Judges Giving Lenders A Harder Time On Foreclosure

Traditionally, judges almost always sided with lenders when it came to foreclosure. Lenders had the high-powered lawyers and the paperwork. Now things are changing.
Many borrowers are making a convincing case to judges that they did not know what they were getting into when they took on a mortgage.
I find it hard to believe that some judges are swallowing this argument but they are.
What makes matters murky is that it is no longer clear who owns a mortgage.
The New York Times reports:

The reason that notes have gone missing is the huge mass of mortgage securitizations that occurred during the housing boom. Securitizations allowed for large pools of bank loans to be bundled and sold to legions of investors, but some of the nuts and bolts of the mortgage game — notes, for example — were never adequately tracked or recorded during the boom. In some cases, that means nobody truly knows who owns what.

To be sure, many legal hurdles mean that the initial outcome of the White Plains case may not be repeated elsewhere. Nevertheless, the ruling — by a federal judge, no less — is bound to bring a smile to anyone who has been subjected to rough treatment by a lender. Methinks a few of those people still exist.

More important, the case is an alert to lenders that dubious proof-of-ownership tactics may no longer be accepted practice. They may even be viewed as a fraud on the court.