UPDATED: 11/22/2010
READ THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL YOU GET IT (WoE's note) A direct quote from MERS Foreclosure Manual, 1999:
At the auction, the certifying officer will instruct the foreclosing attorney regarding the bid to be entered on behalf of MERS. If the bid is the highest bid, then a deed may be issued to MERS.
However, when the role of MERS, the servicer and the investor is explained and understood, the servicer may be allowed to bid on its own behalf without having to produce any funds at the sale.
Confusion hides sin!
CHECK OUT THE NAME OF THE HOLDER ON MANY OF THE FORECLOSED PROPERTIES. Check your own newspapers!
PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ THIS AND THEN PESTER YOUR CONGRESS PEOPLE!
This Judge questions if it is legal for MERS, instead of the mortgage servicer, to hold title.
..... I'm not certain with the satisfaction of mortgages that have been filed on behalf of MERS how good those are and I am not certain how good title to property is that people bought at these foreclosure sales if it turns or becomes established that MERS was indeed not only not the right party but misrepresented by way of their pleadings and affidavits that they held something they didn't own, so I'm not certain of the consequences but it seems vast." - The Honorable Judge Jon Gordon (Emphasis added)
http://www.msfraud.org/
1999 – Simultaneously, as if anticipating the foreclosures of the future, MERS publishes "How to Foreclose" instructions for each and every State on line for all to see. IN 1999!
http://web.archive.org/...
AND This is RICH. In 1999, Mers makes everyone at all the mortgage lenders locations "Official MERS Agents". When you go to the Foreclosure web site just above, click on Michigan, where you will find out how MERS tweeked laws to ADD CONFUSION for recourse to foreclosed properties. Here it is:
MICHIGAN
Version 1.1, 11 November 1999
Foreclosing a loan in the name of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. is something new in the foreclosure arena.
However, when the role of MERS is examined, it becomes clear that MERS stands in the same position to foreclose as the servicer. MERS, like the servicer, will be the record mortgage holder. It is through the mortgage that MERS is given the authority to foreclose.
To help make a smooth transition from foreclosing loans in the name of the servicer to foreclosing loans in the name of MERS, we have developed state by state recommended guidelines to follow.
These guidelines were developed in conjunction with experienced foreclosure counsel in your state. We have been able to keep the MERS recommended procedures consistent with the existing foreclosure procedures.
The goal of the recommended procedures is to avoid adding any extra steps or incurring any additional taxes or costs by foreclosing in the name of MERS instead of the servicer.
MERS will continually review the guidelines and, if necessary, will issue revisions. The recommended guidelines to follow in your state are as follows:
Mortgages are foreclosed non-judicially usually by a power of sale contained in the mortgage. Local counsel advises that a foreclosure can be brought in the name of MERS. The foreclosure is advertised by publishing the notice for four (4) consecutive weeks.
The attorney should follow the same procedure followed when foreclosing in the name of the servicer except that the foreclosing entity is Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS).
Employees of the servicer will be certifying officers of MERS.
This means they are authorized to sign any necessary documents as an officer of MERS. The certifying officer is granted this power by a corporate resolution of MERS. In other words, the same individual that signs the documents for the servicer will continue to sign the documents, but now as an officer of MERS.
The agencies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae) require a blank endorsement of the promissory note when the seller/servicer sells a mortgage loan to them.
The endorsement is to remain in blank even if the servicer commences foreclosure. Therefore, the note should remain endorsed in blank when the foreclosure is commenced in the name of MERS.
However, we have been advised that sometimes there is an endorsement of the promissory notes to the servicer to foreclose. However, we recommend that the agencies’ policies be followed.
We have not found an endorsement to the foreclosure entity to be a legal requirement, and therefore, the note should not be endorsed to MERS prior to the foreclosure.
READ THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL YOU GET IT (WoE's note)
At the auction, the certifying officer will instruct the foreclosing attorney regarding the bid to be entered on behalf of MERS. If the bid is the highest bid, then a deed may be issued to MERS.
However, when the role of MERS, the servicer and the investor is explained and understood, the servicer may be allowed to bid on its own behalf without having to produce any funds at the sale.
This would be the preferred method to use if at all possible. This way, the deed is executed directly to the servicer.
If this is not possible, and MERS must take title, then title should be held by MERS for as short of time as possible.
A subsequent deed from MERS to the investor should be executed immediately so that MERS remains in the chain of title only for an instant.
We have been advised that the current practice used when foreclosing in the name of the servicer, is for the servicer to take title and then execute a subsequent deed to the investor.
Because the MERS recommended procedure follows the same procedure that is used when the servicer forecloses in its name, no additional taxes are incurred by foreclosing in the name of MERS.
Evictions are handled the same way they are handled when the servicer commences the foreclosure as the foreclosing entity.
If the debtor declares bankruptcy, the proof of claim should be filed jointly in the name of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. and the servicer.
It is advised to file in both names in order to disclose to the court the relationship of MERS and the servicer.
The address to be used is the servicer’s address so that all trustee payments go directly to the servicer, not to MERS.
The Motion for Relief from Stay may be filed either solely in the name of MERS or jointly with the servicer. If MERS is the foreclosing entity, then it is MERS that needs the relief from the bankruptcy.
KIND OF SNEAKY. Makes it hard to find out who your mortgage servicer truly is!
It gets even weirder. Now foreclosed homes can be purchased by towns and FAITH BASED INITATIVES FOR AN F'N DOLLAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FEBRUARY, 2008 - Once enough homes were up for grabs, Congress passes new laws for FHA that make it possible for towns and faith based initiatives to work together to buy foreclosed homes for only $1.00 and then resell for profit. They even included laws to GIVE, not loan, money for landscaping and home repairs (almost $40,000) per home. Meanwhile, the poor homeowner who lost a home is gone. MERS gives the power to evict the homeowner to the new buyers: cities and faith based initiatives.
http://www.hud.gov/...
Here is the research needed to understand the history and how we are BEING FLEECED.
1980 Change in Federal Reserve Glass Steagal powers including interest rates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Institutions_Deregulation_and_Monetary_Control_Act
1982 - The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982
The bill, which deregulated the Savings & Loan Industry, whose full title was "An Act to revitalize the housing industry by strengthening the financial stability of home mortgage lending institutions and ensuring the availability of home mortgage loans," was a Reagan Administration initiative.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
1999 - Conference Report and Text of_Gramm-Leach-Bliley Bill
Repealed of the 1933 Glass Steagal Act and is attributed to
Contributing to today’s housing bubble meltdown.
http://banking.senate.gov/conf/confrpt.htm
1999 - MERS FORMS to use to bundle and sell Mortgages electronically
http://www.mersinc.org/...
1999 – Simultaneously, as if anticipating the foreclosures of the future, MERS publishes "How to Foreclose" instructions for each and every State on line for all to see.
1999 - How to Foreclose Homes Electronically
http://www.mersinc.org/...
As of 2000, Enter: The Rubber Stamp Congress! Yeah Baby, the sun shines in the board rooms and it is time to make a crap load of hey. Congress had already put in place the laws to open the floodgates of Capitalism. Ten years of political foreplay was about to pay off with a huge investment orgasm for Wall Street, et. al. And, thanks to McCain for inventing the Blackberry, everyone could secretly use our new technology to make buying and trading mortgages unabashed and untraceable.
Ah, the Millennium High Jack was to begin.
2003 - How Greenspan’s Federal Reserve helped the Wall Street Fornicators rev up the money-making, hedge-fund driven scheme into a full-blown capitalist orgy. The rate cut, which the Fed approved by an 11-1 vote at the end of a two-day meeting, pushed the funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other on overnight loans, from 1.25 percent to 1 percent, the lowest level since it averaged 0.68 percent in July 1958.
The Fed began cutting rates in January 2001 as it tried to combat an approaching recession that began in March of that year. It kept cutting rates in an effort to insulate the economy from a series of shocks ranging from terrorist attacks to corporate accounting scandals and then early this year consumer and business uncertainty about war in Iraq might do.http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20030626/ai_n11401010
2/2008 - Once enough homes were up for grabs, Congress passes new laws for FHA that make it possible for towns and faith based initiatives to work together to buy foreclosed homes for only $1.00 and then resell for profit. They even included laws to GIVE, not loan, money for landscaping and home repairs (almost $40,000) per home. Meanwhile, the poor homeowner who lost a home is gone. MERS gives the power to evict the homeowner to the new buyers: cities and faith based initiatives.
How to buy a foreclosed home for ONE DOLLAR, $1.00
http://www.hud.gov/...
"WE ARE AN OWNERSHIP SOCIETY" George Bush
None this could have run so smoothly if Greenspan hadn’t dropped the interest rates so low and Congress hadn’t made it legal to offer Subprime mortgages to anyone brave or stupid enough to believe the mortgage brokers and banks when they all said, with straight faces "Hey, don't worry, your home value will go up and you can refinance in a couple of years to a fixed rate after you have also improved your credit rating. It's just the way things are done these days. Wages? Let's see, you need $300,000 for a mortgage, so let's write in that you make $90,000 a year. Is that ok with you?"
And the poor guy who wants a home for his family says "Ya, sure, whatever it takes. You guys know what your doing, I just want a home." And later than night he hears President Bush blaring WE ARE AN OWNERSHIP SOCIETY. He sweats himself to sleep worrying his family will be the only family in America without a home of their own.
My freakin dog, Bruzer, could have gotten a mortgage in 2005, but Bruzer knew better.
The Fed was complicit. The States were complicit. The counties were complicit. The cities were complicit. Appraisers were given free hand to raise the cost of a home for years. All were complicit.
And now we, the taxpayer, are being asked to chip in $2,800 for every person in our family?
The last nail on the coffin? Paulsen is draining our Treasury!
In our new world, where physicists are hired to create Wall Street trading models, where lightly collateralized day traders are allowed to buy huge volumes of equity on a promise, and the internet enables loan officers to scoop as many debtors as time allows and then make small commissions on volume when they whisk their debtor bundles directly into Wall Street’s designer hedge funds...
http://www.dailykos.com/...