Foreclosure company starts its own 'newspapers' to run foreclosure notices

[Newsjock]

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2012/01/northwest_trustee_squeezes_mor.html

Rim Publications LLC ... and its affiliates have in the past two years bought or started up six weekly newspapers in the Northwest. It could buy as many as 50 more in the Western states, said Rim co-founder Stephen Routh.

... Routh is also CEO of Bellevue-based Northwest Trustee Services Inc., whose one-stop shopping business model has made it the largest foreclosure trustee in the region. Owning newspapers will reduce costs for Northwest Trustee's lender clients and could make foreclosures more profitable for Routh's firm.

Oregon and most other states require that lenders or their trustees run a series of legal notices in the local newspaper before they auction off a foreclosed home. These legal ads, which generally cost $500-$2,000, are one of the largest expenses of the foreclosure process.

... They founded the Oregon Legal Journal and the Washington Legal Journal, weekly listings of foreclosure notices with a thin overlay of wire stories and limited local content.

[FreakinDJ]

1. With ZERO Circulation that will be a "Select List" of bidders

That certainly leaves open the door to some very questionable practices if not illegal

[customerserviceguy]

3. What's questionable about it?

This is in Washington State, where you don't do judicial foreclosures. There are requirements to publish in a "newspaper of record" that date from a time when newspapers were relevant. Their only effect was to embarass the debtor until large numbers of people simply stopped reading that section of the paper.

Being as these properties have debts (including sales costs) of far more than the properties are worth, the only bidders are the lenders who 'bid' the amount of their foreclosed mortgage (actually, a Deed of Trust in that state). the folks who are looking for houses to bid on already start at the courthouse, where the Notice of Trustee's Sale is recorded.

This publication requirement is an anachronism, and it does not surprise me in the least that somebody figured a way around giving hundreds of dollars to dying newspapers.

[customerserviceguy]

2. It just exposes the silly truth about publishing foreclosure notices

Nobody reads regular newspapers anymore, and they sure didn't read the voluminous ads in the "Legal Notices" section of the classifieds. Newspapers have lost revenue to Craigslist, so they have to gouge somebody. It was only a matter of time before someone else did this.

If we simply let foreclosing lenders post these on websites, it would stop the charade.