Seminole County Foreclosure Attorney & Short Sale Realtor Tip– Tell the Bank to “Show Me the Note!”

A tip from your Seminole County foreclosure attorney and Seminole County short sale realtor. A common issue in Seminole County foreclosure lawsuits is that the mortgage lender often does not know if they own the actual mortgage note that is the subject of the foreclosure action! Seminole County homeowners, if a lender is suing you for foreclosure, make sure you check the Complaint to make sure that the bank actually owns YOUR note. Check out these examples of foreclosure lawsuits in which the alleged owner of the note sued for for foreclosure but didn’t actually own the note. Look at this link about fraud in the foreclosure process and this blog post about the foreclosure lawsuit.

The reason the lender may have lost track of the note before the foreclosure process is because of mortgage loan securitization. In the securitization process, the originating lender typically sells or assigns the note, or loan, to another company via the secondary market. This company, or another company in the chain of companies that purchased, sold and assigned mortgage notes, then eventually pools together large numbers of other mortgage notes, or sells and assigns the notes to other companies to do so, and the resulting pool of mortgages, which can number in the hundreds or thousands, are marketed as a security, which is backed by the mortgages on the properties. The security, which is the mortgages, is sold to investors. The borrowers’ payments on the home mortgages are pooled with other borrowers’ payments, and are then paid out to service the loans, and the remainder is paid out to people who have invested in these securities. These loan pools were often sold or assigned, and then re-sold or re-assigned. Also, these loan pools would often get “sliced up” into discrete pieces so the owner could group similar risk categories or loan types together to market the loans to diverse types of investors.

The end result of this often elaborate and complicated procedure is that the owner of the note oftentimes does not know where the note is, or if they even own the note!

Under Florida law, the foreclosing lender MUST attach the mortgage note to the foreclosure complaint or it is subject to dismissal under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.130. Additionally, if the lender does not actually own the note, it does not have standing to file a lawsuit.

If the lender does not attach the note to the foreclosure complaint, alleges that the note is “lost,” or you have a good faith belief that the lender does not own your note, YOU ARE COMPLETELY WITHIN YOUR RIGHTS TO ASK THE COURT TO DISMISS THE FORECLOSURE ACTION, DENY THE LENDER’S OWNERSHIP OF THE NOTE AND DEMAND TO SEE ALL DOCUMENTS SHOWING THE LENDER ACTUALLY OWNS YOUR NOTE!