Mortgages are all mucked up...

[dkf]

At the core of the fights over the legal standing of banks in foreclosure cases is Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, based in Reston.

The company, known as MERS, was created more than a decade ago by the mortgage industry, including mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, GMAC, and the Mortgage Bankers Association.

MERS allowed big financial firms to trade mortgages at lightning speed while largely bypassing local property laws throughout the country that required new forms and filing fees each time a loan changed hands, lawyers say.

The idea behind it was to build a centralized registry to track loans electronically as they were traded by big financial firms. Without this system, the business of creating massive securities made of thousands of mortgages would likely have never taken off. The company's role caused few objections until millions of homes began to fall into foreclosure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100607227.html?sid%3DST2010100607251

[csziggy]

1. Aside from stopping foreclosures, I wonder how many local governments

Will realize how many millions of dollars in points and filing fees have been fraudulently kept from being paid due to these schemes? I look at how property taxes have gone up and up and wonder how much those were affected by the failure of the big bankers to pay those fees?

[dkf]

2. The local Govts probably can't prove the banks own the property either.

Maybe they are the ones who get screwed in the end.

[necso]

3. Foreclosure fraud isn't to be tolerated.

(As applicable, of course.)

[dkf]

4. But if the system that keeps track of mortgages is a mess maybe all our mortgages are unenforceable.

And if the investors don't get paid then we all collectively owe trillions through the GSEs. Maybe the reality is the taxpayer is beyond broke because of our obligations our government has subjected us to.

[necso]

5. My guess is that ownership issues

can generally be straightened-out, one way or the other.

And in any event, I'll be very surprised (indeed, shocked) if the current difficulties result in tens-of-millions of people ending-up with homes that they no longer have to pay mortgages on.

[dkf]

6. Well either everyone pays or everyone gets off because it is all one system.

All the outrage about the banks "foreclosure fraud" comes down to this one system.

[necso]

7. Here's a site

http://floridaforeclosurefraud.com/

dealing with assertions of foreclosure fraud in Florida.

It mentions issues other than MERS (which, so far, I've seen mentioned primarily as a standing issue), like fabricated documents, as well as perjury.

This page

http://floridaforeclosurefraud.com/2010/09/there-is-a-great-deal-of-fraud-bill-mccollum-on-floridas-foreclosue-mills/

includes this:

"Most foreclosures are filed by just a handful of 'foreclosure mill' law firms. Those law firms, in turn, are under investigation by Florida’s Attorney General Bill McCollum for committing widespread fraud in the evidence they provide to the courts. McCollum said:

'Thousands of final judgments of foreclosure against Florida homeowners may have been the result of the allegedly improper actions of these law firms. We’ve had so many complaints that I am confident there is a great deal of fraud here.

They submit false documents, fabricate the documents, or the documents actually don’t exist. They wanted to speed the process up because the faster they get the foreclosures done the better.'"