Oregon Does it to MERS Again
By Daniel Edstrom
DTC Systems, Inc.
Once again MERS is hammered, this time in Federal District Court by the Honorable Owen M. Panner. This judge understands clearly what is going on and has some serious questions. Read this case to understand securitization and foreclosures. Here are some highlights (there are many others):
Should the beneficiary choose to initiate non-judicial foreclosure proceedings, the Act’s recording requirements mandate the recording of any assignments of the beneficial interest in the trust deed.
Nobody held a gun to the head of the servicers and required them to use non-judicial foreclosure. They have the right to choose which action they wish to use – non-judicial or judicial. The problem in this case (and almost all other cases), is that the servicers are making the wrong choices. Why? Money, what else?. It is not their concern that they don’t qualify to use non-judicial foreclosures. It is not their concern that they have to strictly comply with statutes. In 90% or more of all cases the homeowners are walking away so nobody will know anyway right? Oops, now the titles have to be cleaned up because of the mess left behind by the servicers, which have all but destroyed the title records for foreclosed properties. This means that in the future, somebody else will have to file a judicial lawsuit to clean up the title for a property because the servicer made the wrong choice and failed to strictly comply with non-judicial statutes. By the way this problem is understated and far worse than anyone actually imagines or understands at this point.