We're pleased to announce that Dreams for Sale has been accepted into another film festival - this time in Orlando, Florida at the 2011 Orlando Film Festival, running from October 19th-23rd, 2011!

As soon as we know on which day the film will be shown, we'll post the information here. The best part about the film festival is that it is completely free for attendees! VIP tickets are also available for $100, which gives you access to all the parties and special events, including priority admission to the films.

Great news!

Dreams for Sale has officially been accepted at the 2011 Fort Myers Film Festival, which will take place from March 23rd-27th, 2011 in Fort Myers, Florida. More information about the festival (including schedules and ticket prices) can be found on the official website: http://www.fortmyersfilmfestival.com

As soon as we know when Dreams for Sale will be shown, we will post the info here. Stay tuned!

Thanks to Chris over at the DV Freelancer forums, we've been profiled on a featured post that is shared with filmmakers worldwide. There are also some exclusive, behind-the-scenes production shots of the Dreams for Sale crew.

Check it out!

http://www.dvfreelancer.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8624

Scores of Palm Beach County homes were sold to investors at foreclosure auction this month for as low as $200 following the collapse of the David J. Stern law firm and ensuing confusion as thousands of its cases are reassigned.

It's yet another muddle for the already overwhelmed foreclosure courts to sort out as former Stern cases went to auction with no bank representation, bids or proper public notice.

The result on Wednesday was 56 percent of winning offers were from investors or individual buyers who in some cases spent no more than a month's mortgage payment to get homes that sold for upward of $240,000 during the real estate boom.

During a typical foreclosure auction, investors or individual buyers purchase between 3 percent and 13 percent of the homes, with the majority bought back by the banks.

But it is nowhere near certain the rock bottom prices will stick. Some of the sales were done without the required public advertisement. The Palm Beach County Clerk of Court will not issue a certificate of sale without proof that the auction was advertised once a week for two consecutive weeks before the sale.

Still, it takes a judge's order to vacate or verify a questionable sale.

"All these sales that have taken place will have to go back into the system," said real estate investor Don Cameron, who realized there was a problem last week after purchasing three properties at auction only to find out they were not properly advertised. "It's going to be a complete bottleneck again."

In a standard auction, the bank tells its attorney how much to bid on a property and a maximum bid is offered. Investors and individual buyers, called third-party bidders, know they may have to beat that maximum bid to win and if they aren't willing to go that high, the bank typically gets the property for a minimal price.

It takes a judge's order to cancel a sale, so although thousands of cases are in limbo as they transfer from Stern's firm to others, they are still moving forward to auction.

Stern's Plantation-based law firm, dubbed a "foreclosure mill" because of the volume of cases it handled, lost a majority of its business this fall after allegations that it was mishandling its cases. Federal mortgage-backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cut ties with the firm last month, physically removing files to dole out to other firms.

Broward County is not having the same auction problems as Palm Beach because it requires proof of public advertisement before a home goes to auction, said Barbara Brown, manager of Broward's circuit civil division. A representative from Miami-Dade County courts could not be reached.

While Palm Beach County requires proof of publication before the sale, the lack of proof is not enough to cancel a sale.

Cameron said experienced investors stopped bidding last week when the problem first surfaced and that people making recent purchases are probably new to foreclosure auctions.

"The seasoned investors have gone dormant," said Cameron, who owns a South Florida franchise of We Buy Ugly Houses.

Cameron plans to ask a judge to verify his sales because he paid "reasonable prices," between $50,000 and $90,000.

But banks could successfully challenge extremely low winning bids.

CitiMortgage had no one bidding for it Wednesday when it lost a home valued at $45,000 by the property appraiser's office to a winning bid of $1,600.

"We are currently looking into the matter," said CitiMortgage spokesman Mark Rodgers.

Real estate attorney Michael Gelfand of West Palm Beach-based Gelfand & Arpe, P.A., said the auction issue is an inconvenience, but not a "game stopper."

"One of the wonderful things about the common law justice system is that it can adjust to unanticipated and changing circumstances," he said.


http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/real-estate/a-house-for-200-foreclosure-confusion-leads-to-1110164.html

An increasing number of homeowners would consider walking away from an underwater mortgage as the nation's lenders and banks face growing criticism over their home loan and foreclosure practices.

A survey released Tuesday by real estate analysts at Trulia and RealtyTrac found 48 percent of homeowners with a mortgage said a strategic default is an option they would consider if they owed more on their home loan than the house is worth, sometimes referred to as being "underwater."

In the previous survey, conducted in May, 41 percent of homeowners said they would consider a strategic default, which is when a homeowner who can afford to make his or her monthly mortgage payment chooses not to.

Rick Sharga, senior vice president of the Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, said recent disclosures that foreclosure documents may not have been handled properly has increased homeowner anger and their willingness to "just mail in the keys" and be done with it, especially if they are underwater.

About 42 percent of South Florida homes with mortgages were underwater during the third quarter of this year, according to Zillow, a Seattle-based real estate and research company. Nationally, 23 percent of homes were considered underwater during the same time period, as well as 52 percent in the Treasure Coast.

"I think there is just less and less faith in the lending institutions," Sharga said. "People are saying, 'If they aren't going to play fairly, I don't need to play that game either.'"

Gender is also a factor when a homeowner considers a strategic default. The survey found 57 percent of men would consider walking away compared to 41 percent of women.

"One is thinking of it more as a home, and one is thinking of it more as a financial decision," said Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia, which is based in San Francisco.

The survey, taken in November of 1,329 homeowners and 652 renters, also found that 44 percent of respondents said they have lost faith in the nation's banks.

Several lenders and home loan servicers halted foreclosures earlier this fall after acknowledging that bank and court documents were being signed in the thousands by employees swearing to personal knowledge of each case when they in fact did not know the details of the foreclosures.

But Anthony DiMarco, executive vice president for government affairs for the Florida Bankers Association, said the so-called "robo-signing" issue has not caused widespread foreclosures and shouldn't be an excuse for people to strategically default.

"It's not the robo-signing that led to the foreclosure, it's the lack of payment," DiMarco said. "Most people understand if you lose your job, you're not paying, but they don't understand people just walking away."

Tuesday's survey did not include any statistics on strategic defaults, something analysts said is hard to measure because homeowner intent must be determined.

But they did say the embarrassment attached to a foreclosure is less than in the early days of the real estate bust.

"The stigma is definitely gone," Flint said. "And it could be very much perceived as a smart financial decision."


http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/real-estate/survey-shows-more-homeowners-would-walk-away-if-1104861.html

JACKSONVILLE, Florida (Reuters) - Lender Processing Services is riding the waves of foreclosures sweeping the United States, but in late October its CEO, Jeff Carbiener, found himself needing to reassure investors in the $2.8 billion company.

Although profits were rolling in, LPS's stock had taken a hit in the wake of revelations that mortgage companies across the country had filed fraudulent documents in foreclosures cases. Earlier in the year, the company, which handles more than half of the nation's foreclosures, had disclosed that it was under federal criminal investigation and admitted that employees at a small subsidiary had falsely signed foreclosure documents.

Still, Carbiener told the Wall Street analysts in an October 29 conference call that LPS's legal concerns were overblown, and the stock has jumped 13 percent since its close the day before the call.

But a Reuters investigation shows that LPS's legal woes are more serious than he let on. Public records reveal that the company's LPS Default Solutions unit produced documents of dubious authenticity in far larger quantities than it has disclosed, and over a much longer timespan.

Read more at the H-P link below:

Great news - there was a great write-up on Dreams for Sale in today's online edition of the Ft. Myers News-Press, written by Cristela Guerra. You can get the full text of the article at the link below.

http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=201012010308