Who owns YOUR mortgage?

[Epoetker]

Apparently we're not that sure anymore:

Because of the expense, time and paperwork it would take to record each of the assignments of the thousands of mortgages in each securitization, Wall Street firms decided to just issue blank mortgage assignments all along the channel of transfers, skipping the actual physical recording of the mortgage at the county registry of deeds.

Astonishingly, representatives for the trusts have been foreclosing on homes across the country, evicting the families, then auctioning the homes, without a proper paper trail on the mortgage assignments or proof that they had legal standing. In some cases, the courts have allowed the representatives to foreclose and evict despite their admission that the original mortgage note is lost. (This raises the question as to whether these mortgage notes are really lost or might have been fraudulently used in multiple securitizations, a concern raised by some Wall Street veterans.)

This is probably going to be the next gigantic issue in this election. Just saying.

[Mountain Man]

I've heard of cases where people have been able to successfully fight eviction on the grounds that the bank couldn't prove that the homeowner actually owed them money.

[Rapalyea]

Mortgages are routinely sold, repackaged, and sold again. It does not matter. What matters is whether you knew the original terms, and whether you can make the payments.

If you can not make the payments you do not belong in that house. You have no right to live in a house you can not afford. Further, the longer you live in that house without paying for it, the closer you come to becoming a thief.

This is not a hypothetical.

[Rapalyea]

Mountain Man - You wrote: "I've heard of cases where people have been able to successfully fight eviction on the grounds that the bank couldn't prove that the homeowner actually owed them money."

The question is not whether they can prove you owe the money. The question, the moral question, and the answer you will need to give you children is DO YOU OWE THE MONEY.

Here I am on a religious forum arguing against not only theft, but SANCTIONED theft. It is a scandal. YOU PAY YOUR DEBTS.

[seanD]

Mountain Man - You wrote: "I've heard of cases where people have been able to successfully fight eviction on the grounds that the bank couldn't prove that the homeowner actually owed them money."

The question is not whether they can prove you owe the money. The question, the moral question, and the answer you will need to give you children is DO YOU OWE THE MONEY.

Here I am on a religious forum arguing against not only theft, but SANCTIONED theft. It is a scandal. YOU PAY YOUR DEBTS.

The problem is the mortgage backed security and collateralized debt obligation scam, a.k.a mortgage derivatives. If bank A packages a bunch of mortgages and sells them to bank B, C, D or whatever, or some other financial institution or investor, no one knows who legally owns the mortgage. Joe Blow, who attempts to contact the bank to arrange some other possible deal with his loan because he's in dire straits is told that his bank no longer has the deed. In many cases, Joe Blow will pay his mortgage that he signed with bank A, not knowing that financial institution B, C, D or whatever is trying to foreclose on his home because they now own the mortgage in a packaged security. Bank A didn't tell Joe either because they're a bunch of dishonest criminals or because they lost track of the paperwork in the derivative back hole shuffle. So as you can see, it becomes not only an ethical dilemma, but a possible legal one, and quite the quagmire for a homeowner.

[Mountain Man]

Mountain Man - You wrote: "I've heard of cases where people have been able to successfully fight eviction on the grounds that the bank couldn't prove that the homeowner actually owed them money."

The question is not whether they can prove you owe the money. The question, the moral question, and the answer you will need to give you children is DO YOU OWE THE MONEY.

Here I am on a religious forum arguing against not only theft, but SANCTIONED theft. It is a scandal. YOU PAY YOUR DEBTS.

I don't know where you got the idea that I was advocating using legal loopholes to avoid the moral responsibility of paying one's debts, so spare me your self-righteous indignation.

[Epoetker]

Mountain Man - You wrote: "I've heard of cases where people have been able to successfully fight eviction on the grounds that the bank couldn't prove that the homeowner actually owed them money."

The question is not whether they can prove you owe the money. The question, the moral question, and the answer you will need to give you children is DO YOU OWE THE MONEY.

Here I am on a religious forum arguing against not only theft, but SANCTIONED theft. It is a scandal. YOU PAY YOUR DEBTS.

Who is this "you" you speak of? Who pays their debts?

A mortgage is a collateralized debt. Walking away from your mortgage, as long as you don't trash the house before you leave, is a somewhat morally defensible act-the bank still gets their collateral back. It's not like, say, walking away from a student loan. Or not paying for something which you already own, and then trying to hide it from the repo men.

Since marriage is down and dystopia is up, we are going to see quite a few more of these. Probably enough that the credit reporting agencies aren't going to clamp down on them as much, since many will be creditworthy otherwise. Sort of like I was still creditworthy after I declared strategic bankruptcy in response to threats of a frivolous lawsuit. (Literally how it went: "I have $1000. I can give this to your lawyer to settle this case, or give it to my lawyer to declare bankruptcy.")

The banks who went along with the crowd in optioning, securitizing, accelerating, and derivatizing every dollar they got deserve every strategic default they get. May they fall, and may responsible banks take their place. May they sell those houses at their actual value, and create realistic home ownership opportunities for real low-income families.

May they learn that the protective economic laws they lobbied Congress for can just as easily be applied by individuals.

[seanD]

The banks who went along with the crowd in optioning, securitizing, accelerating, and derivatizing every dollar they got deserve every strategic default they get. May they fall, and may responsible banks take their place. May they sell those houses at their actual value, and create realistic home ownership opportunities for real low-income families.

May they learn that the protective economic laws they lobbied Congress for can just as easily be applied by individuals.

Unfortunately they won't learn, because it won't fall on the heads of the too big to fail banks, it will fall on the heads of the taxpayers.

[Epoetker]

If it does, I'm electing Zombie Andrew Jackson.

[Epoetker]

And for future reference, to anyone who believes the "It's all about the technicalities!" line:

the implications of a complete breakdown of the title insurance system, the loss of any clear title to a vast number of properties [b](60% of all U.S. mortgages are in MERS now)[b], the potential for wrongful evictions, the potential to have a house you bought at sheriff's auction re-foreclosed by its rightful mortgage holder, the removal from counties of their ancient right to keep authoritative records of who owns land in their jurisdictions, and so on, ending with the potential total collapse of the banking sector and pensions worldwide (AGAIN) if their debt "assets" are shown to be backed by unrecoverable properties. Want to TARP your way out of that one? Say Guten Tag, Weimar!. It's an almost bottomless nightmare and it's got just about squat to do with deadbeat Mexicans and their 5,100 sq. ft. of the American dream. Calling it "lawyers seizing on technicalities" is just ludicrously glib.

The Baby Boomer population did not have enough kids to replace themselves. Now they're desperately trying to price their children and the immigrants they imported out of a starter home so that their retirement portfolio keeps its inflated value. This is precisely why that whole Biblical Jubilee Debt forgiveness thing happened on a 50-year cycle.

The scandal isn't that a few squatters are going to get a free house. The scandal is that those young families who may want to buy a house STILL aren't going to pay anything close to its real value. Banks are simply going to sit on the foreclosures and questionable titles until the government is forced to take them over (with, of course, taxpayer-funded compensation higher than they could get by selling them at market rates,) re-declare them Affordable Housing, and distributing them to whichever group the government wants to get the votes of in the next election.

[seanD]

The banks are essentially laundering counterfeit mortgages. If there are no prosecutions for this mass fraud, then we will know for a fact that banks have unheralded influence in this country, particularly over our legal system. If there is prosecution, then we can watch as the banking system unravels once again before our very eyes, and expect another crash with another bailout.