Let me clarify: I can totally believe that Something Improper is going on here. But it seems like in the vast majority of these cases it's going to turn out that we're talking about incompetence/laziness rather than fraud. Fraud is fundamentally about saying something that's Not True in order to gain; many of these cases are guilty of poor documentation, but it seems unlikely that these foreclosure efforts are invented from whole cloth.
^^^^^ CB: Yeah, civil fraud is intentional misrepresentation of a material fact upon which the defrauded party relies to their detriment. ( I memorized the elements of fraud when I was working on Yurok Indian land recovery in 1978).
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Even if the affidavit process has been phonied up, it doesn't mean that the loan doesn't exist.
^^^^^ CB: Well if what's asserted in the affidavit is not true, there could be a problem. Depends , probably, on whether the false statement is with respect to a material aspect of the deal.
I'm getting the idea that in these cases the holder of the mortgage interest who is trying to foreclose and evict is not able to prove their chain of ownership of the mortgage rights with the necessary written documents.
Poor little big rich banks !
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It's an interesting -- even funny in some aspects -- story, but it's not going to keep anyone from losing their house. The best hope in that situation is to see Congress force refinancing.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130271708
My take is that this is a good plan; it's effectively a "tax cut" without impacting federal revenues much directly. Since many consumers see their household budgets in terms of "after-tax money" I think a lot of people include things like mortgages in the "tax" part of the equation. Whatever it would take to increase your take-home pay feels like a tax cut. I recently helped my (retired) mother refinance her house down 1.5% and it's $300 in her pocket each month. Change, baby!
/jordan
^^^^^^^^ CB: Way to go !