Minneapolis Resident Recovers Title To Foreclosed Home Lost Through Predatory Loan; Servicer Acknowledges Surprise Lock-Out Premature

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Star Tribune reports:

• Fine print filled the inch-thick stack of papers in front of Leslie Parks at a Maple Grove mortgage office Friday. But signing and dating each document was a task she was happy to take on. The papers meant that, after nearly two years of desperately clinging to a south Minneapolis duplex that had slipped into foreclosure when her mother was duped into an adjustable-rate mortgage, Parks finally owned 3749 Park Av. S.



• "Can you believe we're here?" asked a beaming Liz Peter, senior planner for Waterstone Mortgage. "I can, actually," Parks replied.



• The closing marked a happy ending to a painful saga that drew the attention of U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, who pushed measures last year to protect consumers from the kind of predatory lending practices that had jeopardized Parks' house.



• It began in December 2009, when Parks arrived home from work during a blizzard to find that the locks had been changed on her mother's former duplex. Parks was in the midst of negotiating with lender OneWest Bank of Pasadena, Calif., to stay in the home after it had slipped into foreclosure the summer before.



• Her mother, Tecora Parks, had refinanced her fixed-rate mortgage with a subprime adjustable-rate loan to pay for city-ordered window upgrades for the rental property. OneWest Bank, recognizing it had made a mistake in changing the locks too early, contacted Peter to help Leslie Parks buy the duplex back from the bank.

For more, see After 2-year foreclosure battle, she owns Minneapolis home (After her mother's duplex was foreclosed following a predatory loan, Leslie Parks signed a mortgage on the south Minneapolis duplex).