took me a few years to develop and over $10k in training to learn, and I gave that to you for nothing. There is nothing more that you need to learn or that I or anyone else can teach you on that subject, if you paid attention and took good notes, and if you are a member, you can go back and listen to the audio as many times as you want so that you fully understand that. As far as an upsell for an app goes, you don’t need it, but if you want to use it, just pay a small fee for it. Otherwise, copy the sheets that I gave you and use them. That will give you the exact same outcome.

Forewarning… August will be a few national speakers who will all try and upsell, I recommend being there, learning as much as you can and just be prepared for the upsell. If you are ready for what they are offering, then you have the OPTION to buy, if not, then do as I usually do, keep your wallet at home.

After August, we will have only local speakers until Next February. The local speakers will give you some of the best training you can hope for and they will also tell you about the services that they offer, but they won’t be infomercials.

I am sharing this with you because I get this question once in a while from newbies and I hope you read this before you get upset with all the infomercials out there and stop learning. Are there a lot of infomercials, sales pitches in the real estate investing business? Yes of course there is, But if you go into it with the right mind set, you will be able to get the most out of it in the long run.

Real Estate Investing is a different kind of business and there is no college course to get a degree in it. If there was, you would need a master’s degree in Business Management, Business Finance, Marketing, Psychology, Construction, Law, Chemistry, Entrepreneurship and did I mention Psychology… An education like that would probably take you 15+ years and cost a couple hundred thousand dollars at least.

So since there is no college program like that, everyone has to go out and learn the business on their own, and there are several different components to the business. Eventually, someone who has the ability and passion to teach will prefect a certain niche and develop a training program, a software program, a service or an app to help improve their own business and then package that program for sale. If you want to learn what they have to offer, you will need to pay for their knowledge/expertise, and the way they get the opportunity in front of you is to offer free training for 60-90 minutes. Why only 60-90 minutes? Because that is all the longer the average human’s attention span can stay focused on any one thing at a time. After that they will lose your attention and the time spent together will have been a waste of time for both the presenter and you.

So in that 60-90 minutes, they will first have to demonstrate their qualifications by giving you some training, then they will need to take about 10 minutes to share with you what opportunity they have for you to take your training/business to the next level, but only when/if you are ready to go there. If you opt to take advantage of their knowledge/training, then it will cost you, but not nearly as much as if you tried to go out and learn/develop it yourself.

How to learn from infomercials? They best way is to watch as many webinars and attend as many local REIA meetings, workshops and seminars as you can. Most of them are free or very inexpensive. If you go there with the understanding that most of the time, you are going to see an upsell, then you will be in the right frame of mind to learn from them without having to buy their product, service. When you are ready, you will know it is right for you to take it to the next level. Until then, just get out there and learn as much as you can.

Meet your New Landlord… The Banks

Mike Jacka — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 09:32:29 GMT

We knew this was coming, just a couple of weeks ago, BoA (Bank of America) sent out a letter to 1,000 customers who are currently in default offering them the option to rent the property back from BoA at fair market rent if they simply deed the property back to BoA in lieu of a foreclosure. This will only add to the currently unknown number of properties in the Shadow Inventory.

On Thursday April 5, 2012 the Federal Reserve issued a policy statement on the rental of REO’s.

The general policy of the Federal Reserve is that banking organizations should make good-faith efforts to dispose of OREO properties at the earliest practicable date. Consistent with this policy, in light of the extraordinary market conditions that currently prevail, banking organizations may rent residential OREO properties (within statutory and regulatory holding period limits) without having to demonstrate continuous active marketing of the property, provided that suitable policies and procedures are followed. Under these conditions and circumstances, banking organizations would not contravene supervisory expectations that they show “good-faith efforts” to dispose of OREO by renting the property within the applicable holding period. Moreover, to the extent that OREO rental properties meet the definition of community development under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations, they would receive favorable CRA consideration. In all respects, banking organizations that rent OREO properties are expected to comply with all applicable federal, state, and local statutes and regulations.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/bcreg20120405a1.pdf

I just wonder if the banks are going to have to follow all the local rental guidelines as the rest of us have to follow. And what kind of shape will these properties be in when they finally make it back on the market, if they ever do?

Big Banks Sued for Making Risky Loans

Mike Jacka — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 09:39:00 GMT

On Friday September 2, 2011, the federal government sued 17 big banks for selling mortgage-backed securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after those securities turned toxic. This is just another example of the underling disease infecting this country.

In the 90’s, the federal government was pushing banks to make it more affordable to first-time home buyers and lower income families to qualify for a mortgage to promote their American Dream agenda of everyone in America owning a home. At first the banks pushed back and said this was a bad idea, because a good percentage of the borrowers would never be able to pay the loans back.

The federal government, in their infinite wisdom created legislation that would penalize the banks if they did not. So the banks complied and the markets roared. Now everyone with a pulse could get a mortgage. That is what the federal government wanted and the economy exploded.

But they hay days would have to end some time. And in 2006 the housing market, which was the driving force of the economy at the time start to show signs of weakness. However, since the market was conditioned for the status quo, they just kept on trucking. And the few people who saw the pending destruction were demonized by the federal government and the media, so nothing was done to even slow down the inevitable train wreck.

Then in 2008, the markets crashed and the housing market has been in a free fall ever since. So the same people that were forced to write those loans that went bad were now labeled predatory lenders and were prosecuted for there involvement. No, I am not blind. Yes there were a few that took advantage of people and even committed fraud, and those people were dealt with, but most of the lenders were only doing what they were trained to do per the federal governments legislation to promote the American Dream agenda of everyone in America owning a home.

In 2008 the feds passed TARP (Toxic Asset Recovery Program) to bail out the banks for the mess the federal government created. Will they ever admit that they created the problem? Publicly they will not, but the passage of TARP was in my opinion an admission of guilt because they had to clean up their own mess.

Now 3 years later when most of the TARP funds to the banks have been repaid and they are earning record profits, the federal government has decided to sue them, as if it was their fault. I think this will back fire on the federal government as evidence comes to the front line.

But the bigger question here is why would the federal government do something like this at this time in our history? Sure the banks are not lending right now so their cash reserves are building, and I think that is why the feds brought this action right now. There are a lot of political reason I believe this is happening, but I don’t want to get into that right now. What I want to get into is the financial implications of a suit like this at this time. First of all, in 2008/2009 the federal regulators tightened up the banks regulations and increased their required cash reserves before they could lend again. Secondly, many of the larger banks are shoring up their cash reserves so that when the real estate markets bottom out and start increasing in values, then the banks can start lending with their own cash, rather than having to follow federal guidelines in order to resell their loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

FHA extends Anti-Flipping Rule Waiver through the end of 2011

Mike Jacka — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:14:00 GMT

I wrote about the Anti-Flipping Rule Waiver just over a year ago and at that time I predicted that it would get extended: Flipping-is-Legal-Again.

Three days before the expiration of the original waiver, they extended the Anti-Flipping Rule Waiver till the end of this year, December 31, 2011. This is good news for everyone because the real estate market needs investors right now to help clean up the foreclosure mess.

Wholesalers can do what they do best, find and negotiate good deals on rundown REO properties. Rehabbers can do what they do best, quickly rehab the properties and bring them back up to code. And first time home buyers can get into a home at a good price that is completely rehabbed and ready to move in without having to worry about painting, fixing a leaky faucet, replacing the carpet or any other cosmetic improvements that they can not afford to do or don’t have the time for right now.

How To Get More Offers Accepted

Mike Jacka — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:49:00 GMT

Have you been making offers on REO’s only to get frustrated that none of your offers are getting accepted? I feel your pain and frustration. This is something that I have also been struggling with.

So why are our all of our offers getting rejected at such a high rate? There are a few reasons that I can think of. First of all, the banks have received so much federal bailout money that they are not hurting as much as one would think; therefore they are not pressured to liquidate their inventory fast. In fact a lot of their inventory never even makes it to the market, but rather quietly slides into the “Shadow Inventory” category.

Secondly, we have been competing with first time home buyers who are looking for a deal and beginning investors who are looking for rentals and plan on doing a light rehab rather than a full blown rehab, which enables them to offer less than most of us do. But don’t feel bad, the dirty truth about a lot of these investors is that their inexperience causes them to get hurt financially in the long run. I get calls from these types of investors all the time asking me how to get out of trouble with these properties. Unfortunately the only thing I can tell them is that they have no choice now but to hold on to the property for the long run and hope that the market value increases to recover their losses. I have even had two recently that came to me for help after they out bid me on the same property. Opps...

So how can we improve our odds of getting our offers accepted? The answer is twofold. First of all, time will work in our favor. Most of the first time home buyers are out of the market and the ones that are left are starting to look for completely rehabbed properties. This will eventually drive down the prices of the REO’s that need rehabs, cosmetic face lifts and code compliance.

Secondly, I have just recently developed a new set of tools to help more accurately determine the rehab costs and a Scope of Work, worksheet that is automatically generated from the Repair Estimate Worksheet, that can be submitted with your offers to the banks to help justify you offers.

How To Video’s

If you don’t have a free account with www.RealEstatePromo.com, then you will need to create one in order to watch the “How To Video’s” and you will need to upgrade to a premium membership to use the Repair Estimate Worksheet and the Scope of Work.

Repair Estimate Worksheet

Mike Jacka — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 15:50:00 GMT

It has been a couple of months since I have been able to post anything on the blog. I have been rather busy lately as we have made a lot of changes around the office, and I was working on a new project that I finished just before the holidays. Hopefully I will be able to post more frequently now that things are starting to settle down a little bit again.

In December at out Monthly MnREIA Meeting, we had a great panel of REO agents. And we had one of our largest attendances in a long time, we usually have between 125-160 people at all our meetings, but December brought in 181 for the REO Panel. If you missed the meeting, the audio archive is available for MnREIA Members at www.MnREIA.com/Events.aspx?ID=REO-Agents-Panel-10-12-7-2010.

The biggest project I have been working on though is a Rehab Estimate Worksheet. The worksheet is designed to allow anyone, regardless of your level of experience to easily and quickly determine the estimated cost of a rehab for a property. First you have to setup some default costs/factors, which will be easy enough to determine the defaults, because it shows you the state/local and national averages, and with one click of a button, you can set your defaults to either the local or national average defaults. You can then come back and adjust each individual item as time goes on and you get a better feel for your own individual costs/factors.

Once your defaults are setup, you will then be able to walk through a property, click on some check boxes, enter a few quantities and then just hit the total button to calculate all the costs to rehab that particular property based on the square footage of the property and your default costs/factors. You can do all this right from your phone, as long as it has internet access. You can then pull the rehab cost worksheet up for this property back at your office from your desktop/laptop computer, enter in some comps (comparable sold properties) and the system will calculate the MAO (Maximum Allowable Offer) for you.

The Rehab Estimate Worksheet is available to REP (Real Estate Promo) Premium Members. There is a new “How To Video” that anyone can see, all you need is a basic/free REP membership to see a live demo of the Rehab Estimate Worksheet.

This is just the first part of an even larger project that we have been working on, but I will keep the second part a surprise until it is ready to go. Hope everyone has a fantastic year in 2011.

Top 5 Reasons Why Real Estate Investors Need Local SEO!

Mike Jacka — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 16:07:00 GMT

You’ve heard about SEO, but have you heard about Local SEO? It’s not your fault if you haven’t, but if you don’t take this moment to begin building your knowledge of Local SEO you will only have yourself to blame. This is where your attention should be if reason #1 has any meaning to you whatsoever... this is what you need.

#1 - LOCAL SEO IS THE REAL ESTATE INVESTOR'S DIRECT PATH TO THE FRONT PAGE OF GOOGLE!

Over the past year you may have noticed that a peculiar little box providing a map and local results are popping up more and more for real estate related terms. It is most commonly referred to as “The 10-Box” and as you have probably noticed… this “10-Box” displays local results prominently on the first page of Google’s search results!

Below is an example of the first page of search results where we can identify 3 distinct areas when doing a search for the term “home buyers.”

*note: Local result placement may vary, search for your terms and make note of which terms bring up a 10-box and which ones don’t.

Local SEO’s purpose is to get you on the first page of the search results by taking the optimizing for the local results. This is better than fine, this is great!

#2 - Real estate is a local business so we should be optimizing locally!

For example, we steer our marketing efforts locally by focusing on the Saint Paul market. We’ve optimized two different ways (traditional vs. local) and guess which one is outperforming the other. Take a look at the zoom in of the 10-box below for “home buyers.”

These 2 positions are by yours truly and they perform! Traffic is one thing, but if it isn’t someone in our target market within our local area then that traffic doesn’t mean a whole lot. In this case we can enjoy the benefits that Google Local provide by letting Google do their thing.

Their IP address and search history triggers the Google Places box, making it most likely that the visitor is within our area.
In order for this box to appear the keyword must be associated with local intent. To put it another way, Google Local actually relieves you of some of the burden of distinguishing actionable keyword traffic (traffic that is motivated).
Google Places also comes with its very own set of analytics, so when you’re working on conversion you can base the ratio on a cleaner set of traffic data. In order for them to come through Google Places they ‘re automatically prequalified in intent and location!

Google Local results have treated us well and will continue to do so in an increasing number of ways.

#3 - Competition in Google Place for real estate investors is surprisingly light, but that's BECAUSE NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT IT!

In zoom in above you can see that we have the top 2 spots.

These spots show up on the front page of Google search results to doubly qualified traffic in your local area.

The competition for Local SEO is much lower than it is for traditional SEO (MUCH LOWER) because nobody is talking about it. We’ve been on top of these local listings for about a year now and have yet to have had to defend our position at the topic of our local Google mountain.

It’s almost tragic Local SEO is so completely overlooked because we get real results and some of our best leads off Google Places. If you’re interested in getting started with local this next reason will make your day!

#4 - Local SEO is far easier than traditional SEO. Plus the traffic is better as it fits the online needs of real estate investors perfectly!

Traditional SEO, as cool as it sounds is hard laborious work because there is so much competition on a playing field that changes form weekly. If you’re not familiar with the role of search engine optimization (SEO) then this abbreviated flow chart will spell it out for you.

With traditional SEO every single step of this processes can be a major undertaking, especially when the SEO is competitive. But even in some competitive traditional SEO markets Local SEO is grossly overlooked because all the internet marketing sharks are too busy trying to outdo each other.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of what you’re getting into when you’re deciding on which internet route you want to focus your optimization efforts:

For real estate investors this comparison illustrates on four key points the advantages Local SEO provides. Traditionally SEO can get ultra-competitive ultra-quick, but the way things stand becoming a first adapter and capturing the lead before others get wise to the benefits of Local SEO will surely payoff in the long term!

Reason #5: With Local SEO you don’t have to be the best in the World, you only need to be the best in your local market within your niche.

As things stand, only a small % of real estate investors are truly competing in Local SEO. Also since Google isolates areas by their location the competition will be mostly limited to other investors who have a lot to learn as well.

I simply cannot stress enough the importance of capitalizing on all the benefits Local SEO offers real estate investors. Your sellers and buyers are most often going to be local, when people search local there is intent on finding a solution which triggers the Local 10-box result.

Local SEO may very well replace the entire first page of Google results with Local results for certain keywords and this is your opportunity claim the best seat before all the seats sell out.
For the second let’s consider the worst case scenario that I’m wrong and Google Local won’t become the entire front page of results for certain terms. The very fact that our two top spots in our Local results has been feeding us quality leads for the past year is a real benefit that you can obtain.

Monday, October 25th I’ll be leading a live GoToMeeting training at 7pm Central Time where I will walk you through the steps you need to take to significantly increase your Local SEO power. It's not everyday that you get the chance to learn from someone who is fluent in both real estate investing and SEO.

Local SEO doesn't just help you, but it protects your business from being hijacked online!

This is your ticket to the front page of Google in your local market, click it!

Should there be a Moratorium on Foreclosures?

Mike Jacka — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 09:27:00 GMT

The new headlines catch phase is “Robo Signer”. These robo signers have been signing foreclosure documents at a rate of up to 1 document per minute. That’s 5,000 – 10,000 per month. Everyone knows that it is not physically possible for these robo signers to have read every document. That is the reason everyone is calling for a moratorium on foreclosures. Or is it?

If everyone was upset with the fact that these robo signers were not reading all the documents, then why wasn’t everyone upset that congress has passed health care and over a trillion dollars in stimulus programs while all along admitting that no one could possible read all of it before voting on it. So ask yourself, are they really upset that the robo signers didn’t read the documents. If you are honest with yourself, then the answer would have to be no.

So what is the real reason everyone wants a moratorium on foreclosures. Politics… In 3 weeks there is a major midterm election and this could be one of the most historic elections in our country. The politicians on both sides of the isle are looking for something to blame and point fingers at to make themselves look like they care and that all our problems are the banks.

In reality, these so called robo signers have whole departments of people to create the documents and make sure that everything is correct before giving them to the robo signer for their signatures. This is how all business works. This is how congress and the president pass bills.

Now to be fair, there are reports of fraudulent mortgage documents on the banks part, but these isolated incidents are rare and need to be dealt with. For those few homeowners who were victims of falsified documents, they should end up with their houses free and clear. However, that should not cause the banks to free all foreclosures for the remaining 99% of foreclosures that were done correctly.