Blogging buddy, New York attorney, and real estate broker Joseph Ferrara publishes Sellsius, one of my favorite real estate blogs. This morning, he tossed out a possible solution that might help stall at least some of our San Diego foreclosures:
Ask your lender or loan servicer for the original note.
In the past, mortgage loans were sold and resold and repackaged with other loans into security packages on a regular basis. Ferrara has good reason to believe that lots of the original paperwork (up to 40 percent) has been lost in the shuffle.
He also cites an Associated Press article by Mitch Stacy where a Florida homeowner facing foreclosure asked her lender to produce the original mortgage paperwork. Unable to produce a tangible response (which could be buried in a warehouse somewhere), foreclosure proceedings by the mortgage lender have been indefinitely stalled.
Could this strategy help someone here stall or stop a San Diego foreclosure? Decide for yourself after reading Ferrara’s article — and then consult a competent real estate attorney.