Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Homeowner Woes

The housing crisis has taken an odd new turn: Now you can lose your home to the bank even if your payments are up to date. The whole thing was a mistake, of course, but what's even more frightening was that the banks knew about the mistake, and the house still got auctioned off. Anna Ramirez, a woman in Homestead, Florida, had gone to Washington Mutual to restructure her loan, and somehow, the bank recorded it as a foreclosure. They auctioned off her house, even as Ramirez was making the new payments.

Fortunately, the bank recognized the error, and went to court to get the auction sale reversed. But then, the comedy of errors continued: the court never filed the judge's orders, so the man who bought her house went ahead and took possession.

Ramirez arrived home last week to find all her possessions out on the front lawn. It took her till the next morning to get a judge to realize that yes, this woman who had been making her mortgage payments didn't deserve to have her house auctioned out from under her.

Washington Mutual, of course, was one of the biggest issuers of subprime mortgages in the nation. Add to that the court system in Florida, and you end up with a lawful homeowner getting her furniture strewn all over her lawn.

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