Even an insanely booming home market would not have been able to hide the problem, however. There would still be tragic situations (such as the unexpected death of a mortgage paying home owner who had no death benefit insurance and no heirs to try to take care of the mortgage by selling the house) in which the purported MERS assigns of the mortgage would attempt to foreclose, only to find as here that they could not. Can you imagine what this would look like on a title if they did it right... a million owners or however many shares the mortgage got divided into?
That’s true... but the instances would have not been enough to start causing investor heads to pop up and say “Whaaaa?” If the housing market had remained stable, these kinds of cases would have made for interesting bedtime reading for property lawyers and mortgage geeks.
NOW, however, with so many homes being underwater, so many people being out of work on a long-term basis with no sign of improvement in people’s ability to service debt... these cases are literally cracking open the doors to hell for mortgage finance companies. They’re realizing (too late) that they forged a petard most stoutly, and now “the little people” intend to hoist them upon it.
As to millions of owners: No. When this is done properly, you don’t see a bunch of owners on the deed or trust recording. You see a trust company or banks running the trust as the lienholder or trustee. RMBS have been sold in the US for decades now. There have been pools of mortgages for decades too. What failed here was the idea that some idiot could create a computerized mousetrap that could adhere to the real estate law of all 50 states, hide the transfers from the county clerks, and still be upheld in court.