I have a close friend of many years, a real estate broker, who acquired several properties before the Republicans helped banksters wreck the housing market. She’s a fighter, and has tried desperately to refinance her loans. She’s followed all the steps, and run up against all the dirty little schemes that banksters use to say they are participating in the program, but not really do so. I have shared her pain for over a year over this, and feel great anger over her experience. When I saw this, I immediately forwarded it to her, because it appears that in the midst of their predatory lending greed, the banksters may have screwed themselves.
Over 62 million mortgages are now held in the name of MERS, an electronic recording system devised by and for the convenience of the mortgage industry. A California bankruptcy court, following landmark cases in other jurisdictions, recently held that this electronic shortcut makes it impossible for banks to establish their ownership of property titles–and therefore to foreclose on mortgaged properties. The logical result could be 62 million homes that are foreclosure-proof.
Mortgages bundled into securities were a favorite investment of speculators at the height of the financial bubble leading up to the crash of 2008. The securities changed hands frequently, and the companies profiting from mortgage payments were often not the same parties that negotiated the loans. At the heart of this disconnect was the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, or MERS, a company that serves as the mortgagee of record for lenders, allowing properties to change hands without the necessity of recording each transfer.
MERS was convenient for the mortgage industry, but courts are now questioning the impact of all of this financial juggling when it comes to mortgage ownership. To foreclose on real property, the plaintiff must be able to establish the chain of title entitling it to relief. But MERS has acknowledged, and recent cases have held, that MERS is a mere "nominee"–an entity appointed by the true owner simply for the purpose of holding property in order to facilitate transactions. Recent court opinions stress that this defect is not just a procedural but is a substantive failure, one that is fatal to the plaintiff’s legal ability to foreclose.
That means hordes of victims of predatory lending could end up owning their homes free and clear — while the financial industry could end up skewered on its own sword… [emphasis added]
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Don’t get me wrong. I’m not part of the something-for-nothing set and believe that people should pay for what they get, if they possibly can. However, these corporate criminals have been so underhanded, that if this pans out to save their victims, I will dance for joy!
