IMO, the first thing the judge should establish is whether the mortgage is in arrears. If someone is contesting the Foreclosure simply ask them to produce a payment history.
Once it is established they are in default TO WHOMEVER owns the mortgage, place the contested asset under the custody of a receiver and evict the dead beat. The receiver can propose to rent the property back to them, under court approval, and if they default on rental, they are in contempt of court...evict. Meantime, out of the rental, escrow taxes and insurance, pay yourself a management fee, escrow the difference and try to determine who the rightful owner is under the conservatory.
The banks are not in any rush to have these foreclosures go through because from what I understand, the authorities are allowing them to keep the mortgages on their books at full value. Once they are foreclosed and the property sold, they know they will take a hit.
Good post.
The whole robosigning thing has been blown out of proportion and used as a smokescreen to shelter deadbeats and enrich lawyers. And as a vehicle for cranks to attack banks. Not that the incestual relationship between government and banks isn’t unhealthy, but it’s a different problem.
The comparison that I made to stock trading in my post #18 gets to the heart of the problem: record keeping for stock trading is done by private entities and trusted, while real estate records are handled by government agencies and is a mess. Just as one would expect.
What is needed is a one-time (gigantic) effort to identify each parcel and its components (mineral rights, water rights, easements, etc.) and get it right. Have the database be accessible electronically so that there is no tedium in determining ownership, and so that processing it is efficient. Unlike the laborious system that we have now, where lawyers and judges only make things worse.
That’s not quite right. The banks want to speed up the foreclosures and get the property resold (even at a loss)and the reason is - those mortgages that are MBS which people are defaulting on? The Banks/Servicers are paying the monthly payments to the MBS trust to avoid letting the investors know just how toxic the trust is. They are speeding up the foreclosures to try and get some of their own money back.
My question - In a lot of cases, if the Banks/Servicers continue to pay the Trust/investors (who actually OWN the mortgage assuming the note is in the Trust)- then there is NO DEFAULT. Whether my mortgage payment according to the terms of my note is paid by me, my grandmother, the neighbor down the street or the servicer is irrelevant. The Trust (investor) owns my note, not the servicer - so how can they claim I’ve defaulted if the investor has been paid monthly?
Who has standing to sue for foreclosure? Under the law as it is written, only the holder of the title.
Unless you also propose to eliminate the concept of “standing”, which would likely bring some interesting lawsuits about a certain Hawaii birth certificate to light.