So can someone please tell me where the "multiples" are? I am assuming that they mean apartments/condos. 44 new seems out to lunch.

Just as it seemed the U.S. housing crisis couldn’t get any worse, the largest bank in the United States is halting all sales of foreclosed houses as of this weekend, amid growing allegations that lenders have improperly seized hundreds of thousands of American homes.

The decision by Bank of America on Friday could grind a significant portion of the real estate market to a halt in the next few months. It comes after legal questions were raised about the automated processes bankers in the United States have used to handle the unprecedented number of foreclosures taking place.

Lawyers representing foreclosed homeowners argue that so-called “robo-signers,” people employed by the banks to process piles of paperwork, can’t possibly verify all the information contained in the documents, given the speed at which the foreclosures are being filed. Further, since so many of the mortgages offered in the U.S. are securitized and not held by the original lender, some of the cases lack sufficient proof of which bank actually owns the rights to the home. They allege this has led to improper seizures.

Those legal technicalities have the potential to reverse some foreclosures if the documents are proven to be incomplete or inaccurate. But the implications of this latest storm are much broader.

The freeze now threatens to chill parts of the U.S. real estate market as buyers and sellers of distressed homes wait for the banks to sort out the paperwork problem and verify documents, leaving all sides in limbo. Real estate agents in several states began pulling foreclosed homes off the market Friday, according to reports from across the U.S.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/housing/foreclosure-freeze-adds-to-us-woes/article1750648/