What is MERS?
Salt Lake County Recorder Gary Ott Describes it as “It smelled like it could be a scam from hell.”
The Mortgage Bankers Association created the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, or MERS, in the mid-1990s. It is a database that holds the names of the entities that have a financial interest in a particular mortgage, such as investment funds that bought bundles of mortgages called mortgage-backed securities. MERS is recorded on many property deeds of trust in Utah as the “beneficiary” of a loan taken out on a property even if that loan is sold and resold many times. MERS allows the actual loan owners to avoid paying fees every time a loan is sold.
In reality MER’s is a Tax Evading entity created by the major mortgage lender to avoid paying revenue to the Salt lake County recorders. Loans are sold or transferred at least 4 or more times. In the past the assignments of trust deed was recorded at the county recorders records office, so everyone knew who the note holder was. That cost about $30. Doesn’t seem like much until the look at the hundreds of thousands of times they didn’t pay the fee to our county recorder, and how much revenue that took out of the county property tax budget. County tax budgets need funded no matter what to run the county; so if they are short they increase the amount a home owner pays in millage for a property. You pay more tax even if the property value goes down the tax amount increases to cover the budget. They still need the same amount of money for the budget. If MER’S doesn’t pay their billions of dollars for recording fees the tax payer’s do pay that amount in increased taxes because the lenders are cheated the county. Simply stated if the county has more money you pay less in taxes. The other problem is who owns the loan? Who has the right to foreclose? Shouldn’t the Home Owner be able to know who actually owns the note they pay on? Who they can work with to modify or work out their loan deficiencies so they can keep their home. The servicers plays a let me ask the manager game similar to used car salesman in loan modification. After having the home owner make good faith payment, stringing them alone in a mortgage modification scam, designed to get more money for the servicer. They also want to put more time in the housing market comeback so they can foreclose later and get a higher price for the home. In the end 90% of the time the servicers comes back and says after 6 month to a year later your investor doesn’t participate in the program! That should have been known form the beginning not a year later. It’s a scam no other way to see it. They then demand all back payments in full without any option to defer the past do amount in a modification. Balm, you’re in foreclosure after making a year’s worth of good faith payments.
We have found that the only way to get them to the table to do a real good faith loan modification is to Sue them. We assist families in Salt Lake and all Utah Counties fight for their rights in court. That creates a listening that they have something at stake so they will create a compromise. They will reduce the principal, lower the interest, wipe out past credit history! Why do they quickly settle? In a collateralized debt obligation or credit swaps, the mortgage backed security certificate holders are insured for their payments so they have no loses. The lender doesn’t want to have a legal precedence and credit laws allow changing a reported credit history in a legal settlement. So they settle the loan because it’s already sold and not on loses. The insurance which the government is bailing out loses, but no one that cares loses.
MER’s was created to prevent the home owner from having anyway to know who the owner of the note on their mortgage is. They deliberately sever or split the security instrument from the note by saying MERS is the beneficiary (the one benefiting from the note) and that leaves the security invalid see. You home is not at risk any more. That is the law of the land!
See, U.S. Supreme Court decision in Carpenter v. Longan 83 U.S. 271 (1872)
” The note and mortgage are inseparable; the former as essential, the latter as an incident. An assignment of the note carries the mortgage with it, while an assignment of the latter alone is a nullity. “
So MER’S’s is a company created to defraud home owners and deprive the county of money and should be held as such by the courts when they try to say they have the right to foreclose. I say you “reap what you sow” and they deserve all the legal action we can bring on them as Americans!