If judges have thrown out foreclosures because no one can prove

[BR_Parkway]

they "own" the mortgage - how are the people ever going to get a clear title on their homes? In fact, how are a lot of other people who are making their payments, not being foreclosed on - but their loan has been sliced and diced so much, who would be authorized to sign off that the loan was paid in full?

[Taverner]

1. Squatter's Rights

A beautiful law indeed

(My Inner Anarchist loves this one)

[rucky]

2. Maybe title insurance isn't a scam after all?

Well, I'm not holding my breath, but just wanted to work "title insurance is a scam" into the conversation.

[havocmom]

8. good point, but they are laying off the people who do the work there too

gonna be the guy with the biggest club to fight with pretty soon

[morillon]

9. Owner's title insurance is well worth it, IMO.

A friend of mine lives in a nice neighborhood with a central golf course. The owners of the golf course property apparently lost their minds sometime last year and decided to start shaking down the people who had property adjacent to the course to give up chunks of their land. They told my friend that part of his house, which is several decades old, was illegally on golf course property. If he hadn't had title insurance, he would've had to hire a lawyer on his own dime to clear his title. Some of the other homeowners didn't have title insurance and ended up forking over parts of their property because they couldn't afford to fight back.

In my friend's case, his title insurance company and their mean lawyers took care of the whole thing. It turned out the golf course owners had NO claim at all, and their experience with his title insurance company's lawyers was enough to get them to back down on other attempts to screw people out of their land. If it had turned out the other way, the title insurance company would've paid to make things right, which could have included buying his property.

I'm in a situation with my old house where let's just say I'm glad we have title insurance. The guy who owns one of the adjacent properties is a bit of a nut, and he's made threatening comments about our driveway being in the wrong place, despite it having been there for many decades. He knows we have title insurance, 'cause I told him I'd be glad to have my title insurance people respond to any claim he'd care to bring. I think he's used to bullying people into giving him stuff (he got his piece of land in barter for a debt), and he backed off when he saw we'd lawyer up without turning a hair. :-)

[FirstLight]

3. well, if posession is 9/10ths of the law,

then if you are still LIVING there, it's yours, right...?

I think we are coming to a place where so much will crash, it wil be impossible to figure out and we will start from a "clean slate" type of place... at least I hope so!

"squatters rights!" :woohoo:
I am a renter, can I just stay here? lol

[BlooInBloo]

4. YAH! It'll be just like Mad Max!!! It'll be GLORIOUS man!!!

:rofl:

[Still Sensible]

5. I contend that challenging a mortgage action on this basis

might be a short term relief, but at some point somebody with that note is going to show up. What do our property attorneys on the board have to say?

[cbayer]

6. I recently sold a house and had a lot of trouble with this.

A paid off second mortgage couldn't be confirmed because the holder had sold to another company who couldn't produce the appropriate paperwork. It was a real PITA.

[morillon]

10. That happened to us when we bought our first house.

The owner prior to the one who sold us the house had some kind of bizarre 24% interest second "mortgage" that he used to buy a C-Band satellite dish, a wide screen TV, and some other fancy gadgets. Although the new owner paid off the weird mortgage when he bought the house (the previous folks ran out on it), the lien was never removed. The same thing happened with some carpet that was installed and financed through a local company.

On the day we closed, we were running all over the place trying to get releases to prove these liens had been paid off. Pain in the ass, for sure!

[customerserviceguy]

7. Maybe these judges just are making up law as they go along here

Ultimately, some person, entity, or group of the aforementioned 'own' the promissory note secured by a mortgage. At any given time, a servicer of that loan can be found, and a payoff figure can be produced by that servicer. How the owners of that payoff choose to divvy it up is their business.

If a closing agent will indemnify a title insurance company, saying that they paid the loan off, the title company will issue a new purchaser a policy of title insurance that does not show the paid-off mortgage as a lien on the property. In states that use a "deed of trust" as a mortgage instrument, the servicing agent can authorize the trustee on the deed of trust (usually either a title company or an attorney) to "reconvey" the land on the deed of trust to the borrower, or their successor in interest, if they've sold the place.

Just twenty-five years of title insurance experience here. Yes, there are scammy things about a few of the ways they do business, but title insurance is not a scam. And I've been out of it since 2005.