Joe Lents hasn't made a payment on his $1.5 million mortgage since 2002.
That's when Washington Mutual Inc. first tried to foreclose
on his home in Boca Raton, Florida. The Seattle-based lender
failed to prove that it owned Lents's mortgage note and dropped
attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have
stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.
Judges in at least five states have stopped foreclosure
proceedings because the banks that pool mortgages into
securities and the companies that collect monthly payments
haven't been able to prove they own the mortgages.
More than $2.1 trillion, or 19 percent, of outstanding
mortgages have been bundled into securities by private banks,
according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a Bethesda, Maryland-based
industry newsletter. Those loans may be sold several times
before they land in a security. Mortgage servicers, who collect
monthly payments and distribute them to securities investors,
can buy and sell the home loans many times.
Each time the mortgages change hands, the sellers are
required to sign over the mortgage notes to the buyers. In the
rush to originate more loans during the U.S. mortgage boom, from
2003 to 2006, that assignment of ownership wasn't always
properly completed, said Alan White, assistant professor at
Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Indiana.
``Loans were mass produced and short cuts were taken,''
White said. ``A lot of the paperwork is done in the name of the
original lender and a lot of the original lenders aren't around
anymore.''
More than 100 mortgage companies stopped making loans,
closed or were sold last year, according to Bloomberg data.
