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Judge Smales: "You'll get nothing and like it!"

Banks Lose to Deadbeat Homeowners as Loans Sold in Bonds Vanish

Some highlights:

Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Joe Lents hasn't made a payment on his $1.5 million mortgage since 2002.

That's when Washington Mutual Inc. first tried to foreclose on his home in Boca Raton, Florida. The Seattle-based lender failed to prove that it owned Lents's mortgage note and dropped attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.

...Judges in at least five states have stopped foreclosure proceedings because the banks that pool mortgages into securities and the companies that collect monthly payments haven't been able to prove they own the mortgages.

...Each time the mortgages change hands, the sellers are required to sign over the mortgage notes to the buyers. In the rush to originate more loans during the U.S. mortgage boom, from 2003 to 2006, that assignment of ownership wasn't always properly completed, said Alan White, assistant professor at Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Indiana.

"Loans were mass produced and short cuts were taken,'' White said. "A lot of the paperwork is done in the name of the original lender and a lot of the original lenders aren't around anymore.''

...When the mortgage servicers and securitizing banks that act as trustees of the securities fail to present proof that they own a mortgage, they sometimes file what's called a lost-note affidavit, said April Charney, a lawyer at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida.

Nobody knows how widespread the use of lost-note affidavits are, Charney said. She's had foreclosure proceedings for 300 clients dismissed or postponed in the past year, with about 80 percent of them involving lost-note affidavits, she said.

"They raise the issue of whether the trusts own the loans at all,'' Charney said. "Lost-note affidavits are pattern and practice in the industry. They are not exceptions. They are the rule.''

"Lost-note Affidavits". Add that to "Bandos" as a nominee for best new bubble buzzword of the year.
HARM

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