Hat tip to daytrip for sending this along:
http://www.vice.com/read/this-former-bank-regulator-quit-his-job-to-fight-for-his-house-518
Eric Mains is fulfilling a dream many Americans have had since the onset of the financial crisis seven years ago: He’s attacking fraud in the banking industry as aggressively as he can, using every possible tool under the law to achieve justice —and win some money back for himself.
Mains, a former team leader with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), has become so bitterly embroiled in a six-year dispute with his mortgage lender that he left the regulatory agency, fearing that he might have to eventually name it as a defendant in a federal lawsuit. He’s one of a small yet determined band of people still fighting foreclosure (the seizure of property) cases with obscure and sometimes arcane arguments, built on a simple yet mind-blowing premise: The true ownership of millions of mortgages issued during the housing bubble was fatally corrupted, and now it’s impossible to prove who actually legally controls those mortgages.
Recent Supreme Court precedent suggests that by rescinding his mortgage—canceling it, basically—Mains and people like him can put the onus on banks to prove they have the right to assets like his house in the first place. If Mains or his allies succeed, they would rip open a wound that virtually everyone in power has tried to stitch up and forget. But such a long-awaited victory wouldn’t make up for the years of stress and personal hardship Mains has suffered, including a failed marriage and now the end of his career in public service.
“I had to ask myself a question: Will I do this no matter if it hurts?” Mains told me. “I said yes. If I can afford to fight these suckers and bring this illegality to light, that’s why I went to law school.”
Mains has gotten divorced, lost custody of his kid, and wound up in the hospital – read the full article here:
http://www.vice.com/read/this-former-bank-regulator-quit-his-job-to-fight-for-his-house-518
I, for one, am rooting for the guy, Jim!
Geez, the whole Mortgage Electronic Register System mess! I’ll never forget getting a call from my mortgage lender while driving to my new home out-of-state. I had already signed the mortgage documents. Her one Q:
“Why didn’t you tell us about your prior TWO foreclosures?”
My FICO scores were stellar. I had already packed up my rental house, all my possessions were in transit and we had been on the road for 9+ hours. It took about two hours to fix the whole mess as I continued to drive, but what a headache!
And who screwed up with their records (on past mortgages that weren’t even mine?) This is just one reason I call Bank of America, “Bend Over America”… #TeamEricMains
We just did a refinance on a home to get a lower interest rate. The process is a MESS. A deliberate mess. If you aren’t familiar with the process of getting a home loan, refinancing, etc. and know how to work a computer, email and the internet, you’re SCREWED. Toast. We had to fight them to use our real estate attorney/title company at close.
People can be this stupid and many of the people at the loan servicing companies are stupid. But when you get pass the dropped phone calls and the many “..can you send this form again, I can’t find it..”, you quickly see it’s a well orchestrated attempt to NOT allow you to refinance.
The banks and loan servicing companies are at the head of this out of control cartel/mob like operation. From the public’s point of view, the only way for this to end well is for a bunch of top and mid level people to go to jail and reinstate most of the regulations that were in place prior to 1980. We then need regulators who have the authority to enforce those regulations.
That will require a sea change in public attitudes.
I hope this guy can hold out and win. It would be epic. I hope one of the judges hearing this case has knowledge of just how messed up this enterprise has become over the last 20 years (the last 15 were the hard core years).
Jim, this can’t be easy for honest real estate agents. You work hard, help people find a house they really like and can afford, and then have to watch them get put through the meat grinder by the cartel/mob bank/mortgage companies.
Have you lost any deals because of these crooks?
: /
Anything that will get foreclosures happening again is good in my book.
Banks are passing the liability on to investors and keeping the ability to “service” (ie. tack on fees) to mortgages. If someone doesn’t pay banks just add fees. If the borrower can’t pay the fees they dump the mortgages on investors and likely keep hounding the borrower for the fees via collections.
Investors end up holding the bag and have no idea what to do with the property or who actually owns it so the deadbeat gets to live in the property for free.
jd, I haven’t lost any, but I’ve had delays.
Buyers can do their own basic qualifying online, plus lately almost all of the buyers coming our way have found their lender first and been pre-approved.
The runaround is usually a breakdown between loan rep and underwriter, and them failing to communicate to the borrowers what is wanted and needed to get the loan funded. It turns into a mad scramble at the end to produce stupid and senseless documentation that would have been a little more tolerable if told in the beginning or middle.
BofA is the worst by far – 100% of the time they have delays that could have been averted if they were on their game. Andreina says it is different with her though – hoping to break the streak!