Posted on 03/30/2015 9:14:54 AM PDT by Theoria
In September, Susan Rodolfi celebrated an unusual anniversary: five years of missed mortgage payments.
She is like a ghost of the housing market’s painful past, one of thousands of Americans who have skipped years of mortgage payments and are still living in their homes.
Now a legal quirk could bring a surreal ending to her foreclosure case and many others around the country: They may get to keep their homes without ever having to pay another dime.
The reason, lawyers for homeowners argue, is that the cases have dragged on too long.
There are tens of thousands of homeowners who have missed more than five years of mortgage payments, many of them clustered in states like Florida, New Jersey and New York, where lenders must get judges to sign off on foreclosures.
However, in a growing number of foreclosure cases filed when home prices collapsed during the financial crisis, lenders may never be able to seize the homes because the state statutes of limitations have been exceeded, according to interviews with housing lawyers and a review of state and federal court decisions.
“No one gets a free house,” Judge Michael B. Kaplan of the United States Bankruptcy Court in Trenton wrote in an opinion late last year, reflecting what he characterized as a longstanding “admonition” he and others made during the foreclosure crisis. But after effectively ending a New Jersey homeowner’s foreclosure case in November because the state’s six-year statute of limitations had expired, he wrote in his opinion, “With a proper measure of disquiet and chagrin, the court now must retreat from this position.”
It is difficult to know for sure how many foreclosure cases are still grinding through the court systems since the financial crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wow. Sad. Thanks for the FReeper story/experience.
“They do have clear title. They simply have digitized the paperwork and misplaced the hard copies.”
No they don’t. In some cases they have digitized paperwork, which is not compliant with local laws.
In many cases they don’t have any paperwork except the mortgage. Only they can’t even prove they are the legitimate owner of the mortgage because those were all lumped together and shuffled around.
both are corrupt and soaked in greed
I agree.
However, the CRA required loans in red-lined areas, and NINJA loans were done in an attempt to placate those who insisted on such laws. In effect, banks were required to make such loans. (Not saying that they did not embrace the practice.)
Those loans were bundled with more solid loans, and sold. The result was the housing bubble.
I have little doubt that as housing prices increased, scoundrels took out home equity loans against their now-inflated homes' values and walked with the cash, just onw scam of many which have wounded our economy.
The bank chose to snooze.
Someday someone will open the can of worms crated by the cabals involving the banks, the builders and the appraisers, which also helped fuel this fire.
There is nothing immoral about it
The bank knew the rules. There was no theft. It wasn’t the homeowner but the bank that chose not to proceed when it very well could have but CHOSE not to. There is nothing.immoral or.corrupt.about a legal principal hundreds of years older than the US.
Considering the details are misplaced, in storage, scattered, or in electronic form (maybe), the future sleuth might get the larger picture, but the details will likely have been lost.
I assure you they have a legitimate lean on the property.
ARGH!
‘Ten Most Wanted”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul Pelosi, Jr. also received a loan with Countrywide. Barbara Boxer, Jim Johnson [Fannie Mae], Adam H. Putnam, Richard C. Holbrooke, James E. Clyburn, and Donna Shalala are among those with mortgages from Countrywide....and Chris Dodd.
As far as i know......all got off, Scott-free....which I why I hold no hope for HRC serving any time.
Sorry, but this red line argument is a red herring, always was. You don’t blow up the housing market and the larger economy with failed loans in depressed inner cities... That argument is a red herring.
The fact was that flat out GREED is what lead to the bust. The reality was, there were buyers willing to buy Mortgage Back Securities, and there was a complete run on them... Koreans weren’t buying up these things because the FED was incentivising red line district loans. The simple fact was there was so much demand for these things, that banks and everyone else in the system were willing to keep financing anyone just to keep feeding the pig.
There were more buyers for these securities than there were any sort of reasonable supply, so everyone and I do mean everyone was doing everything they could to invent supply. They had no qualms giving loans they knew could never be repaid and didn’t care, and no the overwhelming majority were not in red line districts, because you don’t have brand new 800k homes in red line districts to finance.
The housing bust was not a result of redline policies, that’s a nice conservative talking head talking point/spin, but its not remotely the cause of it. When you have people making 50k a year, buying 600k homes, or 100k a year buying 1 Million dollar homes you aren’t selling homes to folks who are either destitute or are in red lined areas.
What you had happen is the banks would finance ANYONE, no credit check, no income verification, no debt to income, no anything... they would finance ANYONE for anything. This did 2 things, first it cause housing prices to go up astronomically because it didn’t matter the price, there was nothing to pressure it back down. Buy a house today, it was worth 100k more in 12 months, in many markets.. banks lazy, people took risks they never should have thinking they could win the gravy train... etc etc etc. 2nd it cause more people to buy beyond their means because who cares, i twill be worth 100k more in a year, and I can sell it and make 100k, I can strap myself for a year for that kind of profit...
GREED cause the housing crisis, not red line loans. This idiotic talking point has to end, you don’t destroy a housing market because you made some loans in questionable areas, you destroy the housing market by overfinancing everyone.
The cause of the housing bust cannot be laid at the feet of government, it can be laid squarely at the feet of those that government spent billions bailing out... the Banking industry.
“I assure you they have a legitimate lean on the property.”
But they don’t and thats the cruxt of the issue. Someone HAD a legitimate lien on the property when the mortgage was originated. Through the multiple tiers of selling the mortgage and using it as backing for securities the banks failed to properly document the owner of the mortgage, thereby invalidating the lien.
Property laws are local and must be complied with.
The bottom line is that government made the whole thing possible, and in some areas virtually required that the loans be made.
The NINJA (no income, no job, no assets) loan was just one manifestation of the greed, one vehicle by which money could be made. But the government made the rules which precluded turning someone down on the basis of where the property was located. The whole broader 'flipper' market resulted from the kiting values and the idea someone could turn a property for a profit in no time, often with little or no investment.
The whole 'it will be worth more tomorrow' bit has been done before on smaller scales (I have been through a couple of oil booms and the busts which followed, so this isn't the first time I have seen wild fluctuations in real estate values.). Sooner or later a few someone(s) are very rich, others get left holding the bag.
Joe,
Again, the government redline rules are and always were a red herring! Believe me, South Koreans weren’t buying up these things because of government policy. You can’t crash an entire economy by forced loans in redline districts... redline districts by their very nature are an incredibly small part of the housing stock. This line is good red meat for right wing ideologues but it was not the cause of the housing debacle.
Here’s the simple truth, if you took every red lined house in the country and gave them all loans that failed, it would not remotely have caused the problems that you saw over the last 7 years. The numbers don’t add up.
Now, were the red line polices smart? No, and we can discuss that all you would like, but the supposition that it caused or led to the housing debacle is just flat out nonsense.
Its a red herring, and its frankly moronic, there is no difference between that flat out lie that red line polices caused the housing crisis, than there is to the flat out lie that more welfare will fix the inner city. Both are flat out, complete and utter lies, the only difference is which side of the political spectrum created them and uses them to spin reality.
The reality is simply this, GREED created the housing crisis, pure and simple, not governmental policies around red line districts. The overwhelming majority of $$ lost in the debacle were not tied to red lined properties.. because housing bubble or no red line areas are naturally depressed. No one is going into a red line area and paying 800k for a 3 bedroom house, no one. Yet, a couple both working labor jobs making a combined income of 50 or 70k between them were going in and buying new construction homes at 800k and getting their loans approved, because it was GREED. You put these people into homes in interest only loans or even negative amortized loans with a 5 year balloon and guess what, they are going to fail. That’s what brought the on the housing crisis, not the fact that a banks were forced to loan in redline neighborhoods.
The facts do not support this lie, and its insulting and disingenuous that fools like Hannity continue to regurgitate it. There is no doubt that fed policies around red line districts were poorly thought out, and they deserve to be criticized. However, to take that issue and try to present it as the root cause of the housing crisis requires so either complete ignorance of facts by those espousing it, or a complete willingness to ignore the facts to gain ideological points.
Its a lie, pure and simple, and it needs to stop being espoused as gospel.
When the lid came off those areas, standards changed all over.
Their is a legitimate lean filed at the county courthouse.
Their is not a clear title to the property. Without a clear title it can never be transferred to a new owner. There is no way that any financial institution will release that lean without some form of payment.
A lien that doesn’t have an owner cannot be legitimate. The financial institution cannot prove it owns the mortgage. In many cases the financial institution no longer exists.
Give it up, they’ve screwed things up which is why this judge is giving away this house.
She still doesn’t own the house.
She will end up owning. Because nobody else has a valid claim.
When I worked for a contractor we put leans on homes all the time when people short paid or didn’t pay for work on their home.
The estate of the contractor still gets checks regularly when properties transfer.
I am sure banks have more pull than a guy who barely made payroll every week and is dead.
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