Law Offices of Michael D. Stewart provides Real Estate Services, including foreclosure defense - we can stop the bank from taking your house. We will then negotiate with the bank to receive a mortgage loan modification on your home. This can reduce the principal amount you owe on your house, oftentimes back to market value, particularly for those whose homes are underwater. We will also seek to reduce the interest rate on the loan, and can assist with refinance, short sale, deed for lease, or deed in lieu of foreclosure and bankruptcy if necessary.
If you entered into a bad loan, with a bank such as Countrywide; now Bank of America, oftentimes there were a number of potential defects with the loan. Some such defects were Robosigning, where your signature was notarized without you being present, or the bank failed to provide you with all of the required disclosures when issuing a loan. Other problems relate to what happened to your mortgage and note after you obtained the loan.
If you have been sued for foreclosure, you have 20 days to file a response to the banks allegations. This can be done through either a Motion to Dismiss or through an Answer with Affirmative Defenses. One of the main problems with bank or servicer foreclosures has been that they lack standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place - meaning that they don't actually own what they say they own or have a right to enforce the mortgage or the note.
This has occurred because your loan was transferred from bank to bank, and the recordings of the transfers, if even done, were done through a bank created company called MERS or mortgage electronic registration system. MERS was created so that the banks could more easily and cost effectively transfer your loan between themselves. However, MERS actually created significant problems when it came time to determine who actually owns the mortgage and the note.
In our law firm's Motion to Dismiss, or Answer with Affirmative Defenses, we raise these as well as a number of other issues. Further, we file numerous pages of discovery, or requests for documents and admissions. The discovery filed usually includes interrogatories, requests for admissions, and requests to produce documents. We also often rely on deposition testimony, such as from the robosigners who were supposed to have legally notorized your signature but didn't. In other cases signatures have just been forged.
Through this litigation process, we seek to come to a resolution with the bank as to who owns the mortgage and the note. This often results in the bank conceding to the homeowner and providing a reduction in the principal amount of the loan - often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, forgiving back debt, and reducing principal.
If you require assistance, contact Law Offices of Michael D. Stewart at 866-438-6574
Legal Services are provided in New York and Miami.
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