Ownership of Note
The only person or entity that can displace you from your house is the entity that actually owns the mortgage and holds the note to prove it.
What did the holder of the note do with that document? Not so long ago it was put in a vault or a file, so that if the homeowner fell behind in payments, the owner of the note was able to locate the document that proved ownership of the debt. But in the frenzy of greed that characterized the last few years, this practice was substantially modified. Instead of keeping the original note securely, those notes were packaged with hundreds or thousands of other notes. They were sliced and diced and sold, and resold and passed on again. There is a reasonable chance that if you fall behind on your payments, no one will be able to produce the original note and so no one will be able to say to a court of law that they for sure are the owner of the note. True, there will be a record of payments but this may not be sufficient to establish actual ownership of the note.
Some distressed homeowners have been going to court, and when the time comes for that dreadful moment for them to hear that they have been foreclosed upon, instead the intrepid homeowner speaks up and says, "Where is the original note?" Some courts are proving sympathetic to such a challenge, and have put the alleged owner of the note to the task of proving they are indeed the true owner.
The homeowner proves ownership by means of a grant deed recorded at the county recorder's office. The mortgage holder proves ownership of the mortgage debt by producing the original deed of trust that is evidence of the indebtedness. If this document cannot be produced, how can the homeowner be dispossessed?
The banks did very well out of the enormous run-up in home prices in the past ten years. Their shareholders did well and their executives took home millions in bonuses. But now that times are hard, they have gone to the government for billions of dollars in bailout money.
The homeowner should not be held to a different standard. Ownership is not a technicality that a bank should be allowed to ignore. Banks have already played their hand. The homeowner must now have a chance to play as well. But there is a difference.
It seems to me that both lenders and banks have complicated the concept of ownership by chopping the debt up into a thousand little pieces and then inserting them into pools of investment instruments that get sold over and over again. The banks and lenders and their lobbies created this mess - so why shouldn't the homeowner demand that the lender produce the original note or deed? Sounds fair to me. It may be a technicality - but it's the homeowners technicality for a change!!!
Who owns my mortgage?
When trying to find out who owns your mortgage it is important to understand that there is a substantial difference between the servicer of your loan, and the actual owner of your mortgage. Trying to find out exactly who owns your loan may be a difficult task. Just because every month you send in your payment to a certain company does not mean that they are the owner of the loan, they may just be your mortgage servicer.
Knowing who owns your mortgage, will be very helpful when contacting your servicer for some sort of loan workout. But finding out who owns your loan is unfortunately not always as easy as it sounds. You should be able to directly connect with your servicer by calling the telephone number listed on your last monthly statement. But most likely this number will only connect you to your mortgage servicer, or company that collects your monthly payments.
MBS or “mortgage backed securities” are mortgage loans that are traded and sold among investors on Wall street.So because of this many investors tend to subscribe to MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System) which is an automatic system that helps investors keep track of who owns which mortgages they are traded among investors, as well as who is servicing the loan. But if you are a customer trying to figure out who owns your loan on the MERS registry, you will not find the answer.
This is because MERS only allows the name of the name of the servicer and their contact information to be displayed. Only the servicer or investor will disclose this information.
So the question is “what should you do when trying to find out weho owns your mortgage?”
Start by calling the number on your most recent monthly statement or the number in your mortgage coupon book. This number will connect you to your servicer, who may actually be the owner of your mortgage. If they are not the owner they may be able to tell you who is, but remember that person may not may not always know who the investor is.
If you happen to have an FHA loan you should contact FHA’S National servicing Center, to find out who owns your mortgage.
The facts are that this is a great mystery for most homeowners and many will never find out who the actual owner of their mortgage is. Many waste precious time searching for something that cannot be found, when they could have been actively pursuing a loan workout or bettering their lives. In addition, knowing who the owner is will not do you much good because they purposely want to remain anonymous.