Posted on 03/30/2015 9:14:54 AM PDT by Theoria
In September, Susan Rodolfi celebrated an unusual anniversary: five years of missed mortgage payments.
She is like a ghost of the housing market’s painful past, one of thousands of Americans who have skipped years of mortgage payments and are still living in their homes.
Now a legal quirk could bring a surreal ending to her foreclosure case and many others around the country: They may get to keep their homes without ever having to pay another dime.
The reason, lawyers for homeowners argue, is that the cases have dragged on too long.
There are tens of thousands of homeowners who have missed more than five years of mortgage payments, many of them clustered in states like Florida, New Jersey and New York, where lenders must get judges to sign off on foreclosures.
However, in a growing number of foreclosure cases filed when home prices collapsed during the financial crisis, lenders may never be able to seize the homes because the state statutes of limitations have been exceeded, according to interviews with housing lawyers and a review of state and federal court decisions.
“No one gets a free house,” Judge Michael B. Kaplan of the United States Bankruptcy Court in Trenton wrote in an opinion late last year, reflecting what he characterized as a longstanding “admonition” he and others made during the foreclosure crisis. But after effectively ending a New Jersey homeowner’s foreclosure case in November because the state’s six-year statute of limitations had expired, he wrote in his opinion, “With a proper measure of disquiet and chagrin, the court now must retreat from this position.”
It is difficult to know for sure how many foreclosure cases are still grinding through the court systems since the financial crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ping!
It is theft and corruption. Call it by any other name, and it is still theft and corruption.
Good. Banks must bear responsibility for sitting on their rights. Lol
No its called a procedural had to recovery. (Also, karma)
Many think they’re getting even with the ‘Banksters’. But two wrongs are still two wrongs. How can a society recover from such corrupt practices?
Law doesn’t apply??
Yes it is. There is nothing these people ever did or will do to earn what they stole. In the end we all pay for their “good fortune”......
A statute of limitations is not a corrupt practice.
They didn’t steal anything. The banks did chose not file claims in time
—chose not to file claims in time
No it doesn’t, States out date Real-estate laws do not apply today’s suave Mortgage lenders.
In order for the statute of limitations to apply, the Banks must have waited for more than six years from the date of the last mortgage payment to even file a lawsuit. Even a single payment restarts the running of the statute of limitations.
Theft by the banks or the people the banks failed to prove their case against?
Yep, you snooze, you lose.
And the banks have been downright Rip van Winkling it.
I am not supporting the people who are getting their homes and not having to pay for them, but what the hell is wrong with the banks for waiting so long to recover these houses?
Forgive me if I am wondering if we’re only seeing a very small part of the story here. I can’t imagine that there’s not a compelling reason why a money-grubbing bank would not follow through on a foreclosure unless by doing so they’re somehow making MORE money.
not in obamaland...btw- what about real estate taxes due on these homes??? have they been paid?? and if not don’t local municipalities have a right to garnish wages, etc???
She used a lawyer to finesse the law instead of making good faith payments ($1300 mortgage vs. $500/month for the lawyer). It doesn’t make her right. She stole the house.
I read the article and I think she was capricious and disingenuous in her representation to the bank about any “deal” and she scammed them.
Regardless, now the banks won’t have to pay the property taxes (back taxes included) and insurance and this b!tch will lose the house.
“How can a society recover from such corrupt practices?”
You ask that while the people who caused it remain free and clear enjoying the billions they “earned”.
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