Posted on 10/17/2010 3:25:22 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The national faulty foreclosure crisis that could extend the real estate turmoil for years, has been traced back to a modest Denmark, Maine home with a $474 monthly mortgage payment.
The house was purchased for $75,000 seven years ago by Nicolle Bradbury.
But when she lost her job about two years ago she was unable to continue making her payments. But unlike millions of others who just closed their eyes and waited until the lender foreclosed and evicted them, Bradbury contacted a legal assistance center when her foreclosure notification came, the New York Times’s David Streitfeld reported.
And at the Pine Tree Legal Assistance a volunteer lawyer, Thomas A. Cox, got her file. As fate would have it, Cox was a retired lawyer who worked for a bank for 20 years and knew a lot of foreclosures.
Cox, the article says, almost immediately recognized that GMAC Mortgage’s foreclosure document was flawed.
It contained a note that the foreclosure was approved “by an employee whose title was ‘limited signing officer,’ an indication to the lawyer that his knowledge of the case was effectively nonexistent,” the NY Times reported.
Cox deposed the employee who acknowledged that he prepared about 400 foreclosures a day, and “that contrary to his sworn statements, they had not been reviewed by him or anyone else.”
That employee is one of scores of what are now called “robo-signers” hired by banks and other lenders and signed off on millions of foreclosures falsely attesting that each file had been examined and was correct.
Other lawyers found out about the deposition and throughout the country started legal actions contesting foreclosures. As a result GMAC, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and other lenders have had to either freeze or suspend foreclosures in almost every state.
Attorneys general in all 50 states as well as Congress is now investigating. Bank stocks are taking a beating as investors fear the foreclosure crisis could result in long-term damage to bank earnings.
So the bankers that helped create the global financial crisis by providing easy credit to many who could not afford the mortgages, as well as investing in financial products they did not understand, can now be blamed for the foreclosure crisis because they failed to follow the law.
While the suspension of foreclosures will help some who deserve to be helped, many more who knowingly bought houses they couldn’t afford or stopped making mortgage payments simply because the value of their homes are now less than the mortgage simply stopped paying will also be rewarded.
And guess who will end up paying for this crisis? Either consumers or taxpayers. It won’t be the bankers. At least Bradbury is still in her home, despite the fact that she hasn’t paid her mortgage in two years.
“The tragedy of foreclosure is that some homeowners may be able to stay where they are if their lenders are more interested in modification than eviction. Without a job, Mrs. Bradbury is not one of them. Her family, including her 14-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son, lives on welfare and food stamps,” said the Times article. “A lot of people say we just want a free ride,” Mrs. Bradbury said. “That’s not it. I’ve worked since I was 14. I’m not lazy. I’m just trying to keep us together. If we lost the house, my family would have to break up.”
The banks are in the wrong for lying. But this gal isn’t paying her mortgage, so it’s not like they were wrong to foreclose on her.
I think we will find very, very few people foreclosed on who should not have been. The vast majority are people who aren’t paying for their home. So all this will do in the end is push back the forclosure mess a few more months, or give homes to people who can’t afford them and won’t be able to maintain them.
$474 monthly mortgage payment and hasn’t paid in two years. To be honest you can’t blame banks for cheating or taking shortcuts. They were forced to provide bad loans, forced to followed non-nonsensical regulations that are almost impossible to comply.
I would bet that lady’s house that if an intelligent outsider could abolish the current system and provide clear cut, sensible regulations and procedures, the banks would have no problem complying. I have know doubt that their are thousands upon thousands of pages of rules and regulations that make it almost as complicated as our current tax code.
Oh please. If there is a problem they can object or sue - presumably they have their cancelled checks or some indication that they paid somebody somewhere for their property?
This whole thing started with Andrew Cuomo under Clinton, when we had the very first case forcing banks to give loans to people who could never repay them. This woman is being used. She’s being blamed or credited for something that has nothing to do with the “crisis.”
I have friends and family in real estate, and the whole crisis is because Obama wants to undermine the stability of contracts and mortgages. Is bundling mortgages bad? Not necessarily, but it does indicate that the banks wanted to be clear of them because they knew they had been forced by the government to take on mortgages that even on their face were going to be nonperformining.
This whole document crisis is a massive attempt to shift the blame. Don’t fall for it.
But weren't bankers simply following the mandates imposed upon them by the federal government? Why is this not mentioned in this story? Do we really believe that bankers, who are in the business of making money, wanted to loan money that they, most likely, will never see again?
I believe the whole reason for the “robo-signers” was to insulate the lawyers drawing up the docs from being charged with a fraud upon the court, so there is no member of the bar association with a signature on any of these documents.
Why does this sound like a who's who of the Wall Street porkers who bellied up to the trough for taxpayer TARP and bail-out funds?
Arg... Too bad it is impossible to edit grammar mistakes. ;^)
Over the past 20 years,I have noticed a level of incompetence that extends across all walks of life and in all professions and occupations. I have seen rather egregious typographical errors in all sorts of professional correspondence - including legal and medical- and reports. I am sure most people have noted the number of errors seen daily in newspapers.
People in businesses answer the phones as if we are interrupting their day and they have something more important to do (like texting, filing their nails, etc.).
I see this is as just more of the same. Incompetence, a lack of professionalism and a serious lack of integrity and ethics.
What else is new?
Lawyers are destroying all our ways and means, one by one.
Anybody hiring “Robo-Signers” knew exactly what the score was and they are the ones who belong under the bus.
But, briefly… In the 1990s, mortgage lenders and servicers decided to bypass centuries of established precedent for tracking ownership of physical land and the related loans, because they did not want to pay fees to county registries that have tracked that ownership for legal purposes since before the nation was founded.
As a result, 60% of all mortgages in the U.S. today are legally “owned” by MERS, a Delaware corporation with approximately zero employees. Now, in order for the owner of a mortgage to perform certain legal actions — like “conveying an interest” in the land — some states require the signature of a “Vice President”.
Imagine for a moment why a state might impose such a requirement, and then read this quote from Prof. Peterson’s new paper (emphasis mine):
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As a practical matter, the incoherence of MERS’ legal position is exacerbated by a corporate structure that is so unorthodox as to arguably be considered fraudulent. Because MERSCORP is a company of relatively modest size, it does not have the personnel to deal with legal problems created by its purported ownership of millions of home mortgages. To accommodate the massive amount of paperwork and litigation involved with its business model, MERSCORP simply farms out the MERS, Inc. identity to employees of mortgage servicers, originators, debt collectors, and foreclosure law firms. Instead, MERS invites financial companies to enter names of their own employees into a MERS webpage which then automatically regurgitates boilerplate “corporate resolutions” that purport to name the employees of other companies as “certifying officers” of MERS. These certifying officers also take job titles from MERS stylizing themselves as either assistant secretaries or vice presidents of the MERS, rather than the company that actually employs them. These employees of the servicers, debt collectors, and law firms sign documents pretending to be vice presidents or assistant secretaries of MERS, Inc. even though neither MERSCORP, Inc. nor MERS, Inc. pays any compensation or provides benefits to them. Astonishingly, MERS “vice presidents” are simply paralegals, customer service representatives, and foreclosure attorneys employed by other companies. MERS even sells its corporate seal to non-employees on its internet web page for $25.00 each. Ironically, MERS, Inc.—a company that pretends to own 60% of the nation’s residential mortgages—does not have any of its own employees but still purports to have “thousands” of assistant secretaries and vice presidents.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/are-all-mortgage-backed-securities-scam
“”But weren’t bankers simply following the mandates imposed upon them by the federal government?”””
Well stated. Let us not lose sight of the fact that
Congress and the Presidency were both patting themselves on the back for getting over 65% of Americans owning a house.
Now the politicians are blaming the banks for the problem they created.
Oh yes, the Federal Reserve was a willing partner in creating this mess.
“At least Bradbury is still in her home, despite the fact that she hasn’t paid her mortgage in two years.” I do not understand how she could still be in her house if she has not made any payments fo 2 years. I would think if she even made minimum wage she coudl afford the payment if she worked 40 hrs per week if she made $8.00 per hour for 40 hrs a week that is 320.00 per week. Also if she did not make her mortgage payment did she not pay he property tax bill? Where I live if you fail to pay your property tax bill they will take your property there is no way I could go without paying property tax for 2 years and still have my home.
They probably are innocent, though - that's another tragedy. You can bet that their superiors or the person who hired them told them they have the proper authority to sign and to do so in the manner prescribed by the bank. That it was all legal and per the normal state of operations.
I can just see one of those robo-signers getting handed a stack of foreclosure documents and told "yep, these have been flagged and reviewed, sign so we can begin proceedings".
Congress and the Presidency from both parties.
W was out in AZ bragging about the number of immigrants who were now home owners.
It started with Carter and has gotten worse and worse with each president.
That's right.
Given securitization when it comes to tracing who really owns the mortgages -- it's the U.S. taxpayers!
And the Democrats would scream to high heaven
"YOU RACIST!!!!"
Indeed, which is exactly why the bank should not have tried the 'the dog ate my homework' approach to what should have been an open-and-shut foreclosure.
I wonder if this deadbeat is paying local property taxes.
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