For as safe as tax liens are touted, there is a risk of loss, especially during the tax lien foreclosure stage. While Arizona Revised Statutes Section 42-18206 provides a remedy to collect attorney’s fees and costs that have been incurred by the tax lien investor, timely service of process of the tax lien foreclosure complaint … [Read more…]
The Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) was created by the mortgage industry to fast-track the loan assignment process and helped bypass the burden of having to record every assignment. MERS was a perfect solution during the mortgage securitization frenzy. When the housing bubble imploded and foreclosure activity went through the roof, MERS found itself the target … [Read more…]
Well, the 2014 tax lien sales in Arizona are complete. I attended the Pima County tax lien sale where over $10 million dollars of tax liens were sold over the course of two days. What was readily apparent from the beginning is that investors looking to fetch high interest rates on tax liens were going … [Read more…]
The Arizona Court of Appeals (Division 2) recently issued an opinion regarding the extent to which parties must be noticed in a tax lien foreclosure action. In this case, the subject real property (the "Property") was owned by Robert and Carri Anderson. The Property had a first position Deed of Trust, securing the Promissory Note. The … [Read more…]
The New York Times recently reported that when homeowners went to cash checks coming from the National Mortgage Settlement, the checks bounced – yes bounced. Ronnie Edward, whose home was sold in a foreclosure auction, apparently waited three years for his $3,000 check. When it arrived, he went to his local bank in Tennessee, only … [Read more…]
Democrats on the House oversight committee have apparently been pushing to subpoena the Federal Housing Finance Agency ("FHFA") to obtain an analysis looking at what effects principal reductions would have on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As HousingWire has reported, FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco has long defended the agency’s policy of keeping Fannie and … [Read more…]
A new federal federal task force, dubbed the "Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group" led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sent subpoenas to the 11 largest financial institutions in the past few days as part of its investigation into possible residential mortgage-backed securities fraud. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who was cast off the central … [Read more…]
In one of my prior blog posts (April 6, 2010 – "Tax Lien Foreclosure: Ready, Willing, and Able to Redeem"), I wrote about an unpublished Memorandum Decision from the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division 2 – Leveraged Land, Montgomery, v. Hodges, 2 CA-CV 2009-0057. In that Decision, the Court overturned a default judgment that a tax … [Read more…]
It never ceases to amaze me how astute and opportunistic people can be when it comes to making money. In the Arizona tax lien foreclosure realm, there exists a group of opportunistic investors that derisively have been called "bottom feeders" or "title raiders." What these people do is comb public records to find pending tax … [Read more…]