Saturday, April 5, 2008

Collateral Damage

There was a video story on abcnews.com yesterday about a couple in New York that had successfully fought back against their lender by defending their foreclosure. They and their attorneys had in fact convinced the judge that they had been victimized by a predatory mortgage broker, and had been lied to about the terms of their loan.  They signed the loan documents, went to closing, were in their house, and six months later discovered that the terms of the loan weren’t what they thought they were. It was a happy ending for them, they refinanced into a fixed very low rate loan, and I expect are going to live happily ever after. Good for them, I’m glad to hear that people are having some success fighting back against predatory lenders.

I read the comments that people had posted about that story. The comments were mixed. A lot of people wanted to know where they could refinance into a loan like that. Their rate was something like 4.4% fixed. Other people just thought they were dumb to sign the loan documents in the first place. Whatever. One of the postings caught my eye.

This woman from somewhere in the Tampa, Florida area posted that she had given rent money for a house and went to start moving in and discovered that the house didn’t belong to the landlord anymore. There was a foreclosure notice on the door, not a notice that it was going to foreclosure, but had actually been sold the day before. So between the time that she gave the landlord the rent, plus deposit, it had gone on the auction block and sold, probably back to the lender. She said she gave this landlord $3,700. So she went to the sheriff. Sheriff told her it was civil, because there may not have been criminal intent.

Apparently she was able to get a partial repayment out of the landlord and a promissory note that she would be paid back next Tuesday. I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday … So that’s why the sheriffs maintain that it is a civil matter and not criminal. I always thought that was for a judge to decide, and a tricky business even for the judge. How do you know what’s on someone’s mind? Since foreclosure auctions are scheduled months in advance, the landlord had to know his house was going on the block.

 

Posted by foreclosure defense network at 15:55:14 | Permalink | No Comments »