Foreclosure Actions in the Name of MERS
Servicing Guide, Part VIII, 105: Conduct of Foreclosure Proceedings
Effective with foreclosures referred on or after May 1, 2010, MERS must not be named as a plaintiff in any foreclosure action, whether judicial or non-judicial, on a mortgage loan owned or securitized by Fannie Mae
.
Sadly, millions have been introduced to Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) when they received their foreclosure notices.
America is a crime scene. The government was not only complicit, it helped create MERS. Freddie Mac now wants to hide MERS involvement on foreclosure proceedings?
What do We the People do, when we are the victims of our own government?
Is Freddie trying to cover their tracks which walk side by side with MERS? It is not a bizarre question to ask. So, where will this country be if the Republicans who created this American Crime Scene were to gain power again? I shudder to guess.
Here's the rest of the Freddie Mac instructions to mortgage servicing companies:
MERS is the mortgagee of record when either a mortgage names MERS as the original mortgagee and is recorded in the applicable land records, or a completed and recorded assignment names MERS as the mortgage assignee.
Therefore, when MERS is the mortgagee of record, the servicer must prepare a mortgage assignment from MERS to the servicer, and then bring the foreclosure in its own name, unless Fannie Mae specifically requires that the foreclosure be brought in the name of Fannie Mae.
In that event, the assignment must be from MERS to Fannie Mae, in care of the servicer at the servicer's address for receipt of notices. In all cases, the assignment from MERS to the servicer or Fannie Mae must be recorded before the foreclosure begins.
Fannie Mae will not reimburse the servicer for any expense incurred in preparing or recording an assignment of the mortgage loan from MERS to the servicer or to Fannie Mae.
If an assignment has been recorded from MERS to either the servicer or Fannie Mae and the borrower reinstates the mortgage loan prior to completion of the foreclosure proceedings, the servicer need not re-assign the mortgage to MERS and re-register the mortgage with MERS. Re-assigning and re-registering the mortgage with MERS is not required by Fannie Mae and any such action will be at the discretion and expense of the servicer.
The servicer should consult its foreclosure attorney to determine if any other legal requirements apply when conducting foreclosures of mortgage loans in which MERS is the prior mortgagee of record.
Mortgagee? Definition: mortgagee n. the person or business making a loan that is secured by the real property of the person (mortgagor) who owes him/her/it money. (See: mortgage, mortgagor).
Will the media please ask Freddie why now? Why wait until May of this year to change foreclosure procedures? Isn't Freddie supposed to work for the people? Is it a government agency or a corporate/Wall Street agency? If the latter, is that what it was set up to be?
END OF STORY/DIARY.
An examples of MERS 1999 Foreclosure Plans in comment thread.
For a graphic presentation of how this transpired I highly recommend viewing a presentation found here. Click on the "Multi-Media" pic in the left hand column.
It is interesting, although not perfect. Also, in this article MERS is not taken to task sufficiently, imo. I guess I have just read too many docs and know better than to believe that MERS is 'just a system'.
There is an on-line MERS in-depth internal document historical trip.
Here's an example of what you will find at the MERS own document historical, on line record:
To: All MERS Members December 15, 1999
Relaxation of County Code Edit for Registrations
It is currently a requirement to include a valid Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) county name or FIPS county code in the County Description field to successfully pre-register or register a loan on the MERS System.......
Effective December 17, 1999, if county information is omitted or does not match the FIPS table, the MERS System will process the transaction and insert “County Unknown” in the County Description field. This edit change applies to pre-registrations, registrations and MIN updates submitted through both the MERS Desktop Application and batch transmissions........
Although we are making this enhancement to make it an easier process to register loans on the MERS System, we strongly encourage you to provide the correct county code at the time of pre-registration or registration. As part of our Quality Assurance Standards, MERS will require members to provide the correct county information on MERS within 12 months of the registration date. In a future release, we will provide you with a new report that will list all of the MINs that have “County Unknown” in the County Description field.
What could possibly go wrong with hundreds, maybe thousands, of real estate transactions listing the County as "County Unknown" and then dependent on someone to correct this when we know that mortgages changed hands almost instantly upon closing? Who corrected the information? Was it corrected?
There might be some good news, if MERS followed the system carefully, every mortgage transaction performed that used the MERS system produced a Mortgage Identification Number!
Somewhere buried in the 60,000,000 mortgages processed via MERS, every mortgage should have been assigned a Mortgage Identification Number (MIN). Was this done prior to this 2003 MERS bulletin? That would be for MERS to answer.
However, in order to have a Mortgage Identification number on the Purchaser's docs, the Purchaser had to request it. If you have a mortgage that shows MERS on any paperwork, do you have your MIN #? If not, get it ASAP.
You will find this at the link above in the 2003 Re: MERS 1-2-3 Redesign:
You also have the option of including a loan number, if required by the Intended Purchaser.
And, in this same MERS bulletin, this nugget which helps to explain why home buyers can't find out who they need to talk to:
Effective June 30, 2003, the MERS® 1-2-3 website will no longer display the
Org(inator?) ID, User ID and password fields. Instead, there will be a link to access the Document Preparation Providers to obtain a MERS 1-2-3 MIN and prepare documents.....
Below is a summary of the new Document Preparation and MIN Reservation process for
MERS 1-2-3.
To Select a Document Provider:
- Click on the desired Document Preparation Provider link on the login page of MERS
1-2-3.
- Upon selecting the desired Document Preparation Provider, you are taken to the login page for that provider.
- First time users must follow the Document Preparation Provider’s instructions to obtain a User ID and password to gain access to that system.
- User IDs and passwords previously established remain valid and can be used to gain
access to the provider’s system.
This is quite clever. The originator will not show up as the originator as of June, 2003, but will be able to act as the newly named originator. Smoke screen?
But, let's get back to the big story: Is/was our government complicit with the mortgage fraud and foreclosure debacle.
If Freddie, Fannie, HUD, and Congress all helped this process to thrive, who within our government will take action against itself?
Fannie and Freddie are MERS shareholders:
MERS Shareholders List
Shareholders played a critical role in the development of MERS. Through their capital support, MERS was able to fund expenses related to development and initial start-up.
The following organizations are Shareholders of MERS.
American Land Title Association (an originator of MERS)
Bank of America (used to be Country Wide?)
CCO Mortgage Corporation
Chase Home Mortgage Corporation of the Southeast
CitiMortgage, Inc.
Commercial Mortgage Securities Association
Corinthian Mortgage Corporation
EverHome Mortgage Company (A unit of Bear Stearns?)
Fannie Mae
First American Title Insurance Corporation (an originator of MERS)
Freddie Mac
GMAC Residential Funding Corporation
Guaranty Bank (Closed. Now Compass Bank
HSBC Finance Corporation
Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation
MGIC Investor Services Corporation (provides market-leading mortgage credit and prepayment risk analytics to lenders)
Mortgage Bankers Association (an originator of MERS)
Nationwide Advantage Mortgage Company
PMI Mortgage Insurance Company (I'ts a PAC, but you have to pay $14.98 to see the list of it's contributors. Interesting)
Stewart Title Guaranty Company (Precursor to MERS? It's global.
SunTrust Morgage, Inc. (Owned by Sun Trust Bank)
United Guaranty Corporation
Washington Mutual Bank (Now owned by JP Morgan Chase)
Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.
WMC Mortgage Corporation (A subsidiary of GE Money. Electronic data management.)
Here's the 2009 list of the Board of Directors:
MERS Board of Directors (most are CEOs or Principles):
Ed Albrigo Freddie Mac
R.K. Arnold MERSCORP, Inc.
Barry Bier GMAC Residential Holding Corp.
John Courson Mortgage Bankers Association
Henry Cunningham Cunningham & Company
S.A. Ibrahim Radian Group
John Johnson MortgageAmerica, Inc.
Leo Knight National City Mortgage
Pat Lamb P 1st National Bank of Arizona
Ron McCord First Mortgage Company, LLC
Michael Petrie Mortgage & Investment Corp.
Kurt Pfotenhauer American Land Title Association
Bruce Posey Streeter Brothers Mortgage Corp.
John Robbins Vertice Lending
Deborah Schiavo Highland Advisory Partners
Marianne Sullivan Fannie Mae Washington, D.C.
H.G. Waddell United Guaranty Residential Insurance Co.
Michael Young Cenla Ewing, NJ
I believe these list may have been edited since I first found it in 2008. I think I remember Country Wide being on the list.
MORE TOMORROW
Here's MERS 1999 Foreclosure rules for each state, this is now an archive file, MERS took it down late last year
http://web.archive.org/...