I don’t want to see foreclosures stopped. It hurts banks that did everything right.
When you have banks stopping their own foreclosures because of problems with the paperwork. My radar is on full alert.
Oh yes. This is a real mess, and it’s the bank’s own fault. We could well need some horrible bank bailout bill to fix it, when all is said and done. Because at the moment, it looks like in some cases, a homeowner will not be able to get clear title to their own house, nor would any holder of a note be allowed to collect on that note, because there is no valid paper trail (valid in the sense of being properly filed with the correct local authorities).
In some cases, people really don’t have any idea what the paper trail is. In MOST of the cases, ownership is clear, just not properly documented. I think we’ll have to take action to “make legal” those cases where a clear transaction timeline exists that simply wasn’t properly documented; that would leave us with mostly good titles, and then we could deal with those cases where the chain of ownership has really been lost.
I’m fortunate that my original bank still holds my mortgage. I’m working on a refinance now, and I would be falling into this trap if my bank had sold the mortgage. And this bill’s veto may then have cost me a low interest rate or the money I am expecting to get out of the new mortgage.