Chain of title
"In the depths of the Great Recession, a cancer nurse, a car dealership worker, and an insurance fraud specialist helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history-a scandal that implicated dozens of major executives on Wall Street. They called it foreclosure fraud: millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it. Fiscal Times columnist David Dayen recounts how these ordinary Floridians challenged the most powerful institutions in America armed only with the truth -- and for a brief moment they brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees"
Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2017–2018years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Here is a real, widespread, horrifying example: I was aghast when reading "Chain of Title" by David Dayen. https://thenewpress.com/books/chain-of-title
Amongst many things, recall how banks got away with a slap on the wrist for the whole Robo-Signing scandal. (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_foreclosure...)
If an average individual had done this, they would face charges (and they should.) But mysteriously when it is done tens of thousands of times it somehow becomes legitimate. I'm a pretty liberal person but I am deeply disappointed in the previous US administration for not pursuing this scandal towards justice.
- > Then the bank holds... gets a bail out, the home is written off, and the market is just as tight as it ever was.
This! I've been talking to people about this for years. Most don't believe me when I say it. In fact, I've only had one person, a banking official, acknowledge that this was standard practice, but he assured me that it was coming to an end (two years ago).
But yes, what you've written is totally the case. In fact, I just checked on a house that I know to have been abandoned by its "owners" in early 2011, but is still recorded as in their possession. Those folks sent the bank jingle mail, which the bank kindly sent back! (LOL)
[edit 1: I also don't think that many of the low- & no-money down portfolio sales that Fannie and Freddie did to clear their books helped matters.]
It's almost like Japan (from the little that I've read) was a blueprint for the U.S. etc., and the U.S., I suspect, will be an further example for other markets.
[edit 2: Book recommendation Chain of Title by David Dayen] - > Seriously, who in their right mind would accept this? That you pull some data in a ... what, app? Provided by whom?
Exactly the problem I have with the system - MERS [0,1] - that the banks have been putting in place over the last 20 years. I think having to file, in paper, with local property appraisers may make the most sense as a check on large-scale manipulation, but having some kind of independent, incorruptible single source of truth is desperately needed and isn't especially there right now.
> In the real world, there is a chain of trust made out of lawyers, notaries, various government agencies and so on.
And in that real world, there's plenty of manipulation in which houses get taken from their rightful owners. See, for instance, 'Chain of Title' [2] by David Dayen. Again, some kind of independent, incorruptible single source of truth is desperately needed and isn't especially there right now. I wouldn't want to replace multiple, independent parties checking the validity of transactions, but having an accessible, reliable, incorruptible reference would help everybody, I think.
[0] https://www.mersinc.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_Electronic_Registrati...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DV1YERY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
