Orlando Foreclosure Defense

One of the key principals of any business is to listen to your customers when they express concerns or suggestions. This sort of input has led to all types of changes in the market place, from the cardboard sleeve that wraps around a cup of coffee to full size spare tires in cars. Companies listen because customers express real life experiences with their products and these experiences give them valuable information that could never have been anticipated in a think tank setting.

This concept has not been lost on our federal government because they now want to hear from the public to gather suggestions as to how to fix housing. The government wants the public to provide comment to questions that will be published in an upcoming release of the Federal Register. While the idea is sound many of the questions are open ended and I am not sure who exactly they had in mind to answer some of them.

Here are a few examples of the government questions:

How should federal housing finance objectives be prioritized in the context of the broader objectives of housing policy?

What role should the federal government play in supporting a stable, well-functioning housing finance system and what risks, if any, should the federal government bear in meeting its housing finance objectives?

Should the government approach differ across different segments of the market, and if so, how?

How should the current organization of the housing finance system be improved?

How should the housing finance system support sound market practices?

What is the best way for the housing finance system to help ensure consumers are protected from unfair, abusive or deceptive practices?

Do housing finance systems in other countries offer insights that can help inform US reform choices?

The questions are designed to focus on what the housing finance system should accomplish with a big picture view. While it is a good step in hearing out the public on many of these issues, one hopes that this questioner is not a veiled attempt to make it look like the public’s views are being considered when in actuality the government has already decided what directions to take.

As seen on Fox 35 for Foreclosure Defense

“Orlando Homeowners facing foreclosure may be able to hold onto their homes by making a simple request of their bank: Show me the note.

In essence the homeowner is requiring the lender to show the original mortgage paperwork.

And just like that, the foreclosure proceedings came to a standstill.

Homeowners around the country are managing to stave off foreclosure by employing a strategy that goes to the heart of the whole nationwide mess.

During the real estate frenzy of the past decade, mortgages were sold and resold, bundled into securities and peddled to investors.

In many cases, the original note signed by the homeowner was lost, stored away in a distant warehouse or destroyed.”

Persuading a judge to compel production of hard-to-find or nonexistent documents can, at the very least, delay foreclosure, buying the homeowner some time and turning up the pressure on the lender to renegotiate the mortgage.

One Orlando foreclosure defense attorney says in almost all cases he sees, the lender can’t produce the original mortgage paperwork signed by the homeowner.

“It’s always ‘we’ve lost the note, it’s destroyed, it’s stolen, we don’t know where it is’, but we want to collect on the note’”, said Steven Kramer of the Kramer Law Firm.

Kramer said if pushed, banks usually produce the note, but homeowners can stay in their homes longer and have time to negotiate with the lender to possible get a lower payment they can afford.

“I don’t think it’s a stalling tactic,” Kramer said. “But by forcing the banks to do what they’re supposed to do, to do the right thing and produce the original note, homeowners will get more time.”

Tom Deutsch, deputy executive director of the American Securitization Forum, a group that represents banks, law firms and investors, dismissed the strategy as merely a stalling tactic, saying homeowners are “making lawyers jump through procedural hoops to delay what’s likely to be inevitable.”

Deutsch said the original note is almost always electronically retained and can eventually be found.

Judges are often willing to accept electronic documentation. And lenders are sometimes allowed to produce other paperwork to establish they are the holder of a loan. Still, assembling such documents to a judge’s satisfaction takes time, which to homeowners is the point.

The practice is becoming so common that one Tampa lawyer created the web site Consumer Warning Network to promote the produce-the-note strategy nationwide.” - You can read the full article on My Fox 35 News website at http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/Show_Me_Note021809