Zombie Propertie

Zombie Properties: Banks Don’t Want the Money, Don’t Want the Property: They Just Want Foreclosure Sale and Deed

 

The borrowers are for the most part willing to straighten this mess out if approached with fair terms that reinstate their credit and reinstate or create loans that are free from the myriad of defects in the falsely claimed securitization chains. The intermediate banks don't want that because they would be facing liability for trillions of dollars they collected through fraud, deceit and identity theft. So if things keep going the way they are going, the ultimate effect is indeed going to be that the "free house" is going to switch from the intermediate banks who have no just or legal claim to the property to the homeowner whose signature was used in ways he never agreed and would never have agreed.

With 6.6 foreclosures and an equal amount to come, given 2.5 residents per household, more than 33 million people will be displaced--- paying the price for the misbehavior of the bank and having been used as innocent, ignorant pawns in a PONZI scheme that has nearly perfected the technique of PONZI schemes. ---

Internet Store Notice: As requested by customer service, this is to explain the use of the COMBO, Consultation and Expert Declaration. The only reason they are separate is that too many people only wanted or could only afford one or the other — all three should be purchased. The Combo is a road map for the attorney to set up his file and start drafting the appropriate pleadings. It reveals defects in the title chain and inferentially in the money chain and provides the facts relative to making specific allegations concerning securitization issues. The consultation looks at your specific case and gives the benefit of litigation support consultation and advice that I can give to lawyers but I cannot give to pro se litigants. The expert declaration is my explanation to the Court of the findings of the forensic analysis. It is rare that I am actually called as a witness apparently because the cases are settled before a hearing at which evidence is taken.

Zombie Properties got their name from being in a state of limbo. Broadly characterized, they include first homes abandoned my misinformed homeowners who believed their home was subject to a legitimate foreclosure. Second they include properties subject to foreclosures but where the bank has put off getting the final judgment or put off the sale. And third they include properties in which the foreclosure sale has occurred but the property was abandoned by the Banks.

Not surprisingly many schemes have evolved in which the renting of these properties has been accomplished by strangers to the transaction. Knowing that the property is temporarily or permanently abandoned, people are offering "deals" to renters, collecting rents on property they don't own. In other cases the neighborhoods have become so blighted that nobody would move in there if you gave the house to them. So Detroit, Cleveland and other cities are bull dozing tens of  thousands of homes creating farm land and park land where businesses and residential housing had been.

It seems obvious now that the Banks want that foreclosure sale and that is the end of the story. They don't want the money (we are trying to give them the money in several cases (1000 cents on the dollar) and they are resisting, they don't want the house (we are actually deeding the house to them without prejudice and without an agreement to avoid a deficiency judgment), They don't want reinstatement, they don't want redemption, and they don't want any modification or mediation except just enough to give the public relations impression that they are trying to work things out. In most modifications, even where the modification is approved and the homeowner complied with all terms including the payments, the Bank goes ahead and forecloses anyway.

In a real mortgage situation, Banks will do almost anything to avoid foreclosure. If you review the literature on foreclosures prior to 2007 it is all based upon workouts in commercial and residential real estate. In fact "workouts" are an area of concentration for most law firms that engage in mortgage litigation whether they are on the lender side or the borrower's side. Now now. The Bank wants the foreclosure sale and the borrower, investor who put up the funds and insurers who "covered" a "loss" and the counterparts who were covering announced losses, let them be damned.

Why do we have a pandemic of zombies and foreclosures when so many homeowners are actually eager to sign new document that would clear up the title problems caused by MERS, improper disclosure at closing as to who the lender was, claims of fraud, predatory lending deceptive lending etc.?

In the law we say look to the result to determine the intention. There is no doubt that the policies and procedures pursued by the banks, on loans they never owned based upon mortgage bonds that were issued by unfunded trusts, MINIMIZES the eventual monetary recovery and justifies the payment of insurance, payment of hedge contracts (CDS), and the reports to investors that there investment was lost because of foreclosures and expenses of foreclosure, leaving the Banks with the money and frequently the house too because they brought the foreclosure as a servicer without stating they were acting for a principal that had advanced the actual money for the loan.

Since the Banks are evading payment in full, evading receipt of the deed to the home, and evading workouts and modifications, the intent is clear no matter how logical the other alternatives appear to the advantage of all concerned. The intent is to get a foreclosure sale and deed on foreclosure which in most states starts a short statute of limitations ticking in which the deed on foreclosure cannot be challenged.

Of course there are possible remedies involving fraud on the court or the borrower that MIGHT change that but the foreclosure sale basically closes the book on the matter. What does this do for the banks? It ends the possibility of having to account for and pay back money received from investors, insurers, CDS counterparties, guarantors (Fannie and Freddie) and the Federal Reserve who has been buying the worthless mortgage bonds (that supposedly represent a claim of ownership over the loans) at the rate of $85 Billion per month apparently for years.

By getting a deed from a foreclosure sale, they put another layer of deniability between them, the Banks, and the parties from whom they took money on the announced failure of the loans, the bonds or the asset pools. The essential defect of the loans, that the payee and named mortgagee never loaned a dime to the borrower (unknown to the borrower) destroys the claim that the note and mortgage lien were ever perfected. This defect results in a finding of no valid mortgage, nullification of the instrument, and thus no security for the lending party --- something that obviously smart Wall Street lawyers knew about but thought they could finesse --- and they were right.

By having the information at hand in a title and securitization analysis, getting it explained in an Expert declaration from a credible source, and consulting with those who actually understand what happened here, the lawyer can feel confident that he is pleading and can prove that the entire transaction was a sham. Ask any professor of law who knows bills, notes, negotiable instruments, etc. If there was o underlying transaction in which value was exchanged both ways, no enforceable rights arise. There simply isn't a transaction at all, and all the paperwork in the world isn't going to fix that without getting a signature from the borrower --- which most borrowers are willing to do if they get a fair modification based upon real values, instead of the artificially inflated values that were used for the loans.

The fact remains that virtually all loans were paid off in their entirety whether they ever went into "default" (which could not exist because the loan no longer existed), or whether they are performing loans in which hapless homeowners are paying monthly payments to a bank who does not own the loan, on a loan that either no longer exists or which has been paid down by actual payment from parties who waived subrogation, waived contribution and waived any right of action against the homeowner. If the account receivable is paid off, the banks' claim for recovery one more time (after being paid several times over 100 cents on the dollar) in the form of a foreclosure is nothing more than looking for an official governmental action that cuts off the players who advanced the money on the same loan assets repeatedly.

Looking again to the result to determine the intent, it cannot be argued that the Banks pretended to issue mortgage bonds issued from a REMIC trust that was never funded and then did whatever they wanted to do with the trillions of dollars deposited with those investment bank for purchase of the bonds. The investors weren't buying bonds. They were buying problems. They were, contrary to agreement with the investment bank, directly lending money to homeowners without a note or mortgage.

The actual closing procedure was a sham. The closing agent applied the money received from investors through one of the investment banks or an affiliate of the investment bank as though it was a loan from the named payee on the note and the named mortgagee on the mortgage or the named beneficiary on the deed of trust.

Thus the title, to which the investors were expecting and entitled was diverted from the investors to puppet companies who were already under contract to do what they were told --- as in the Assignment and Assumption Agreement executed between the loan "originator" and the "aggregator" neither of whom advanced a dime, nor did they need to do so --- the money from the investors being at hand in a commingled account at the investment bank who never followed through giving money or loans to the Trustee of the New York "Trust" thus creating a legal entity that had neither money nor assets.

The illusion is ONLY completed with an apparently legal "foreclosure sale" which creates a presumption of validity on the 6.6 million foreclosures completed thus far, and the additional latest estimate of 7 million more foreclosures). By fabricating foreclosure documents after the "trades" had been completed (i.e., the banks had received payment for the bonds and loans several times over that they never reported to the investors - but which still must be accounted for as payment to the investor because the investment banks were at all times acting as the agents of the investors).

Confused? Here is the easy way of looking at it. The Banks stole the identity of the investors and the REMIC trust by issuing the bonds into street name" but showing on end of month statements to the investors that they owned the bonds and loans. After selling the loans several times or receiving mitigating payments that were intended to reduce the loss, the loans were worthless to the Banks and now represented a liability to give all that money back because the underlying loans were fraudulent and defective and the trading profits declared by the banks was really the proceeds of theft. All the participants squeeze the last ounce of fees and profit from this PONZI scheme which was completely reliant on the continued purchase of the bogus mortgage bonds. When it was all over, they pitched the loan over the fence and said the Trust owned it but there had never been a transaction between the trust and anyone else in which the trust paid for and was delivered the loan according to the terms of the Prospectus and the Polling and Servicing Agreement.

Want it shown differently? The Banks stole the identity of the borrowers and traded on it knowing they would do anything possible to make the loan go into default and thus collect, in addition to the original money advanced by investors, insurance and other funds that paid off the loan several times over. Some enterprising Class Action lawyer who really knows what they are doing can lay claim to the vast pool of money that emerged from this scheme with the real parties in interest -- the investor lenders and the homeowner borrowers taking the loss. The payment extinguishes the loan and the over payment collected by the banks is due back to the homeowner unless the investors intervene and assert claims to the pool of money that ultimately was held by firms that were at best only intermediaries and at worst (and usually) complete strangers tot he transactions with investors and complete strangers to transactions with the borrowers.

The borrowers are for the most part willing to straighten this mess out if approached with fair terms that reinstate their credit and reinstate or create loans that are free from the myriad of defects in the falsely claimed securitization chains. The intermediate banks don't want that because they would be facing liability for trillions of dollars they collected through fraud, deceit and identity theft. So if things keep going the way they are going, the ultimate effect is indeed going to be that the "free house" is going to switch from the intermediate banks who have no just or legal claim to the property to the homeowner whose signature was used in ways he never agreed and would never have agreed.