"Produce the note": Words everyone threatened by foreclosure should know

[MrScorpio]

http://www.buzzflash.net/story.php?id=1009211

Banks Starting to Walk Away on Foreclosures


Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.

Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then, into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson from her loss. So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently, demanding that she resume maintenance on the property.

The sheriff’s sale had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title — and a world of trouble — in her name. “I thought, ‘What kind of game is this?’ ” Ms. James, 41, said while picking at trash at the house, now so worthless the city plans to demolish it — another bill for which she will be liable.

City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate.

The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and bureaucratic headaches.

[annabanana]

1. Is this the inevitable result of over-development?

Thousands of Chambers of Commerce, strong-arming thousands of planning commissions and and buying building variances?

There should be NO homeless in this country...

[MrScorpio]

2. Many banks no longer have the original notes

A lot were sold and resold during the housing loan glut

[ORDagnabbit]

3. right now thats what I'm doing even though I am not in foreclosure....I'm getting the runaround and

I'm about to lawyer up...

if they cant produce the original note with my ink signature I will be using mister lawyer to sue their asses.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Hmmmmm.if my lender cannot produce the note, how can it collect each month, legally speaking?

Esp. since BOA has bought Countrywide, but Countrywide obviously sold every loan it made.

Interesting,
Perhaps a PRE-foreclosure gambit is available to distressed homeowners.

[pinto]

5. I've heard this mentioned a lot. Know who *actually* holds the note.

Sad tale, but thanks for the post.