Tag Archives: mortgage

Missouri Court Dismisses Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and Home Ownership Equity Protection Act Violation Claims Brought Against Nationstar Mortgage, LLC and MERS

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The court in deciding White v. CTX Mortg., LLC, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 146589 (W.D. Mo. 2013) ultimately granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss. The plaintiff’s complaint asserted that the chain of title had been broken. Consequently, “title was not clear enough” for CTX to foreclose on the property.

Plaintiffs raised eight claims: (1) “Predatory Lending”; (2) “Servicer Fraud”; (3) violations of the Home Ownership Equity Protection Act (“HOEPA”), 15 U.S.C. § 1639, et seq.; (4) violations  [5] of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (“RESPA”), 15 U.S.C. § 2601, et seq.; (5) “Breach of Fiduciary Duty”; (6) “Identity Theft”; (7) Civil Rico; and (8) quiet title to real property.

For relief, plaintiffs requested economic damages; a declaratory judgment identifying the “owner” of the note and clarifying whether the deed was actually security for the loan; and injunctive relief conveying the property to plaintiffs or a judgment quieting title to plaintiffs’ property.

At the outset, the court made several general observations about the complaint. In each count, plaintiffs had substituted legal conclusions for facts. Subsequently, Nationstar and MERS argued that the court should dismiss all eight counts because they (1) failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, or (2) were barred by the applicable statute of limitations. Ultimately, the plaintiff’s claims were dismissed.

 

Nevada Court Dismisses TILA and Fraud Claims Brought Against Chase and MERS

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The court in deciding Leong v. JPMorgan Chase, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 144678 (D. Nev. 2013) ultimately granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss.

This action arose out of the foreclosure proceedings initiated against the property of the plaintiff Teresa Leong. Defendants Chase and MERS filed a motion to dismiss plaintiff’s action. Plaintiff alleged two causes of action, one of which was fraud: “wrongful use of a non existent co-borrower” and the other was “fraudulent documentation.” Plaintiff also requested, “to see her original documents, note and deed.”

After considering the plaintiff’s contentions, the court found that the plaintiff failed to allege that she was current on her mortgage payments or had otherwise satisfied the conditions and terms under the deed of trust. Accordingly, the court found that plaintiff failed to state a legally cognizable claim for wrongful foreclosure, and the action must be dismissed.

Plaintiff also insisted that defendant failed to provide the original note, plaintiff cited Nev. Rev. Stat. § 107.086(4). However, the court found that the defendants correctly point out that the plaintiff failed to cite to any authority that required defendants to produce the original note. As such, this cause of action was dismissed with prejudice.

Plaintiff lastly alleged that defendant failed to comply with the Federal Truth in Lending Act (“TILA”), codified at 15 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq. TILA contained many provisions concerning accurate and meaningful credit disclosures. However, the court found that the plaintiff’s complaint did not specify any particular provision with which defendant failed to comply. Accordingly, plaintiff provided only a conclusory statement as support for a vague TILA claim, and to the extent that this cause of action is alleged, it must be dismissed.

 

Nevada Court Dismisses Show-me-the-Note Action Brought Against Chase and MERS

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The court in Leong v. JPMorgan Chase, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 144678 (D. Nev. Oct. 7, 2013) granted defendants’ motion to dismiss.

This action arose out of the foreclosure proceedings initiated against the property of pro se Plaintiff Teresa Leong. Pending before the court was a motion to dismiss filed by defendants JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (“Chase”) and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (“MERS”) (collectively, “Defendants”). Plaintiff continued to request “to see my original documents Note and Deed.”

Plaintiff insisted that defendant failed to provide the original note. The court found that the only possibly relevant Nevada statute requiring the presentation of the original note or a certified copy is at a Foreclosure Mediation. Nev. Rev. Stat. § 107.086(4). Moreover, the court noted that it treats copies in the same way as it treats originals: “a duplicate is admissible to the same extent as an original.” Nev. Rev. Stat. § 52.245.

The court noted that the defendants correctly point out that plaintiff failed to cite to any authority that requires defendants to produce the original note, and defendants additionally provided non-binding legal authority to the contrary. As such, the court dismissed this cause of action with prejudice.

Washington Court Rejects Split-the-Note Theory

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The court in Zhong v. Quality Loan Serv. Corp., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 145916 (W.D. Wash. 2013) granted defendant’s motion to dismiss.

In her complaint, plaintiff alleged ten causes of action in connection with the initiation of the non-judicial foreclosure of her property.

Specifically, she brought claims for (1) wrongful foreclosure under the Washington Deed of Trust Act (“DTA”), RCW 61.24, (2) violation of Washington’s Consumer Protection Act (“CPA”), (3) negligence and breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing, (4) a request for injunctive relief, (5) a request for declaratory judgment, (6) cloud of title, (7) quiet title, (8) predatory lending, (9) emotional distress, and (10) unjust enrichment. Defendants removed the case to federal court, and now move to dismiss the complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim.

The defendants filed a motion to dismiss, this motion was granted. The court found that the plaintiff’s arguments failed as the court found that the plaintiff simply rehashed well-worn arguments that courts have repeatedly rejected.

 

Shiller on Primitive Housing Finance

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Robert Shiller has posted Why Is Housing Finance Still Stuck in Such a Primitive Stage? The abstract for this brief discussion paper reads:

The institutions for financing owner-occupied housing have not progressed as they should, and the financial innovation that has followed the financial crisis of 2007-9 has not been focused on improving the risk management of individual homeowners. This paper lists a number of barriers to housing finance innovation, and in light of these barriers, the problems of some major innovations of the past and future: self-amortizing mortgages, price-level adjusted mortgages (PLAMs), shared appreciation mortgages (SAMs), housing partnerships, and continuous workout mortgages (CWMs). (1)

The paper is more of an outline than a fleshed out argument, but it has some interesting points (and not just because the author recently won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics).  They include

  • Shared appreciation mortgages (SAMs), which offered some risk management of home price appreciation, were offered by the Bank of Scotland and Bear Stearns in the 1990s, but acquired a damaged reputation with the boom in home prices. U.K. homeowners who took such mortgages, and lost out on the speculative gains, were so angered that they filed a class-action lawsuit against the issuers. The suit was dropped, but the reputation loss was permanent. (5)

  • There has been some questioning of the assumption that insuring homeowners against a decline in home value is a good thing. Sinai and Soulelis (2014) have written that the existing  mortgage institutions may be close to optimal given that people want to live in their house forever, or move to a similar house whose price is correlated with the present house, and so are perfectly hedged. But their paper cannot be exactly right, given the sense of distress that homeowners are experiencing who are underwater. They are more certainly not right about all homeowners, many of whom actually plan to sell their home when they retire. (5-6)

  • The difficulties in making improvements in mortgage institutions have to do with the complexity of the risk management problem, coupled with mistrust of institutional players. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the Dodd-Frank Act and having authority over mortgages, among other things, seems oriented towards addressing complaints from the public, and has focused its attention so far on such things as unfair collection practices, bias against minorities, and excessive complexity of financial products being used to confuse customers. These are laudable concerns, but complaints that economists might register about the fundamental success of mortgage products to serve risk management well have not yet taken center stage. (6)

  • New Development economics, Karlan and Appel (2011), Bannerjee and Duflo (2012) has shown how carefully controlled experiments can reveal solid steps to take regarding new financial institutions for poverty reduction. The same methods could be used to improve mortgage institutions, as well as rental, leasing, partnership and cooperative institutions, in advanced countries. (7)

These are just brief thoughts. It will be interesting to see how Shiller develops them further.

California Court Dismisses All Seven Causes of Action Arising Out of the Alleged Wrongful Foreclosure of Plaintiff’s Home

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The court in deciding Dorn v. Countrywide Home Loans, 2013 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 7356 (Cal. App. 2d Dist. 2013) concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the action; the court thus affirmed the lower courts decision.

Plaintiff Jason Dorn appealed from a judgment dismissing his action against defendants America’s Wholesale Lender, Countrywide Bank, Bank of America Home Loan Services, MERS, and ReconTrust.

Plaintiff filed a complaint asserting causes of action for: (1) declaratory relief: fraud in the execution, (2) declaratory relief: failure of consideration, (3) declaratory relief: existence of an obligation — no creation of rights, (4) declaratory relief: existence of an obligation — no creation of rights,(5) injunctive relief, (6) accounting.

After considering arguments the court ultimately affirmed the lower court’s decision to dismiss.

Wisconsin Court Grants Summary Judgment in Favor of GMAC

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The court in deciding GMAC Mortg., LLC v. Poley, 2013 Wisc. App. LEXIS 872 (Wis. Ct. App. 2013) affirmed the lower court’s decision in granting summary judgment in favor of GMAC.

In this foreclosure action, the circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of the mortgagee, GMAC Mortgage LLC. On appeal, mortgagor James Poley argued that the court should have stayed this foreclosure action as a result of a federal bankruptcy proceeding initiated by GMAC during the pendency of this action and, in any case, erred in granting summary judgment in favor of GMAC.

After considering the arguments the court concluded that the lower court did not err in determining that the bankruptcy proceeding did not prevent Poley from opposing summary judgment. The court also concluded that the lower court properly granted summary judgment. Therefore the court affirmed the decision of the lower court in all respects.