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Shari B. Olefson is an American business attorney certified by the Florida bar in real estate, a Civil Circuit-Supreme Court Certified Mediator, [1] television news expert, [2] speaker, author, and advocate.
Olefson was born in New York City and raised both in New York and Florida, where she graduated from Pine Crest School in 1981. she graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in journalism and psychology in 1985, from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University and from the University of Miami Masters of Law program in 1989. She subsequently studied broadcast journalism at Columbia University and earned a master's degree in psychology from Nova Southeastern University.
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(July 2018) |
While in law school, Olefson interned at the Broward County Public Defenders office and worked for a New Your City based law firm before opening a general private practice, including probate, real estate, and business transactions and litigation, in South Florida. While writing her first book, Olefson became a subject matter expert on the real estate crises for television networks including CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS, PBS, CSPANN, Bloomberg, and a speaker at industry conferences. During this same time, she also became a resource for policy makers and worked with Florida's Collins Center, meditating residential foreclosure cases.
Since 2010 Olefson has been the television news expert for the Fox and NBC network affiliates situated in West Palm Beach, Florida with weekly segments covering legal and consumer issues tied to current news. Her book 101 Ways to Stay Out of Court: Navigating Life's Little Legal Landmines is based on viewer questions received during this time.
Olefson has continued to serve as a Mediation, but left the practice of law in 2012 to serve as Director of a non-partisan The Carnegie Group think tank.
On May 4, 2018, Olefson enter the Florida primary race for Broward Circuit Court judge, Group 36.
She is the author of several books on American real estate law and economics.
A chain of title is the sequence of historical transfers of title to a property. It is a valuable tool to identify and document past owners of a property and serves as a property's historical ownership timeline. The "chain" runs from the present owner back to the original owner of the property. In situations where documentation of ownership is important, it is often necessary to reconstruct the chain of title. To facilitate this, a record of title documents may be maintained by a registry office or civil law notary.
A mortgage is a legal instrument of the common law which is used to create a security interest in real property held by a lender as a security for a debt, usually a mortgage loan. Hypothec is the corresponding term in civil law jurisdictions, albeit with a wider sense, as it also covers non-possessory lien.
A homeowner association, or a homeowner community, is a private association-like entity in the United States, Canada, the Philippines and certain other countries often formed either ipso jure in a building with multiple owner-occupancies, or by a real estate developer for the purpose of marketing, managing, and selling homes and lots in a residential subdivision. The developer will typically transfer control of the association to the homeowners after selling a predetermined number of lots.
Foreclosure is a legal process in which a lender attempts to recover the balance of a loan from a borrower who has stopped making payments to the lender by forcing the sale of the asset used as the collateral for the loan.
Predatory lending refers to unethical practices conducted by lending organizations during a loan origination process that are unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent. While there are no internationally agreed legal definitions for predatory lending, a 2006 audit report from the office of inspector general of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) broadly defines predatory lending as "imposing unfair and abusive loan terms on borrowers", though "unfair" and "abusive" were not specifically defined. Though there are laws against some of the specific practices commonly identified as predatory, various federal agencies use the phrase as a catch-all term for many specific illegal activities in the loan industry. Predatory lending should not be confused with predatory mortgage servicing which is mortgage practices described by critics as unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices during the loan or mortgage servicing process, post loan origination.
Foreclosure investment refers to the process of investing capital in the public sale of a mortgaged property following foreclosure of the loan secured by that property.
Second mortgages, commonly referred to as junior liens, are loans secured by a property in addition to the primary mortgage. Depending on the time at which the second mortgage is originated, the loan can be structured as either a standalone second mortgage or piggyback second mortgage. Whilst a standalone second mortgage is opened subsequent to the primary loan, those with a piggyback loan structure are originated simultaneously with the primary mortgage. With regard to the method in which funds are withdrawn, second mortgages can be arranged as home equity loans or home equity lines of credit. Home equity loans are granted for the full amount at the time of loan origination in contrast to home equity lines of credit which permit the homeowner access to a predetermined amount which is repaid during the repayment period.
The 2000s United States housing bubble or house price boom or 2000shousing cycle was a sharp run up and subsequent collapse of house asset prices affecting over half of the U.S. states. In many regions a real estate bubble, it was the impetus for the subprime mortgage crisis. Housing prices peaked in early 2006, started to decline in 2006 and 2007, and reached new lows in 2011. On December 30, 2008, the Case–Shiller home price index reported the largest price drop in its history. The credit crisis resulting from the bursting of the housing bubble is an important cause of the Great Recession in the United States.
OneWest Bank, a division of First Citizens BancShares, was a regional bank with over 60 retail branches in Southern California. OneWest Bank specialized in consumer deposit and lending including personal checking and savings accounts, Money Market accounts, CDs, and home loan products. OneWest offered small business checking, savings, CD, and money market accounts as well as small business loans and treasury management products.
Equity stripping, also known as equity skimming, is a type of foreclosure rescue scheme. Often considered a form of predatory lending, equity stripping became increasingly widespread in the early 2000s. In an equity stripping scheme an investor buys the property from a homeowner facing foreclosure and agrees to lease the home to the homeowner who may remain in the home as a tenant. Often, these transactions take advantage of uninformed, low-income homeowners; because of the complexity of the transaction, victims are often unaware that they are giving away their property and equity. Several states have taken steps to confront the more unscrupulous practices of equity stripping. Although "foreclosure re-conveyance" schemes can be beneficial and ethically conducted in some circumstances, many times the practice relies on fraud and egregious or unmeetable terms.
Real estate owned, or REO, is a term used in the United States to describe a class of property owned by a lender—typically a bank, government agency, or government loan insurer—after an unsuccessful sale at a foreclosure auction. A foreclosing beneficiary will typically set the opening bid at such an auction for at least the outstanding loan amount. If there are no interested bidders, then the beneficiary will legally repossess the property. This is commonly the case when the amount owed on the home is higher than the current market value of the foreclosure property, such as with a mortgage loan made at a high loan-to-value during a real estate bubble. As soon as the beneficiary repossesses the property it is listed on their books as REO and categorized as an asset..
Mortgage discrimination or mortgage lending discrimination is the practice of banks, governments or other lending institutions denying loans to one or more groups of people primarily on the basis of race, ethnic origin, sex or religion.
United States housing prices experienced a major market correction after the housing bubble that peaked in early 2006. Prices of real estate then adjusted downwards in late 2006, causing a loss of market liquidity and subprime defaults.
Loan modification is the systematic alteration of mortgage loan agreements that help those having problems making the payments by reducing interest rates, monthly payments or principal balances. Lending institutions could make one or more of these changes to relieve financial pressure on borrowers to prevent the condition of foreclosure. Loan modifications have been practiced in the United States since the 1930s. During the Great Depression, loan modification programs took place at the state level in an effort to reduce levels of loan foreclosures.
The 2010 United States foreclosure crisis, sometimes referred to as Foreclosure-gate or Foreclosuregate, refers to a widespread epidemic of improper foreclosures initiated by large banks and other lenders. The foreclosure crisis was extensively covered by news outlets beginning in October 2010, and several large banks—including Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup—responded by halting their foreclosure proceedings temporarily in some or all states. The foreclosure crisis caused significant investor fear in the U.S. A 2014 study published in the American Journal of Public Health linked the foreclosure crisis to an increase in suicide rates.
Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) is an American privately held corporation. MERS is a separate and distinct corporation that serves as a nominee on mortgages after the turn of the century and is owned by holding company MERSCORP Holdings, Inc., which owns and operates an electronic registry known as the MERS system, which is designed to track servicing rights and ownership of mortgages in the United States. According to the Department of the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, MERS is an agent for lenders without any reference to MERS as a principal. On October 5, 2018, Intercontinental Exchange and MERS announced that ICE had acquired all of MERS.
A mortgage servicer is a company to which some borrowers pay their mortgage loan payments and which performs other services in connection with mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. The mortgage servicer may be the entity that originated the mortgage, or it may have purchased the mortgage servicing rights from the original mortgage lender. The duties of a mortgage servicer vary, but typically include the acceptance and recording of mortgage payments; calculating variable interest rates on adjustable rate loans; payment of taxes and insurance from borrower escrow accounts; negotiations of workouts and modifications of mortgage upon default; and conducting or supervising the foreclosure process when necessary.
Joel T. Lazarus was a Florida prosecutor and later a circuit judge.
Steven J. Baum, P.C., was a law firm headquartered in Amherst, New York, United States. It was founded as Marvin R. Baum, P.C. in 1972, and remained under that name until Marvin Baum's death in 1999, after which his son Steven inherited the business and renamed it after himself. Its practice was primarily in real estate law, particularly in representing lenders and servicers in residential foreclosure actions in its later years.
Christopher Benjamin is an American attorney, ADR professional and politician who has served as a member of the Florida House of Representatives from District 107 since November 2020.
