Posted on 02/20/2010 4:06:38 PM PST by Alberta's Child
I'm looking for help with a real estate issue, and I was hoping a Freeper with some knowledge of real estate can help me.
I'm researching the ownership history of a residential property, and I've come across a formal record in a county office indicating that the last mortgage on the property has been discharged through a company called "Mortage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc." I know this was not the lender, and I can find no record anywhere indicating that this company has ever held a title on the property.
Some research I've done online indicates that this company is involved in property foreclosures on behalf of large U.S. banks, but I have no indication right now that the property in question was ever in foreclosure.
Can anyone here offer any help or insight on this? I'm simply trying to determine: (1) if the property has ever been in foreclosure under the current/previous owner, and (2) if this "Mortage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc." has any kind of lien on the property. The mortgage discharge was filed very recently, so I have no way of knowing right now if the property has changed hands.
MERS provides tracking numbers for the hundreds of millions (billions?) of mortgages across the country. Look for the bar code.
Mortgages (and other instruments) change hands so often, a private database was created.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MERS
I apologize if the info on Karl Denninger’s “tickerforum” is behind a password, but there’s a fair amount of info thereon. Let me know if you cannot access.
http://tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=119986
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Horstkamp_Sharon_35082712.aspx
http://tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=120785
Try MERSINC.org
if you want to FReepmail me the address I’ll do some digging on some sites i use for property short sells, foreclosures, etc./
Also, any liens will be available at the county records office.
MERS is a shell company created by the mortgage companies and Wall Street. Loans are assigned to MERS so when a loan is sold from one entity to another the transfers do not have to be registered at your local gov’t office.
Loans are assigned to MERS so when a loan is sold from one entity to another the transfers do not have to be registered at your local gov’t office.
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At least that’s what MERS assumed ,, that they could ignore recording laws and BS the courts into believing that their non-conforming unrecorded assignments are worth more than toilet paper.
You make a good point. The whole issue is if MERS assignments are as you say the whole mortgage market would collapse.
The curious part of this whole thing is that the mortgage discharge document is the first time any indication of MERS' involvement is recorded. I have no indication that the property has changed hands (I can't find this out right now because the discharge occurred so recently), so a mortgage discharge in the absence of any other documentation seems odd.
Very interesting. What’s put this whole thing “on my radar screen” is that every online article I’ve read involves a story about MERS and foreclosures.
I’ve got the bar code for the mortgage discharge document right in front of me. What exactly am I looking for on this?
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A company called "ReconTrust Company, N.A." is also listed on the mortgage discharge document. Their website seems to indicate that they are mainly involved in foreclosure proceedings.
I'll be checking back later . . . Thanks again to all of you for your help!
Ping to my last post.
mark
Whenever you want to search/trace your mortgage, that’s the number they’ll want.
Yes. MERS, as I understand it, is structured as a corporation but exists primarily as a centralized electronic “registry” for mortgages. It is this centralized registry function which enables a: folks who are located remotely from the situs of registration, eg; the county seat where the subject property is located and b: folks who cannot easily obtain access to online property records town-by-town, such records being completely non-uniform as to the means of access, form and field(s) length, etc; etc.
In other words, MERS facilitates title investigation: the whole securitization and credit-reporting and lien-discovery processes are **dramatically** enhanced by having these types of records located/available online, in readily searchable format. That is inarguable.
What many of these recent lawsuits are about is that lienholders and noteholders have sought to foreclose based upon entries in MERS. Well, convenience is one thing, actionable legal proceedings are another, in terms of the docs you need to prove things. As you probably know, many courts have held that an original mortgage note or deed of trust has to produced for a mortgage to institute a foreclosure proceeding. And many, many of these morts have been sliced and the separate tranches distributed in unimaginable ways and nobody thought they’d ever have to undo the slicing. In essence the foreclosing lender in many, many cases has not been able to produce their copy of the note! AND, they have not been getting checks from the borrower, they have been getting checks from a servicer. So, they don’t even have a stack of Xeroxed checks payable to them to show second-class evidence of indebtedness. Sucks to be them!
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