My loan was issued 20 years ago by some bank, can’t remember who, which was bought by Washington Mutual, which was taken over by JP Morgan, which was taken over by Chase. I wonder if anybody has the original note. It sounds as if, even if I finished paying off the note, I wouldn’t be able to obtain clear title to my own house, even though I’m the original owner, because nobody would be able to locate the original paperwork and thus no one has the right to declare the note paid off. Is that correct?
I have heard something similar. That was part of BofA’s big SNAFU right? They were foreclosing on houses, but when the time came to pony up the papers, a lot of them weren’t signed or something was missing, so they had to halt all proceedings. That was just a couple weeks ago I think.
I suppose thems the breaks when you are forced to do a few million foreclosures a year..... (makes me sick)
Just because your original paper has been bought and sold it doesn’t do anything to your original obligation nor does it interfere with your payoff of the final payment.
I have actually run into that! I am not sure that they were an “original” owner but they had paid off their mortgage and the note couldn’t be found.
This is an unbelievable problem that is going to be with us for years.
This paperwork situation is not joke. I work for a law firm in NJ, we do mucho real estate work.
There was an article in The New Jersey Law Journal, which is the official weekly paper for lawyers, it publishes court notices, etc. A judge has stopped a foreclosure because nobody knows where the original docs are.
It was all a little convoluted so I asked my boss about it. He said you have to have the note, if you don’t have the note you don’t hold the debt, just like this blog post says.
It seems to me this entire situation could be about to get very worse, very fast.
I’ve always felt we haven’t been told the whole story on this housing market fiscal crises.
OK, loans were made to people who shouldn’t have been lent the money; prices were ballooning (for a variety of reasons); Las Vegas, Florida got way over-built, Cali is a mess due to property tax inequities, but still...but still....
How many loans, really? How did this almost crash the global economy, or at least the US banking system?
But, what if the same mortgages were sold MULTIPLE times?
I mean, is that the situation?
LOL, I finally clicked through to the article. It’s about that exact case in NJ.
I shouldn’t laugh really.