WHERE'S THE NOTE?
Demand to see your mortgage note.
What’s a mortgage note?
A mortgage note is the document you signed when you purchased your home loan. Mortgages contain lots of paperwork – but only the original mortgage note with your signature is proof that you owe the debt. That’s why banks need the note to prove that they own the loan and can collect payments from you. The problem is, banks now buy and sell mortgages up and down Wall Street – slicing them up and repackaging them to sell to other banks. The bank you bought your mortgage from two years ago may not be the bank that owns it today. But, in all the shuffle, the mortgage notes often don’t get transferred along with your debt.
The Wall Street banks’ foreclosure system is a mess. Their total disregard for mortgage laws and standards is what created the foreclosure epidemic in the first place. Now, their total mismanagement is catching up to them. As of today, some of the largest mortgage lenders – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and GMAC (now called Ally) – have been forced to halt foreclosures in 23 states and growing. We can’t rely on Wall Street banks to follow basic rules. We have to hold them accountable. At very least, they must provide the mortgage notes.
When Wall Street banks securitized, packaged, sold, and resold our mortgages, they created a system where it is often impossible to figure out who actually owns mortgage notes and therefore has the authority to foreclose on properties. But the big banks are getting tangled up in their own web. Recent events have exposed a handful of banks that are throwing families out of their homes even though they don’t have the mortgage note that proves they actually have a legal right to do so. There have been instances of two banks trying to foreclose on the same home, and in at least one case, of a bank trying to foreclose on a house where the homeowner had never even taken out a mortgage with anyone in the first place.
Whether you are facing foreclosure, have an underwater mortgage, or are just a concerned homeowner, it’s important that you contact your bank and demand to see the original note on your mortgage.
MOVE YOUR MONEY CAMPAIGN
Are you outraged that the six largest bailed-out banks have used their government largesse to award another round of employee bonuses — to the tune of $90 billion, according to the New York Times? A new campaign suggests you don’t call your Congressman — just move your money to a community bank. The grassroots movement Move Your Money is sponsored by Ariana Huffington and Rob Johnson, director of Economic Policy Initiative at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. (Yahoo!Finance posted an interview with him today.) They want consumers to shift funds away from the six largest ”too big to fail” banks: Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. Those banks, they argue, were largely responsible for the financial crisis because of their reckless derivatives trading. They enjoyed a record year of profits in 2009 by returning to those risky schemes — rather than using government bailout money and guarantees to lend money to ordinary Americans, particularly small business owners. (And don’t forget what happened with credit cards in 2009 … interest rates hiked, credit lines slashed, accounts closed.) The Move Your Money campaign argues that the special protection given to the too-big-to-fail banks is wreaking competitive havoc on small community banks — putting even more power in the hands of the mighty. The mega-banks have been sending taxpayer cash back to Capitol Hill to thwart reform, including the regulation of derivatives. The website includes a video with clips from the Frank Capra classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” contrasting the David and Goliath banks. It also has a search tool to connect you with a local bank. (No matter what bank you put your money in, as long as it’s FDIC-insured, your deposit is protected up to $250,000.) I moved my money to a local credit union and am absolutely thrilled. Would you move your money as a form of political protest?
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