Why are Banks Halting Pending Foreclosure Auctions for Tens of Thousands of Home Owners?

The last week has seen a rash of the nations largest banks and lending institutions publicly announcing that they are delaying foreclosure proceedings for tens of thousands of their borrowers. It first started with an announcement by GMAC that they were suspending foreclosures in 23 states while they reviewed the legal documents filed in the cases for accuracy. Shortly there after JP Morgan Chase announced they too were following suit. Followed by the nations largest lender Bank of America a couple days later.

Why the sudden about face from these lending giants. It starts with a handful of law firms that were hired by these banks to prepare, process and file the necessary foreclosure paperwork with the courts. These law firms have recently come under fire for allegedly providing fraudulent documents and/or affidavits concerning the loans they were foreclosing on. At the heart of the issue is what entity actually holds the legal right to foreclose on these homes. Because of the way loans were packaged and bundled into mortgage backed securities and then sold like stocks on Wall Street, sometimes multiple times, it is quite often difficult to pinpoint the actual legal owner of the note or loan in question without a good bit of research. Many times banks like JP Morgan and Bank of America are only the servicing agent who is collecting the monthly payments from the borrower for the eventual end of the line investor. Rather than research the thousands of individual loan files to determine some of these answers, the law firms in question simply prepared affidavits certifying XYZ Company as the legal owner of the mortgage and they would proceed with the foreclosure process.

Recently several high level executives at these lenders have admitted that they would sign 7000-10,000 of these documents a month without reviewing them for accuracy. Now that the cat has been let out of the bag on this the banks in question have decided it would be prudent to temporarily halt these pending foreclosures to allow them time to verify the accuracy of the information.

This move by the banks will in no way stop the tidal wave of foreclosures happening around the county but will likely push back the inevitable by a couple of months while they sort things out. It is interesting to note that Wells Fargo Home Mortgage has publicly stated that they will not be postponing any of their pending foreclosures and they even took it a step further in announcing that they will no longer issue postponements for a foreclosure that has a pending sale on it. What does this mean for agents or buyers and sellers who are trying to close on a short sale transaction? If you have a short sale pending and it has been approved through Wells Fargo, make sure you close by the date on your settlement letter because there are no second chances anymore.