OCC and the Federal Reserve announced this week that banks who service mortgages will be sending letters to homeowners this month and next, offering them an opportunity to request review of any 2009 or 2010 foreclosure. Every homeowner who asks gets a full independent review by a foreclosure auditor. A homeowner who was in any stage of foreclosure in 2009 or 2010 is eligible for review and possible compensation. The request for review runs to five pages, and the web site is not exactly user-friendly. There is also a toll-free number to apply: 888-952-9105.
Compensation will be paid (in the amount determined by the independent reviewers discussed on this blog previously) for financial injuries resuting from errors, misrepresentations or deficiencies in the foreclosure process. Examples include foreclosures during bankruptcy or against an active-duty service member, improper legal or other fees, or foreclosure while a homeowner is in trial or permanent modification plan. The deadline to request a review is April 30, 2012. A request for review will not stop foreclosure, and redress payments will not require borrowers to release claims or affect any pending foreclosure litigation or bankruptcy proceeding. The foreclosure reviews are being done by consulting firms, such as Price Waterhouse and Promontory.
However weak or unreliable this process may be, homeowners have nothing (other than some time) to lose by applying for a review. Borrowers in foreclosure litigation or bankruptcy might also want to seek discovery of their audit/review files to see what deficiencies were identified (or missed).
Comments
6 responses to “Get your Independent Foreclosure Review!”
Maj. Eaton: We have top fry cooks working on it now.
Indiana: Who?
Maj. Eaton: Top… fry cooks.
Gee… No Ocwen… No Litton… No Select Portfolio Servicing… No Saxon on the “review” list. How convenient. Especially since Ocwen now owns Litton and Saxon…
Professor, I just took a quick look at the OCC and FRB links and I couldn’t determine how the extremely narrow time frame of 2009-2010 was arrived upon. Was this just an arbitrary number pulled out of the collective arses of the “decision makers”?
I only ask because I’m watching a local pending Select Portfolio foreclosure, currently handled by Orlans Moran, unfold over the next week or two in which Harmon Law Offices filed an Assignment of Mortgage assigning a Note into a 2004 Trust. Unfortunately, they did it in 2008 but they used clever language (Dated August 2008 but effective January 2004) on the AoM so it could never possibly be noticed. The note was also assigned *out* of the trust and PNC Bank is now foreclosing on it. I guarantee that no one will bother to look two steps back in the chain and the foreclosure will sail through. Already, there is no answer at the homeowner’s listed number…
My point is simply that this garbage, this theft, this organized racket has been going on for over a decade now. “Review” programs like this are nothing more than a screen door on a submarine.
Promontory is recruiting recent law grads to man these positions and paying them $15-25 an hour.
bandaids being used to cure cancer, not sound
I do not agree that homeowners have nothing to lose by filing a request for review. Anything the homeowner puts in the request will be used by the banks as an admission.
The reality is that the originator, bank, trust and/or servicer may not have any idea whatsoever what the remaining balance is on the mortgage and who (if anyone) really owns it. They may not even know that the mortgage exists. Or, at the other extreme, two or three different entities could believe they own the mortgage, in which case they will make fools of themselves in any attempt at foreclosure.
Meanwhile, do any of theses entities have LEGAL recourse to the property? Was a proper chain of title maintained?
Think about it: why aren’t the banks following through on any foreclosures? Do you really think it’s because they are being nice? Or is it because they CAN’T (because they don’t have proper legal recourse to your property).
If the homeowner “talks” by filing these documents, he or she is probably just giving the banks admissions as well as a roadmap for how to forge the right documents in the right manner so that the “record” accords with the homeowner’s admissions about who and how much he owes.
Why not just keep silent, stop making payments, and then let these various knuckleheads trip over themselves with their lies and forged documents if they ever actually try to foreclose?
My legal advice to an underwater homeowner with a mortgage issued between 1998 and 2008 would be to stop making payments, keep living in your home and keep silent. If anyone ever asks why you stopped making payments, tell them it was because you had no confidence whatsoever that you were making payments to the legal owner of the mortgage and felt a moral obligation not to aid and abet fraud.
I would suggest that Mr. Piven buy some good legal malpractice insurance if that is his legal advice. The law regarding notes and mortgages varies greatly state to state depending on the statutory basis and case precedent for foreclosure. Any legal advice that doesn’t recognize this is crazy. In many states “ownership” of the mortgage is irrelevant, but a person who shows up with an original of the note can demand payment of the note and enforce the mortgage, regardless of what entity has its name on the mortgage (in these states, the mortgage “follows” the note) accordingly if the homeowners follow Mr. Piven’s advice, they will lose their home in those states.