These poor fellas couldn’t pay their mortgage but can spend their money frivolously on their “friends”…

The Irony. After shelling out nearly $80 million for a downtown Washington office building in 2007, right around the peak of the commercial real estate price bubble, the Mortgage Bankers Association sold its 10-story Washington headquarters for $41 million after shelling out $79 million for it about three years ago. All but $5 million of that was financed.

It gets better, for its not clear how the Mortgage Bankers Association will pay off all of the roughly $30 million it still owes its lenders on the trophy office building, just a few blocks from the White House.

As for the $714,000, the Washington-based trade group lobbied on numerous pieces of legislation affecting mortgage lending, taxes, housing policy, foreclosure relief and regulation of government-controlled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to an April 20 filing with the House clerk’s office.

One of the group’s top priorities is to stop legislation that would allow bankruptcy judges to cancel a portion of homeowners’ mortgage debt. The group has been successful in convincing lawmakers that this change would upset the mortgage industry and add to borrowing costs.

Besides Congress, the trade group lobbied the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, the White House and the FBI in the January-March period.

4closureFraud.org

Lobbying Report $714,000 Spent by Mortgage Bankers Association