Real Estate Investor Scores Win With Court-Ordered Sale Stall In Effort To Save Home From Foreclosure Fraud; "We're Not Trying To Get A Free House!"

In San Antonio, Texas, the San Antonio Express News reports:

• A San Antonio real estate investor who helps homeowners avoid foreclosure, recently found himself in the same predicament as his clients. Rather than simply fight to stop the foreclosure on his investment home, Ezequiel Martinez filed suit against his lender saying the mortgage should be voided because of phony loan documents and because he doesn't think the bank can prove it owns the mortgage note.



• "We're not trying to get a free house," he said. "We're trying to save the house from foreclosure fraud."



• Finding that Martinez "will probably prevail" at trial, state District Judge Karen Pozza on Aug. 26 issued an order prohibiting the house's foreclosure until the case either is settled or goes to trial in March.



• Martinez's case is one of thousands across the country where homeowners are challenging the validity of foreclosure postings.



• The robo-signing scandal erupted last fall with allegations that lenders had employees process foreclosure documents without required review and notarization. Since then, the foreclosure scandal has grown to include issues of not properly assigning mortgage notes - tracing the line of ownership as the note is packaged and resold through the secondary market - and the allegedly phony documents created to reconstruct the line of ownership where it's broken.



• Rick Sharga, senior vice president with RealtyTrac, a national foreclosure website, said lenders likely can simply restart the foreclosure process if they need to correct faulty paperwork. But he said the prove-you-own-the-mortgage-note issue could become serious. "If you can't prove that I owe you money, that's a problem," he said. "It could throw the whole mortgage industry into chaos."



• The lawsuits represent a tug-of-war that pits home-owners who fell behind on mortgages against lenders who insist any mistakes are mere technicalities.



• John Fleming, general counsel for the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association, said that in almost all cases, he expects lenders or servicers will be able to cure any gap in mortgage assignments. "At the end of the day, if a homeowner or investor has not complied with the terms of the mortgage, they will face foreclosure," Fleming said.(1)

For the story, see Real estate investor sues lender to halt foreclosure.

See also, Fighting foreclosure and hoping for a free house (Missing links in the chain of ownership lead to some foreclosure postings being challenged).

(1) What this paid hack representing the bankster industry seems to conveniently ignore is why the phony documents are being manufactured to cure the gaps in the assignments in the first place.