This is just an idea of the volume that the MERS foreclosure fraud covers, not to mention all that Robo-signing.
MERS was created for the Mortgage banks for ease in dealing with this kind of volume, because it made Securitizing loans so much easier.
Securitizing a LoanIRVINE, CA - July 16, 2010 - (RealEstateRama) — RealtyTrac® (http://www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its Midyear 2010 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows a total of 1,961,894 foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 1,654,634 U.S. properties in the first six months of 2010, a 5 percent decrease in total properties from the previous six months but an 8 percent increase in total properties from the first six months of 2009. The report also shows that 1.28 percent of all U.S. housing units (one in 78) received at least one foreclosure filing in the first half of the year.
Securitizing a loan is the process of selling a loan to Wall Street and private investors. It is a method with many issues to be considered, especially tax issues, which is beyond the purview of this article. The methodology of securitizing a loan generally followed these steps:
· A Wall Street firm would approach other entities about issuing a “Series of Bonds” for sell to investors and would come to an agreement. In other words, the Wall Street firm “pre-sold” the bonds.
· The Wall Street firm would approach a lender and usually offer them a Warehouse Line of Credit. The Warehouse Credit Line would be used to fund the loans. The Warehouse Line would be covered by restrictions resulting from the initial Pooling & Servicing Agreement Guidelines and the Mortgage Loan Purchase Agreement. These documents outlined the procedures for creation of the loans and the administering of the loans prior to, and after, the sale of the loans to Wall Street.
· The Lender, with the guidelines, essentially went out and found “buyers” for the loans, people who fit the general characteristics of the Purchase Agreement,. (Guidelines were very general and most people could qualify.” The Lender would execute the loan and fund it, collecting payments until there were enough loans funded to sell to the Wall Street firm who could then issue the bonds.
· Once the necessary loans were funded, the lender would then sell the loans to the “Sponsor”, usually either a subsidiary of the Wall Street firm, of a specially created Corporation of the lender. At this point, the loans are separated into “tranches” of loans, where they will be eventually turned into bonds.
Next, the loans were “sold” to the “Depositor”. This was a “Special Purpose Vehicle” designed with one purpose in mind. That was to create a “bankruptcy remote vehicle” where the lender or other entities are protected from what might happen to the loans, and/or the loans are “protected” from the lender. The “Depositor” would have once again been created by the Wall Street firm or the Lender.
Then, the “Depositor” places the loans into the Issuing Entity, which is another created entity solely used for the purpose of selling the bonds.
Finally, the bonds would be sold, with a Trustee appointed to ensure that the bondholders received their monthly payments.
As can be seen, each Securitized Loan has had the ownership of the Note transferred two to three times at a minimum, but, no Assignments of Beneficiary are executed under most circumstances. If such an Assignment occurs, it will usually occur after a Notice of Default was filed.
(Note: This is a VERY simplified version of the process, but it gives the general idea. Depending upon the lender, it could change to some degree, especially if Fannie Mae bought the loans. The purpose of such a convoluted process was so that the entities selling the bonds could become a “bankruptcy remote” vehicle, protecting lenders and Wall Street from harm, and also creating a “Tax Favorable” investment entity known as an REIMC. An explanation of this process would be cumbersome at this time.)
Foreclosure filings were reported on 313,841 U.S. properties in June, a decrease of nearly 3 percent from the previous month and a decrease of nearly 7 percent from June 2009. June was the sixteenth straight month where the total number of properties with foreclosure filings exceeded 300,000.
Foreclosure filings were reported on 895,521 U.S. properties during the second quarter, a decrease of nearly 4 percent from the previous quarter and an increase of less than 1 percent from the second quarter of 2009. Default and auction notices were down on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year basis in the second quarter, but bank repossessions (REOs) increased 5 percent from the previous quarter and 38 percent from Q2 2009 to 269,962 — a new quarterly high for the report.
“The second quarter was a tale of two trends,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “The pace of properties entering foreclosure slowed as lenders pre-empted or delayed foreclosure proceedings on delinquent properties with more aggressive short sale and loan modification initiatives. Meanwhile the pace of properties completing the foreclosure process through bank repossession quickened as lenders cleared out a backlog of distressed inventory delayed by foreclosure prevention efforts in 2009.
“The midyear numbers put us on pace to exceed 3 million properties with foreclosure filings by the end of the year, and more than 1 million bank repossessions,”
