Three should be a lien release from the first mortgage.
Find another lender
If there is a 2nd mortgage it will be recorded at the clerk of court for the county where the property is located. There will also be record of any satisfaction of mortgage. That would be the place to start.
I have never heard of a seller needing such a letter. Is this a new thing?
The other mortgage could be a line of credit they aren’t using. They should get more details from Chase.
my advice to you is to not seek legal advice on an internet message forum. seriously.
really, really bad sh*t could happen if you get this wrong. tell your friend to call someone with a license.
Just get a Title Insurance company on it. This is what they do for a living.
I am a mortgage lender and own a real estate company. This comes up all the time.
All they have to do is go back to the attorney/title company that refinanced their last loan (2004) and get record of the filed satisfaction of mortgage.
Also, like another poster stated, it could also be a HELOC or creditline that is not being used with a zero balance but is a lien on the property for the credit limit.
That happened to me back in the 1980’s. There was a mechanics lien on my house for a fence that had been installed (and paid for) many years earlier. I had to provide proof that I had paid off the fence company in order to have the lien released. It had been the fence company’s responsibility to do this, but they never did. It may involve a visit to your town’s registry of deeds, with proof in hand.
I hope that my experience may be a help to you!
The escrow usually finds a title insurance company who does that kind of research. Find out who is the title ins company and talk to them.
When you send the request explain everything in detail - especially that there is not two mortgages. Send it snail mail; certified return receipt requested. Put cc: on the bottom with all three local TV stations - and send them copies.
I think that Cher put out a song about Chase-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLTETaWswCY
Was Chase holding the paper on *both* mortgages? If not, what they need is a letter of satisfaction from the lender who held the other mortgage, not Chase. If Chase held it then they need to cough up a letter. It's not voluntary.
If the note has been paid this shouldn't be a big deal. I'm surprised the professionals handling the transaction are letting this get in the way of their deal.
Contact the first company they had a loan from when they purchased the house. They should verify that they have no mortgage due from this couple, and that their original mortgage was satisfied in 2004.
If the request is coming from a title company, and Chase is being asked to correct what information the title company has, then regardless of what has taken place with Chase regarding their mortgages in the past, something has not taken place - by someone - in the filing of completion of the mortgage that has been satisfied.
If that is the case, your friends need to (a) talk to and provide documentation OF THEIR OWN to the title company, and upon doing that ask the title company and Chase to talk to each other as soon as that is done.
Your friends needed to have kept complete records of their own, no matter what lawyers or banks did or didn’t do for them. If they didn’t keep good records themselves, they may have screwed themselves, because then they become beggars before everyone who may have had anything to with those records. If they have the right documentation, the title company may agree and admit that recording that was somehow missed, by someone, and help your friends with getting it filed correctly and quickly. They and your friends should be able to communicate those facts to Chase and get the case of the satisfied mortgage cleared up.
Don’t get me started on Chase!
I had a knock on my VA home loan benefits from a loan 20 years ago they somehow thought I’d defaulted on. I went to find the bank for my proof of payoff, but they don’t exist anymore. I went to find the title company, and they are gone too. My realtor that sold that house for me didn’t keep records beyond a few years either, and I lost all my papers from back then in a move.
The county had enough records on file to prove I paid off the loan and sold it for a nice profit. The VA fixed it for me the moment I got those to them while I was on the phone with them.
I had a very similar case many years ago, a refi turned into a Short Sale because of a Paperwork snafu. My Mortgage Broker fixed it all by tracking all the info.
The lesson I learned was to keep everything on the cloud and on disk from now on, and know that banks and title companies are a joke.
Shouldn’t a title search company be able to clear that up?