I just read this New York Times article from Yahoo From a Maine House, a National Foreclosure Freeze
It is the story of the foreclosure of one particular home in Maine which lead to uncovering of improper foreclosure processes by lenders and the recent foreclosure freeze.
The whole thing is a mess.
Here's some points from the article:
- GMAC was bailed out with $17 billion in tax dollars and is now majority owned by the federal government.
- The home is worth about $75,000 and the mortgage payments are just $474 a month.
- The woman who owns the home has not paid her mortgage for two years and lives on welfare and food stamps.
- The lawyer for the woman found out about Jeffrey Stephan who is the infamous 'robo-signer' for GMAC who signed over 400 mortgage foreclosures a day.
- The use of robo-signers isn't even new information to the courts: "GMAC had been admonished in a Florida court for using robo-signers four years ago but had persisted."
- In this case GMAC filed a 2nd foreclosure but "did not bother to include the actual street address of the property it was trying to seize".
Everything about this is just messed up.
I'm honestly amazed at how incompetent or arrogant the bank in this case seems to be. They are either incompetent for filing such poorly documented mortgage foreclosures or arrogant for thinking that they shouldn't need to bother to do it right. Maybe they are both.
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