Meanwhile, in Foreclosureland…

It’s always nice to come off a week of non-stop market rallies and soaring portfolio values.  The stock market is now up 19 out of the last 22 days.  Gangster.

But wait – I knew there was something nagging at the back of my mind.  Oh yeah, those pesky 15 million or so homes in some stage of the foreclosure process, not to mention the tens of billions of mortgage backed securities that, if putback to the issuer, could lead to mega-dilution for a certain Dow component bank that bit off more than they could chew.

The latest in Foreclosureland is that Bank of America‘s exposure to the putback/lawsuit threat is somewhere between $54 billion and $375 billion, depending on what day of the week it is.

Here’s Reuters:

Bank of America Corp said it is fighting various lawsuits involving roughly $54 billion in mortgage-backed securities, where investors allege it misrepresented the quality of the underlying home loans.

The largest U.S. bank by assets had put the figure at more than $375 billion in a securities filing issued earlier on Friday, but later issued a statement slashing the figure in light of a Thursday court ruling in California.

If you were a lawyer for B of A, you could safely assume that 2011 is set to be a good year.  A very good year indeed.

Elsewhere, JPMorgan has announced that it is now back in business.  And by back in business, I mean the foreclosure business, booting out delinquent borrowers once again in 40 states.

Here’s the LA Times:

JPMorgan Chase & Co., which had put foreclosures on hold in 40 states and the District of Columbia to assess whether it was following proper procedures, plans to resume seizures of homes “in a couple of weeks,” the New York bank told a meeting of analysts.

Chase, the third-largest U.S. mortgage lender, imposed the freeze on about 127,000 delinquent loans last month in 23 states that require court orders for foreclosures as well as in states with more complicated non-judicial processes. California, which has a streamlined process, was not among the states where Chase stopped foreclosing.

So yeah, in the shadow of the asset price explosion, that’s still going on.

Sources:

B of A Fighting Suits Over $54 Billion in MBS (Reuters)

Chase to Resume Foreclosures this Month (LAT)