Florida continues to show a rather disconcerting willingness to throw its citizens’ rights under the bus to help the banks. The state created special foreclosure courts to clear up a substantial backlog, which might not have been such a bad idea if they had been properly implemented. However, they were staffed with retired judges, many of whom seemed to put speed over due process. There have been numerous reports of judges refusing to hear motions or evidence presented by borrowers, to the point where the ACLU contested the procedures used as violations of due process.
To some degree, this has become moot since these kangaroo courts are expected to be shuttered (they required an extension of funding to continue). Moreover, new foreclosure filings have slowed in Florida as a result of the robo-signing scandal. The revelation of widespread abuses by banks has led some judges to dismiss cases with dubious documentation; judges are also complaining that banks are seldom coming to hearings on foreclosure cases.
Never fear, with government bought and paid for in America, someone was certain to try a fix. The Florida governor has, in effect, suggested that if banks can’t meet the existing requirements for foreclosure, then the solution obviously is to lower them. From a Daily Business Review article on a speech Florida governor Rick Scott made to the state bar association (hat tip Lisa Epstein):
The governor called on judges and lawyers to look for ways to cut court costs, improve efficiency and clear up the foreclosure backlog “as quickly as possible.” The clogging of the courts by foreclosure cases is discouraging businesses interested in moving to Florida, Scott’s main priority, he said.
“It scares people … and is clearly having an impact on the economy,” he said. “I’m looking for The Bar to come forward with suggestions on how to clear this up. Maybe we should consider nonjudicial foreclosures.”
Scott encouraged judges to carefully review verdicts to look for “meritless” cases.
“If we have a huge verdict that seems ridiculous, that adversely impacts companies who want to come to this state,” he said.
The connection between a foreclosure overhang and companies’ willingness to move to Florida seems pretty strained (and who are these business champing to relocate to Florida, anyhow? The idea that this is a meaningful number of entities in a weak economy sounds like wishful thinking). Scott presumably subscribes to the widely-discredited Mellonite logic that foreclosing rather than trying to do deep principal mods for borrowers that have viable incomes and flooding the market with foreclosure sales would somehow be an economic plus.
And look how he would like to square the circle: by turning Florida from a judicial foreclosure state (where the foreclosure has to be approved by the courts) to a non-judicial foreclosure stat (where the lender merely has to advertise the pending foreclosure and can then foreclose if the owner does not go to court to oppose the action). The good news is I am pretty sure this is easier said than done (lawyers please pipe up). I believe that in non-judicial states (or at least most of them), the bank has the deed, while in judicial foreclosure states,the borrower is the owner of the house, but has granted the lender a lien against it. That’s why lenders have to go to court: to enforce their rights under the lien. So even if there was interest in Scott’s idea, I don’t see how it could be applied retroactively.
Note that Scott floated this trial balloon after giving lip service to the rule of law:
Scott, who holds a law degree from Southern Methodist University and who was once a partner at a large Dallas law firm, spoke of his “great appreciation” for the law and called lawyers “the stewards of our government.”
The irony is that as Florida officials appear to have few compunctions about waiving well established legal protections for borrowers, judges in Michigan are so concerned about questionable practices that they are increasing them. From Daily Kos last week:
Early last month (May 2011) the Michigan Appellate Court ruled that the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) was a bunch of asshat jerks who needed to get their butts kicked soundly and sent to bed without their billion dollar bonuses.
Also they ruled that MERS could no longer foreclose on peoples’ homes by publishing the foreclosure in the papers. Oh no…not MERS. No More. Now they need to actually show up in court and prove they have the authority to foreclose on a house.
That’s a problem for MERS because they generally can’t. It’s a problem of their own making. Some clever scheme to buy and sell and divvy up mortgages and bank notes to make a lot of extra money by selling air. Wait. No. That’s not quite right…by selling the concept of air.
Muskegon County Judges, however, have taken it a step further. They’re now halting ALL foreclosures from ALL entities by advertisement, requiring everybody actually show up in court and present the bank note. They actually want a foreclosing party to prove they have the right to foreclose. I know, what a drag, right?….
Foreclosures in Muskegon County have dropped from about 75 per week to about 2 per week.…
Why?
Because banks CANNOT prove in a court of law that they hold an interest in the debt.
Let me say that again…banks CANNOT PROVE in a COURT OF LAW that they hold an interest in the debt.
Think about that for a moment. The moment the courts simply require that a bank prove it has an interest in the indebtedness of the property it’s foreclosing on, 97% of the foreclosures stop.
Banks are the victim of their own shenanigans.
They weren’t satisfied with the honest dollar they got lending money for mortgages, and started to play stupid games. And now, nobody….NOBODY…NOBODY knows who holds the actual interest in your house.
This isn’t some crackpot theory. It’s becoming glaringly obvious. Banks cannot prove in a court of law that they hold an interest in your property. And it’s their own fault.
54 comments
Comments are closed.
Goodness, if this action goes “viral”, wouldn’t it cause the house of cards to fall? I wonder, is there a law that prevents a bank from shopping a state to foreclose property in another state? That could open another can of worms.
So what to do The Day After?
What to do with all the homes that were illegally foreclosed and emptied? With titles that are a mess?
MERS & the banks aren’t going to fix this. They have no solutions. Other than to bully through & pretend nothing’s wrong. That’s not going to last much longer. It’s already collapsing, even in Florida.
Squatting is the solution. Get people in bank-abandoned homes, get feet on the floor, force state governments to create new Homestead Acts.
Hawaii recently passed stronger protections for Hawaiians facing foreclosure.
Oregon shot down a MERS-Legalization bill a few weeks ago.
And all the while….Florida raises the bar on fraudclosure legalization.
The endgame is in the US Supreme Court. When this lands in their collective laps, it will be interesting to see what the Supes conjure up, especially if they rule in favor of MERS.
How would the Supreme Court have any impact on a state property issue….isn’t this going to be 50 different solutions from 50 different State’s Supreme Courts?
I believe that our bought Congress critters are already busy figuring out how to back fill the problem for their bosses…..which Obama will of course sign.
The courts cannot spin the sort of fixes that this problem needs. Only legislation of the memorializing type will do.
Once again, I don’t know how you can federalize state property laws without totally violating the separation of powers.
Of course Conservatives don’t actually believe their rhetoric or they’d be screaming about this “outrageous federal intrusion” but it will still be extremely difficult to do this at the federal level.
The banks are going to have to go state by state and start twisting arms by threatening “not to do business” in that state. That’s a completely bogus threat, but usually effective with state law-makers.
I think you mean “federalism,” not “separation of powers.” Separation of powers refers to the checks and balances between branches of the federal government. Federalism refers to the division of sovereignty between state and federal government.
Anyway, if the U.S. Congress were to pre-empt the dirt law of all 50 states, I suspect that any 10th Amendment or similar argument will be a loser, provided that the congresscritters have sense enough to make a passing reference to the Commerce Clause in the legislation they enact. (Note the aftermath of the Lopez decision: Congress went back, changed the law slightly to mention the Commerce Clause, and the new and improved law passed muster.)
A better argument, at least “better” in the sense of “more likely to succeed in today’s courts” would be to argue that removing foreclosure disputes from the jurisdiction of any court violates due process.
Real property law is the purview of the states and their court systems. Unless the federal government decides to usurp this authority from the states, these matters will have to be decided state-by-state in each of the 50 State Supreme Courts (plus DC’s). Should the federal government decide to usurp this authority by an act of Congress, look for at least 51 lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of said act. It is possible that the U.S. Supreme Court could rule on some federal matter that would impact the situation, but then look for all hell to break loose in Congress and all 50 state legislatures. What Wall Street has done to real property in the U.S. is going to take at least a decade of court decisions, and hundreds of billions of dollars, to clean up.
What about that imminent domain case a few years ago, where the SCOTUS allowed private property to be taken for private commercial use? This court has shown unlimited ingenuity in handing the keys to corporate and financial interests. I’m sure they’ll find a way.
If we are to allow bankers, for the sake of expediency, to press foreclosure without absolute proof they hold the note (wet ink) and have standing, then property rights in this country are at an end.
Steve Schwarzman would not stand for it, Carl Icahn would not stand for it, Warren Buffet would not stand for it, and no judge would disagree with them – a homeowner behind on payments is no different just because his lawyer costs less than a billionaire’s; these are fundamental principles that set us apart from the Middle Ages.
Banks cannot turn upside down the entire reason for our existence as a society and 800 years of progress from the Magna Carta forward – there is no ‘Grand Compromise’ that smooths out the minor detail of not holding the note.
Otherwise, a lawyer could claim a skid-row bum in NYC for a client and sue in Florida to foreclose on a Palm Beach mansion in arrears; the bum would have as much standing as anyone else, including any neighbor to the home-owner in Palm Beach.
If the banks persist in this, we just as well replace the 50 stars on Old Glory with a banana and then hold yearly auctions for licensing rights between Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte – that would fit nicely with selling signage to the highest bidder on the side of the SCOTUS building; wasted space begging for a use.
R. LAW,
ANYTOWN, USA
When even a kangaroo court doesn’t produce the desired verdict, abolish the kangaroo court. Sounds a lot like Gitmo. So when is Scott running for President?
He ran for president in 2008 and won.
Winfield Scott?
“And now, nobody….NOBODY…NOBODY knows who holds the actual interest in your house.” This is so hard for people to wrap their minds around. This message needs to be repeated over and over again. Thank you for this post.
Hope they all chock on it :)
FL gov Rick Scott is a known crook. Check out this article by Jeffrey Sachs, and the bit on Scott.
The Global Economy’s Corporate Crime Wave http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs177/English
The current governor of Florida, Rick Scott, was CEO of a major health-care company known as Columbia/HCA. The company was charged with defrauding the United States government by overbilling for reimbursement, and eventually pled guilty to 14 felonies, paying a fine of $1.7 billion. The FBI’s investigation forced Scott out of his job. But, a decade after the company’s guilty pleas, Scott is back, this time as a “free-market” Republican politician.
Remember also that in 2000, the FBI was NOT done with Rick Scott. Only an intervention at the highest echelons of the newly minted Bush Administration stopped the FBI from finishing the REMF who is now governor of Florida.
BTW, Floridians deserves everything bad happening to them under this guy. If people cannot even bothered to google a name and dedicate 15 minutes of the so-called life to search who’s gonna choose as their new CEO, it’s tough noogies baby!
Hey, bud, not all of us voted for this person. In fact, I have yet to find anyone who’ll admit voting for him…
and from Michigan ? .. amazing !! I am proud to be a resident of this state . Surprised though . More power to the legal system here . Damn the MERS !!
Bill
Keeping in lockstep with Florida’s willingness to throw its citizens’ rights under the bus comes yesterday’s Order of Denial in the ACLU action by the Florida Second District Court of Appeal. Unfortunately, some things will not change.
http://199.242.69.70/pls/ds/ds_docket?p_caseyear=2011&p_casenumber=1728&psCourt=2&psSearchType=
Virtual Globetrotting (Rick’s House)
MERS is a terrorist’s weapon. Absolutely. The reason behind this proprietary code was for profit and to savage existing law, a design that recognized most aspects of the aged, ineffective consumer protection laws in states such as Florida, Maryland and others. Only through attrition have people (media) began to take any notice what so ever, one can also assume a design feature of MERS was to expedite “business as usual” through a sleeping judicary. An unintended side effect is that people are taking a very close look at these comfortable, well paid, elected, public officials. Powerful Realty groups, law firms and other unchecked cancers at the highest levels of Government have enabled and abetted this violence across our country.
Since the American people are a sensation seeking lot, we can metaphorically send in a team of “legal SEALS” against a well entrenched and powerful adversary, seize MERS, (and again, metaphorically speaking) blow a hole in it’s head, and then ditch it somewhere in the Ocean.
In Greece or for Greece, this is called corruption.
Maybe Florida needs to create a new pre-foreclosure “litigation reduction” /“foreclosure streamlining program” /“Document Review Program” and add a ($10,000) fee to Lenders (per foreclosure) to cover the costs. Fees are regularly charged by virtually all Municipalities and Governments to cover costs. Maybe this would be a “modified rocket docket”. I’d be inclined to apply this to “securitized”/assigned loans.
A checklist could be created and Foreclosing parties would be required to submit all documents and evidence addressing all known challenges to foreclosure in Florida. Documentation would be required to be submitted in a standard format, and verified. Errors or omissions could incur additional fees.
Lenders with “clean” documentation would have no problem getting to court and should pretty much be a “slam dunk”. Lenders with incomplete assignment documentation could be allowed to proceed to court with “red flags” to alert the judge and defendants.
I see a $10,000 foreclosure fee as being an incentive for lenders to “modify” or “short sell” or “deed in lieu” or write down principal rather than foreclosing. I also see a ($10,000) fee as taxing the folks most that contributed most to the foreclosure problem.
Interesting alternative.
All we need is the social will to make change.
It would appear that Jim Elliot has hit upon a viable approach to ridding our economy of the fraudsters cancer, especially if it were to be adopted nationwide. Not much chance of that, I’m afraid—certainly not while such financial inbreeding is occurring at the highest levels of theseinstitutions in collusion with Federal entities.
I am the plaintiff against BofA for fraudulent loans (loan flipping and lying twice to disabled people) We are coming up on year three—the motion to dismiss by BofA was denied (same Southern Court where MERS was recently slapped by Judge Owen Panner), and OUR judge has indicated he would like to see the matter adjudicated at mediation or settlement conference.
Even though MERS foreclosed on the property, our attorney has not included this in the complaint. I only wonder if it is too late to do so—or is it proper to bring it up at mediation? Oregon is a non-judicial state, and foreclosures recently increased enormously in opposition to the rest of the states…….
Thanks for the salient venue, Yves. Your site has become a ‘go to’ source for many thousands. No amount of thanks can be enough.
The problem with a $10,000 fee is the lender is getting a writeoff of the value of the property. So a $300,000 home that is foreclosed on is worth $300,000 to the lender and a $10,000 fee is a speed bump.
You would need to wipe out the tax writeoff to make any real difference. Without that change, it is currently worth 100x more to foreclose than any negotiation. Also the writeoff is instant, any continuation of the mortgage stretches off into the distance of as much as 30 years.
The lender has no interest in anything further out than next year, so of course the only real alternative is foreclosure.
“The moment the courts simply require that a bank prove it has an interest in the indebtedness of the property it’s foreclosing on, 97% of the foreclosures stop.”
That about says it all.
Great Article. Finally there is some discussion of what really counts. Thank you Yves.
I suggest that interested parties read: L.Randall Wray’s Article Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud, Part II: The mother of all frauds.
The US needs to reinstate a Glass Steagall Act. The real working people of the world need to get rid of derivatives like forwards, options, and swaps. If you want to keep these derivatives then when your bet blows up in your face YOU pay for the results.
Here is what I see we are witnessing:
The economic elite created the deriviate market. Call it the World casino.
The economic elite bet in the market they created and persuaded the rest of the investment world to bet as well.
When it blew (up as all ponzi scheme’s will) the economic elite decided that they are not going to take a hair cut due to their mistakes.
They decided that the working people of the world will pay for their mistakes through social cutbacks and increased taxes and fees.
Oh, great. To borrow a line from Republican/Tea Baggers…
This is government intervention in free markets. That is right. Those asshats want the government to, once again, to intervene in efficiently operating markets. Will they please make up their f$#king mind about who they are, what they want, and where they are going.
Those asshats like Gov. Scott and Republicans and their ignorant lackey-suckups can not but intervene in efficiently operating markets. Government intervention. All those out there who worship free markets should rise up and overthrow this Communist piece of sh#t. If the people do not need centralized planning, Communism, or Socialism – then neither do corporations.
Now, that sarcasm is done. Back to reality. A non-Republican, non Tea-Bagger reality in lieu of fantastical, magical, propagandized tomfoolery.
“Those asshats like Gov. Scott and Republicans and their ignorant lackey-suckups can not but intervene in efficiently operating market.”
Scoot and the republicans are the lackey suckups, though. Also Obama, Weiner, Schumer, Frank, and Dodd. Could go on.
Lackey suckups, mmm-hmm.
Ditto…..! You’ve seen the light….. Democrat and Republican Corporate lackeys, with their enablers in the MSM….
Of course he has seen the light. The article is about Scott. If the article included the other asshats, we would be discussing them. :)
They weren’t satisfied with the honest dollar they got lending money for mortgages, and started to play stupid games. And now, nobody….NOBODY…NOBODY knows who holds the actual interest in your house. Yves Smith
What honest dollar? Banks steal our own purchasing power and lend it back (at interest) to (some of) us.
It is poetic justice that the banks can’t prove ownership.
were conservatives supposed to be believers in the rule of law? or was the old conservatives? the new ones just believe what ever their boss tells them to?
People tend to forget that banks were forced to make these loans by the Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Obama.
They maintained that home ownership was a right.
Banks loose thousands on every foreclosure, so its the last thing that they want to do.
Right. Banks were forced to make the loans, bundle them into toxic assets, misrepresent those assets when selling them, create a phony registration system, crash the global financial markets, refuse to reasonably modify the loans, bleed every nickel from homeowners who couldn’t sell due to the crashed economy and real estate market, generate fraudulent documents to present to courts, and foreclose instead losing huge value for the suckers who bought their products.
These guys actually have our best interests at heart.
Bankers were furious they had to take so many bonuses.
Well, when the bond rating agencies made it clear that they were rating 80% of everything as AAA anyone that didn’t take advantage of that was a fool, and there are few fools in the upper echelons of the finance world.
Literally, they packaged up home loans into bonds and 80% of them were rated AAA. They took the non-AAA ones and bundled them up with some others which again resulted in 80% being rated AAA. Eventually, everything was rated AAA.
AAA is investment-grade and was then snapped up by pension funds and anybody else that is legally required to only invest in AAA-rated bonds. The fallout from that hasn’t hit yet.
Dear genomega;
Follow the money flow. Basically, the fraud aspects of this are all about the “mortgage system derivitives” money. The ‘charges,’ ‘penalties’ and employee bonuses that flow from them to the myriad individuals working this system to death. The banks themselves are expendable, and should have been allowed to die three years ago. We had a chance to stop this cancer by cuting off a finger. Now the whole arm has to go. (The banksters certainly gave us that finger, didn’t they.)
We are trying in California. Please help pass Assembly Bill 1321. It only asks for all mortgage assignments to be recorded but MERS and title companies claimed it would bring lending to a standstill. What lending you might ask? Any private lending because banks seems to have forgotten how to do it, legally, and provide constructive notice.
It seems as though there may be another interesting mechanism come into play in many states. And that would be where local governments have the authority to sell these properties for unpaid taxes. As careless as the financials have been about all legal requirements, if the homeowners have stopped paying taxes and the banks are disdainful enough to ignore paying them, that should be an interesting scenario. There would be no question at that point about the title to the property – but it wouldn’t be the financials that would own them.
I have recently seen that banks have been given a bye on this also. In my area and others the banks have been given the right to not pay taxes on their foreclosed properties until the property is no longer bank property.The taxes are even added on to the auction price in some cases, sometimes without disclosure to the purchaser.
The mortgages were packaged and sold on long time ago, were they not ?
Can any of your contacts on the Hill make Obama read this article for Pete’s sake?
(I know, I know! A man can always dream, no?)
Just in case the man would stop for one nanosecond to think politics only and get outside The DC Matrix!
Oh dear.
For those of you who think lender forbearance is the solution, you reeeallly need to read this warning from the UK’s financial services authority:
http://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/regulation/forbearance-being-used-to-hide-arrears-says-fsa/1030648.article
No idea how things really work in the US, but I assure you mortgage and credit card arrears are treated like a joke in the UK. I see the debt management plans every day and despair.
The US seems to be dealing with its bad debt problem. The methods are not ideal, but compared to what the UK banks are allowed to get away with, the US system is not too shabby.
However this turns out, know one thing – UK banks are a sham.
Screw Rick Scott. And he has a law degree and he spouts off nonsense? Has he ever heard of the ex post facto clause in the constitution? The real problem is of the banks own making, and can not be changed by legislation.
If they want to change the law on future foreclosures, that is the legislatures choice. Not everyone in this state has drank the tea party kool aid. And I know this dumbass who turned down the federal money for a high speed rail line, because HE wanted to make a statement, has lost the support of the nutjobs who elected him.
That money would have helped many families, and saved many struggling businesses.
Of course he is a ass of the first order.
Theft if theft. I would hope even Scott would not ignore someone robbed at gunpoint, yet it amazes me that as Governor, he is seemingly willing to look the other way while people are robbed by ballpoint.
It is bad enough these criminals haven’t been and likely wont be held accountable or charged with any of the felonious acts they have clearly committed and now our governor wants to give them the weapons.
Who voted for this wack job? I suppose what makes Scott’s idea even more disingenuous is setting aside the entire MERS debacle for a moment, the level and extent of fraud we KNOW to exist and has very recently come to light in the main stream media. Struggling homeowner’s are in NEED of more safeguards so they don’t lose their homes via fraud.
Governor, you want to expedite foreclosure and as a citizen I want you to properly fund our courts. Try this. First, zero tolerance on fraud. Lock a few big wigs up. Then, give the banks ONE shot at a foreclosure. Tell them to bring it, and dot their I’s and cross their T’s. They think a $1,900 filing fee is bad, charge them $3,800 to amend it due to a genuine error and the homeowner is only going to pay the first one if they lose. The bottom line is due diligence is part and parcel of due process the banks need to quit wasting our courts time.
Got problems with the note? Own up to it and negotiate in good faith. You might be surprised to find most people aren’t looking for “free” they are looking for “fair.”
I can explain in two words why banks don’t want the current inventory of vacant homes here in Florida, much less the countless more you wish to enable the theft of. BLACK MOLD. My neighbors packed up and walked away from their 4 year old beautiful home about 14 months ago and it has been vacant ever since. If you look thru the windows, you can see the walls are covered with that toxic mold. Any home sitting vacant and unattended here if Florida is at risk. And you gotta know, once these greedy banks discover this, their new self inflicted mess, they are going to come crying once again, begging, bribing and threatening the government to bail them out.
Putting foreclosure aside, if a bank cannot prove that it holds an interest in the debt, how can they continue to collect payments and charge fees to the debtor?
4th of July
Expect Us
The time is now to strategically default on mortgage payments en masse. A National Mortgage Default Action will begin on the 4th of July. Celebrate your financial Independence by joining this movement here.
Here we stand on the precipice of financial and spiritual collapse. A filthy scourge has been allowed to infiltrate the homes of decent and upstanding people which deters us from living the way we would like. There comes a time in all of our …lives where we must stand up for ourselves and our livelihoods – not only because of the crisis we are currently facing and the oppression we have been dealt; but for the livelihoods of our children, and the betterment of humanity as a whole.
Lenders have foreclosed on tens of thousands of homes in this great land we call the United States of America. These homes – now empty – were once lived in by everyday people like you and me that now have been cast aside and left to fend for themselves in a crumbling economy.
With unemployment at an all time high, we the People of this once great nation must unite and take our lives back; take back our self-esteem, and take back the glory that has been stolen from us via unethical means from these malicious banking magnates. As the “too big to fail” banks are bailed out with our hard earned tax-payer dollars we are made homeless and to suffer at the hands of immoral tyrants.
I ask you as the people of America: what will it take in order for you to stand up and be the the great and empowered citizens we once were?
The time is now! We can be the proud Americans we should be by rising up in spirit by making a stand and taking action. The Action we propose would be to default on your mortgage payments to show these degenerate bankers that they are here to serve the public interest – not to fleece the nation and line their own pockets with gold. While we struggle for bread and milk. In doing so, you should know that you are not alone: there are millions who have questions unanswered, and mouths that go unfed.
How many children go hungry in America every night? How many children go without health care and medicine because you are forced to pay a mortgage so they have a home to starve in?
These tyrannical practices can not continue. We must unite and take our money and power back from those that systematically and routinely run us into the gutter. We are reaching out to you in hopes that your own lives have not been tread upon to the point where you no longer have the will to fight for what is good, wholesome, and right. Please consider not paying your mortgage to show the banks that they do not own us.
We do not need banks, they need us.
Thank You People of The United States of America for your time and consideration.
Be well and happy!
Operation Empire State Rebellion
Join this National Mortgage Default Action here.
And be sure to invite all of your friends…
Is the Author sure Rick Scott went to Law School? Afterall, how could a Judge review a verdict to determine if the underlying case has a merit. The very fact that a case went to trial and a jury rendered a verdict begs the conclusion that the case does in fact have merit.
I read a lot of bellyaching above about what DOES NOT MATTER in the LONG RUN. Does anyone really doubt whether the borrower signed the note and mortgage, borrowed money, got the house, occupied it, paid payments, then stopped paying in violation of the note and mortgage? Only ONE THING undercuts that reality: Fraud at the base of the mortgage.
If you cannot prove fraud, the court will eventually grant the foreclosure because the holder/mortgagee will eventually get their papers in order, refile or appeal, win, foreclose, get the house sold, and take the dough.
BUT, if you find fraud underlying the mortgage, now the court has to give you a mechanism for redress of injury, and with that proof, you can undo the entire transaction. Almost anything else simply delays the inevitable, so what’s the point? Lawyers bilk their clients to do this delay which the clients can do for themselves via loan mod and aborting it for a short sale or deed in lieu of foreclosure, or even a cram-down of the loan balance. Deed in Lieu will give the borrower $5K or $10K to walk away leaving the house broom clean.
What does that mean to you? FIND THE FRAUD. Can’t do it? Hire the best. $2500 to find the fraud and draft a report in tort complaint form. $1000 refund if insufficient torts to justify the complaint. With the complaint in hand, you seek a settlement, and if the lender refuses, sue and hammer the lender like in this case:
http://www.wvrecord.com/news/233771-quicken-loans-on-losing-end-of-3-million-predatory-lending-verdict
IF you have $2500 to find the fraud, contact Storm here, and tell him Bob Hurt sent you.
703 622 5181
Any questions? Contact me here:
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01VM4LQQ7Oo63xwaK6fhRuVw==&c=btRQsu1P1xw8-ABdU2Tp1w==
If you DON’T have the $2500, go ahead and move out of the house and forget fighting the foreclosure, or hock your rolex or car to get the money. After all, you could win a huge punitive damage award or settlement by using the fraud Storm finds, if it exists, which 80% of the single family residential mortgages do.
Thanks for linking to the article.
Muskegon, MI has had zero…that’s ZERO foreclosures listed in the past week based on the decision of the local judges, despite unemployment well into the double digits.