Posted on 11/03/2011 9:25:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
How do you foreclose on a home that doesn't exist?
That's the question KRPC-TV in Houston asked Texas homeowner Brad Gana, whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008 while he was overseas (via AGBeat).
Despite the the destruction, Gana continued to make mortgage payments on the property. Then, two days before Gana planned to sell the property, he learned the bank was foreclosing on it.
What happened?
Apparently, while Gana was making his regular payments, Bank of America had incorrectly placed a homeowner's policy on the non-existent property and additionally, increased his monthly mortage payments.
Bank of America says they notified Gana of the new insurance policy and changed mortgage, but as Gana points out, he didn't receive any of these notices because his mailbox was destroyed in the hurricane. Gana also says he provided BofA with a different email address and two phone numbers where he could be contacted, according to KPRC-TV. Gana explained:
"It wasn't until about 20 calls that someone said, 'We had a homeowner's policy on your home that you reside in, and your monthly payments have gone up.' But they never notified me that my monthly payments had gone up."
Although Gana's attorney was able to stop the proceedings after he learned of the foreclosure, the bank still showed up to remove Gana's personal items.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
BoA is run from the very top like a loan shark.
So he had to have had insurance previously. Why haven’t they paid off yet?
BOA needs to fail.
Several issues here. Headline is misleading. Just because a house is destroyed, doesn’t mean the lender can’t foreclose on the underlying land.
Notice requirements here are vague. He was overseas, which means nothing. If the owner didn’t notify lender of a new mailing address, than it’s the borrower’s problem.
Having said that, B of A is scum. I hope they go out of business.
OK, so I see some errors made, but I don’t see where BofA acted with any sort of bad intent. People make mistakes, in big companies and small companies. The insurance company made a pretty big mistake too, if they wrote a policy on a house that had already been destroyed by a hurricane.
Seems like a set of screw-ups that shouldn’t be all that hard to unravel.
IMO Business Insider has no credibility as an objective publication. Their stories have more of a People Magazine slant.
I guess reading the story is just not important, eh?
He gave them a new address, and two phone numbers.
BOA needs to die, and be gone and all their fraud along with it.
So, why AFTER being prevented from foreclosing on him by the judge, do they GET TO STEAL his personal belongings?
How can that be OK with you?
Nothing that 20 phone calls and a lawyer, and a TV reporter couldn’t unravel.
I had a problem with my mortgage and insurance companies for years.
We bought a good size piece of land with a double wide on it. (The intent was to eventually build our dream home on the land.)
The double-wide was worth $70,000. The land was worth $35,000.
The insurance company would only insure the double wide for $70,000.
But we owed $103,000.
The bank insisted that we have to have an insurance policy that covered the entire mortgage. The insurance company wouldn’t cover more than the price of the structure.
We had to fight between the two of them every freakin’ year until the mortgage was paid down to the insurance amount. At one point the mortgage threatened to underwrite their own insurance policy and charge us $250 a month to cover it. (My wonderful insurance company fought for us on that one.)
I don’t now why anyone would do their banking at BOA.
Why would it be OK? Of course not, and I don’t think I said it was.
Why do you assume that BofA did all this on purpose? Do you think this is how they planned it all out?
One shouldn’t automatically assign to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Fiasco? Fiasco??
Stupid, yes. But this doesn’t amount to a fiasco.
God, the b.i.-blog editors suck. Hyperbole must be on the breakfast menu there.
Thank you. I really don’t get folks’ fetish here for the b.i.-blog (as I call it).
I assume BOA did the stealing of his personnal property on purpose. The judge just dismissed the foreclosure. Or are you going to say that was just a mistake as well?
Your lack of outrage and willingness to just “oh, well, nothing to see here” tone was ........ troubling.
I didn't see why he was overseas, but if it was related to military service, he'd have some protections under the Soldier's and Sailor's Civil Relief Act.
Seems to me that what the bank did understand there is that the land itself is the security for that much of the principal, and the insurance policy covered the remainder with the structure. Insurance policy + value of land = total principal. Sounds like a bank officer that didn’t know that you don’t normally need to insure land. It’s just the structure that’s at risk.
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