What You Don’t Know about “Mortgagegate” Could Crush the U.S. Banking System

Money Morning ^ | 10/15/2010 | Shah Gilani, Contributing Editor, Money Morning

[Chunga85]

Frightening Fallout

In order to easily buy and sell mortgages between themselves so that these loans might be repackaged, securitized and then sold to investors as mortgage-backed securities, banks and other lenders needed a quick way to "trade" individual mortgages. They created a company called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). This group includes Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), GMAC LLC (NYSE: GMA), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), Washington Mutual (now owned by JPMorgan Chase), the United Guaranty Corp. unit of American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG), Fannie Mae (OTC: FNMA), Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC), mortgage-servicing companies and other similarly interested members.

You may not realize it, but at your home-purchase "closing," you sign a document that appoints MERS as the "nominee" for the lender that granted you a mortgage. That gives the nominee the right to flip your mortgage to any other bank or lender it chooses. That's how banks move mortgages around to package them into different securities.

But that brings us to the crux of the controversy: Every time there's change on the title (a change occurs when the nominee switches the lender on your title out for another), local governments require that a new title be recorded. Of course, those governments - the county or municipality that you live in - also charge a "recording fee." MERS also charges a fee, but it's a lot less than government recording fees.

Here's the problem. In creating MERS, these institutions actually changed the land-title system that this country - for much of its history - has relied upon to determine legal ownership status of land titleholders

[DeaconBenjamin]

I’ll do you one better. I’d gladly send you paper Imperial Reichsmarks for any barbarous relic you have lying around.

[phockthis]

sfl

[dennisw]

Barbarous relic? I know nothing! Never heard of it!

[Neidermeyer]

What are my rights in this instance? If the bank forecloses on the house and my landlord contests it, where do I stand, legally?

***************************************************
You’re OK ... IF YOU RECORD THE LEASE CONTRACT at the clerk of the court ... A law was passed in May of 2009 that guarantees that valid recorded leases would be observed in the case of a foreclosure.

[stephenjohnbanker]

The plot thickens....