Tag Archives: Citimortgage

The CFPB Makes Its Case

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CFPB Director Cordray

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its Semi-Annual Report. Given that the Bureau is under attack by Republicans in Congress and in the Trump Administration, one can read this as a defense (a strong defense, I might editorialize) for the work that the Bureau has done on behalf of consumers. The core of the Bureau’s argument is that it levels the playing field for consumers when they deal with financial services companies:

The Bureau has continued to expand its efforts to serve and protect consumers in the financial marketplace. The Bureau seeks to serve as a resource on the macro level, by writing clear rules of the road and enforcing consumer financial protection laws in ways that improve the consumer financial marketplace, and on the micro level, by helping individual consumers get responses to their complaints about issues with financial products and services. While the various divisions of the Bureau play different roles in carrying out the Bureau’s mission, they all work together to protect and educate consumers, help level the playing field for participants, and fulfill the Bureau’s statutory obligations and mission under the Dodd-Frank Act. In all of its work, the Bureau strives to act in ways that are fair, reasonable, and transparent.

*     *     *

When Federal consumer financial protection law is violated, the Bureau’s Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending Division are committed to holding the responsible parties accountable. In the six months covered by this report, our supervisory actions resulted in financial institutions providing approximately $6.2 million in redress to over 16,549 consumers. During that timeframe, we also have announced enforcement actions that resulted in orders for approximately $200 million in total relief for consumers who fell victim to various violations of consumer financial protection laws, along with over $43 million in civil money penalties. We brought numerous enforcement actions for various violations of the Dodd-Frank Act and other laws, including actions against Mastercard and UniRush for breakdowns that left tens of thousands of economically vulnerable RushCard users unable to access their own money to pay for basic necessities; two separate actions against CitiFinancial and CitiMortgage for keeping consumers in the dark about options to avoid foreclosure; and against three reverse mortgage companies for deceptive advertisements, including claiming that consumers who obtained reverse mortgages could not lose their homes. We also brought two separate actions against credit reporting agencies Equifax and TransUnion for deceiving consumers about the usefulness and actual cost of credit scores they sold to consumers, and for luring consumers into costly recurring payments for credit products; and an action against creditor reporting agency Experian for deceiving consumers about the usefulness of credit scores it sold to consumers. The Bureau also continued to develop and refine its nationwide supervisory program for depository and nondepository financial institutions, through which those institutions are examined for compliance with Federal consumer financial protection law. (10-11, footnotes omitted)

Anyone who was around during the late 1990s and early 2000s would know that consumers are much better off with the Bureau than without it. This report provides some of the reasons why that is the case.

Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

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Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

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Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

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Is Freddie the “Government” When It’s In Conservatorship?

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Professor Dale Whitman posted a commentary on Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. v. Kelley, 2014 WL 4232687, Michigan Court of Appeals (No. 315082, rev. op., Aug. 26, 2014)  on the Dirt listserv:

This is a residential mortgage foreclosure case. The original foreclosure by CMI (CitiMortgage, apparently Freddie Mac’s servicer) was by “advertisement” – i.e., pursuant to the Michigan nonjudicial foreclosure statute. Freddie was the successful bidder at the foreclosure sale. In a subsequent action to evict the borrowers, they raised two defenses.

Their first defense was based on the argument that, even though Freddie Mac was concededly a nongovernmental entity prior to it’s being placed into conservatorship in 2008 (see American Bankers Mortgage Corp v. Fed Home Loan Mortgage Corp, 75 F3d 1401, 1406–1409 (9th Cir. 1996)), it had become a federal agency by virtue of the conservatorship with FHFA as conservator. As such, it was required to comply with Due Process in foreclosing, and the borrowers argued that the Michigan nonjudicial foreclosure procedure did not afford due process.

The court rejected this argument, as has every court that has considered it. The test for federal agency status is found in Lebron v. Nat’l Railroad Passenger Corp, 513 U.S. 374, 377; 115 S Ct 961; 130 L.Ed.2d 902 (1995), which involved Amtrak. Amtrak was found to be a governmental body, in part because the control of the government was permanent. The court noted, however, that FHFA’s control of Freddie, while open-ended and continuing, was not intended to be permanent. Hence, Freddie was not a governmental entity and was not required to conform to Due Process standards in foreclosing mortgages. This may seem overly simplistic, but that’s the way the court analyzed it.

There’s no surprise here. For other cases reaching the same result, see U.S. ex rel. Adams v. Wells Fargo Bank Nat. Ass’n, 2013 WL 6506732 (D. Nev. 2013) (in light of the GSEs’ lack of federal instrumentality status while in conservatorship, homeowners who failed to pay association dues to the GSEs could not be charged with violating the federal False Claims Act); Herron v. Fannie Mae, 857 F. Supp. 2d 87 (D.D.C. 2012) (Fannie Mae, while in conservatorship, is not a federal agency for purposes of a wrongful discharge claim); In re Kapla, 485 B.R. 136 (Bankr. E.D. Mich. 2012), aff’d, 2014 WL 346019 (E.D. Mich. 2014) (Fannie Mae, while in conservatorship, is not a “governmental actor” subject to Due Process Clause for purposes of foreclosure); May v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 2013 WL 3207511 (S.D. Tex. 2013) (same); In re Hermiz, 2013 WL 3353928 (E.D. Mich. 2013) (same, Freddie Mac).

There’s a potential issue that the court didn’t ever reach. Assume that a purely federal agency holds a mortgage, and transfers it to its servicer (a private entity) to foreclose. Does Due Process apply? The agency is still calling the shots, but the private servicer is the party whose name is on the foreclosure. Don’t you think that’s an interesting question?

The borrowers’ second defense was that Michigan statutes require a recorded chain of mortgage assignments in order to foreclose nonjudicially. See Mich. Comp. L. 600.3204(3). In this case the mortgage had been held by ABN-AMRO, which had been merged with CMI (CitiMortgage), the foreclosing entity. No assignment of the mortgage had been recorded in connection with the merger. However, the court was not impressed with this argument either. It noted that the Michigan Supreme Court in Kim v JP Morgan Chase Bank, NA, 493 Mich 98, 115-116; 825 NW2d 329 (2012), had stated

to set aside the foreclosure sale, plaintiffs must show that they were prejudiced by defendant’s failure to comply with MCL 600.3204. To demonstrate such prejudice, they must show they would have been in a better position to preserve their interest in the property absent defendant’s noncompliance with the statute.

The court found that the borrowers were not prejudiced by the failure to record an assignment in connection with the corporate merger, and hence could not set the sale aside.

But this holding raises an interesting issue: When is failure to record a mortgage assignment ever prejudicial to the borrower? One can conceive of such a case, but it’s pretty improbable. Suppose the borrowers want to seek a loan modification, and to do so, check the public records in Michigan to find out to whom their loan has been assigned. However, no assignment is recorded, and when they check with the originating lender, they are stonewalled. Are they prejudiced?

Well, not if it’s a MERS loan, since they can quickly find out who holds the loan by querying the MERS web site. (True, the MERS records might possibly be wrong, but they’re correct in the vast majority of cases.) And then there’s the fact that federal law requires written, mailed notification to the borrowers of both any change in servicing and any sale of the loan itself. If they received these notices (which are mandatory), there’s no prejudice to them in not being able to find the same information in the county real estate records.

So one can postulate a case in which failure to record an assignment is prejudicial to the borrowers, but it’s extremely improbable. The truth is that checking the public records is a terrible way to find out who holds your loan. Moreover, Michigan requires recording of assignments only for a nonjudicial foreclosure; a person with the right to enforce the promissory note can foreclose the mortgage judicially whether there’s a chain of assignments or not.

All in all, the statutory requirement to record a chain of assignments is pretty meaningless to everybody involved – a fact that the Michigan courts recognize implicitly by their requirement that the borrower show prejudice in order to set a foreclosure sale aside on this ground.

Is $50 Billion of Mortgage Relief Enough?

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The National Mortgage Settlement Monitor issued his Final Crediting Report. The report states that

In total, the servicers have provided more than $50 billion of gross dollar relief, which translates into more than $20 billion in credited relief under the Settlement’s scoring system. More than 600,000 families received some form of relief under the Settlement. Aggregate credited relief includes:

• $7,589,277,740, or 37 percent of total credited relief, of first lien principal forgiveness.

• $3,105,152,359, or 15 percent of total credited relief, of second lien forgiveness.

• $3,587,672,814, or 17 percent of total credited relief, of refinancing assistance.

• $6,410,554,173, or 31 percent of total credited relief, of other forms of relief, including, but not  limited to, assistance related to short sales and deeds in lieu of foreclosure. (2)

I am not going to criticize the substance of the mortgage settlement. But I have a hard time translating these massive numbers into an understanding of how much help people got from the settlement. $20 Billion of credited relief divided by 600,000 households comes out to about $33,000 in relief per household. The Monitor gives us no sense as to whether that $33,000 made a difference to the affected families.

Perhaps going forward, massive settlements like this should include metrics that help to break down these large numbers into categories that make more intuitive sense:  for instance, did the mortgage relief reduce the monthly payment to a sustainable level?  What percent reduction was there in monthly mortgage payments? How many mortgages were converted from underwater mortgages into ones that were in the money as a result of the settlement? Metrics such as these would help give an understanding of how many people were helped (certainly more than one of the metrics often repeated by the monitor, “My team spent 36,000 hours reviewing and testing the consumer relief and refinancing activities reported by the banks.”

As counter-intuitive as the question may seem, do we have enough information to really know whether $50 Billion of mortgage relief made a meaningful difference for American households?

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Rules in Favor of MERS in Foreclosure Proceeding, Upholding its Power of Sale Over the Plaintiff’s Property

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In Richardson v. Citimortgage, No. 6:10cv119, 2010 WL 4818556, at 1-6 (E.D. Tex. November 22, 2010) the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division, granted the Defendants’, Citimortgage and MERS, motion for summary judgment against the Plaintiff, Richardson, in a foreclosure proceeding. The Court reiterated MERS’s power of sale and its role as an “electronic registration system and clearinghouse that tracks beneficial ownerships in mortgage loans.”

Plaintiff purchased his home from Southside Bank with a Note. As the Lender, Southside Bank could transfer the Note and it, or any transferee, could collect payments as the Note Holder. In the agreement, Plaintiff acknowledged that Citimortgage, the loan servicer, could also receive payments. A Deed of Trust secured the Note by a lien payable to the Lender.

Under a provision in the deed, Southside Bank secured repayment of the Loan and Plaintiff irrevocably granted and conveyed the power of sale over the property. The Deed of Trust also explained MERS’s role as its beneficiary, acting as nominee for the Lender and Lender’s and MERS’s successors and assigns. MERS “[held] only legal title to the interests granted by the Borrower but, if necessary to comply with law or custom, [had] the right to exercise any and all of the interests [of the Lender and its successors and assigns], including the right to foreclose and sell the property.”

Plaintiff signed the Deed of Trust but eventually stopped making mortgage payments to CitiMortgage and filed for bankruptcy protection. As a result, “MERS assigned the beneficial interest in the Deed of Trust to Citimortgage.” Citimortgage posted the property for foreclosure after receiving authorization from the United States Bankruptcy Court. Plaintiff brought suit, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief and challenging Citimortgage’s authority to foreclose on the property.

In granting Citimortgage and MERS’s motion for summary judgment, the court explained that Citimortgage could enforce the loan agreements, including the power of foreclosure, after it received the Note from Southside Bank. Furthermore, under the doctrine of judicial estoppel, Plaintiff could not challenge Citimortgage’s right to enforce the Note after he “represented that it was [his] intention to surrender [the] property to Citimortgage,” in bankruptcy court. Citimortgage subsequently acquired a “valid, undisputed lien on the property for the remaining balance of the Note.”

Plaintiff also challenged MERS’s role with “respect to the enforcement of the Note and Deed of Trust.” In response, the court explained that “[u]nder Texas law, where a deed of trust expressly provides for MERS to have the power of sale, as here, MERS has the power of sale,” and that the Plaintiff’s argument lacked merit.

The court described MERS as a “[book entry system] designed to track transfers and avoid recording and other transfer fees that are otherwise associated with,” property sales. It concluded that MERS’s role in the instant foreclosure “was consistent with the Note and the Deed of Trust,” and that Citimortgage had the right to sell the Plaintiff’s property and schedule another foreclosure.