Just like a good magician uses misdirection to fool his audience, so are the banks and their attorneys. “‘We're not evicting people who deserve to stay in their house,’ JP Morgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said on a conference call.” Which looks, at first glance, like a pretty fair statement. These are people who have quit paying their mortgages. They deserve what they get, and you can’t blame the banks for it...right? No, wrong.
There are laws in all 50 states that outline what a mortgage holder has to do to foreclose on a mortgage. The procedures specify what paperwork the mortgage holder has to file with the court. Because for the court to have the authority to act, it has to have evidence to act on. In a foreclosure, the paperwork is the evidence. There’s no exception in the law for skipping steps, not filing the required proof, or blatantly falsifying the documents required to show that people don’t “deserve to stay in their houses.
BOTH parties had/have certain legal obligations...BOTH parties have to fulfill those obligations...not just the borrower. There are specific laws, statutes, tax codes and UCC codes that need to be complied with by the banks/lenders/note holders....
Here is an excerpt from an email written by an individual in the financial services industry, as posted on KeepAmericaAtWork , that concisely explains the process and current issues: “Homeowners can only be foreclosed and evicted from their homes by the person or institution that actually has the loan paper…only the note-holder has legal standing to ask a court to foreclose and evict.
“Before mortgage-backed securities, most mortgage loans were issued by the local savings & loan. So the note usually didn’t go anywhere: it stayed in the offices of the S&L down the street.
“But once mortgage loan securitization happened, things got sloppy…as everyone knows, the loans were ‘bundled’ into REMICs (Real-Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits) and then “sliced & diced…”“…somewhere between the REMICs and MERS, the chain of title was broken.
“…what does ‘broken chain of title’ mean? Simple: when a homebuyer signs a mortgage, the key document is the note…it’s the actual IOU. In order for the mortgage note to be sold or transferred to someone else (and therefore turned into a mortgage-backed security), this document has to be physically endorsed to the next person. All of these signatures on the note are called the ‘chain of title.’
“You can endorse the note as many times as you please…but you have to have a clear chain of title right on the actual note: I sold the note to Moe, who sold it to Larry, who sold it to Curly, and all our notarized signatures are actually, physically, on the note, one after the other.
“If for whatever reason any of these signatures is skipped, then the chain of title is said to be broken. Therefore, legally, the mortgage note is no longer valid. That is, the person who took out the mortgage loan to pay for the house no longer owes the loan, because he no longer knows whom to pay.
“The broken chain of title might not have been an issue if there hadn’t been an unusual number of foreclosures. Before the housing bubble collapse, the people who defaulted on their mortgages wouldn’t have bothered to check to see that the paperwork was in order.
“But …following the housing collapse of 2007-’10-and-counting, there has been a boatload of foreclosures…and foreclosures on a lot of people who weren’t sloppy bums who skipped out on their mortgage payments, but smart and cautious people who got squeezed by circumstances.
“These people started contesting their foreclosures and evictions, and so started looking into the chain-of-title issue, and that’s when the paperwork became important. So the chain of title became crucial and the botched paperwork became a nontrivial issue.
“…the banks had hired ‘foreclosure mills’…law firms that specialized in foreclosures…in order to handle the massive volume of foreclosures and evictions that occurred because of the housing crisis. The foreclosure mills …were the first to spot the broken chain of titles.
“…it turns out that these foreclosure mills might have faked and falsified documentation, so as to fraudulently repair the chain-of-title issue, thereby ‘proving’ that the banks had judicial standing to foreclose on delinquent mortgages. These foreclosure mills might have even forged the loan note itself…
The foreclosure mills did actually, deliberately, and categorically fake and falsify documents, in order to expedite these foreclosures and evictions.
I, myself, have seen a price list for these ‘services’ from a company called DocX…yes, a price list for forged documents. Still, the banks and foreclosure mill firms would like you to believe that "the end justifys the means".
A USA Today piece, ("Foreclousre processors say they didn't review much") about the "robo-signer" component to the fruad reveals that the banks literally hired people off the street, gave them an impressive title, (and a pen), and had them sign thousands of documents and affidavits a month without reviewing or even knowing the terminology contained in the documents.
I, myself, have seen a price list for these ‘services’ from a company called DocX…yes, a price list for forged documents. Still, the banks and foreclosure mill firms would like you to believe that "the end justifys the means".
Now all of this doesn't mean that everyone should get a home for free...but the banks need to LEGALLY go through the foreclosure process, THAT'S what this is about...
