By Patric Hedlund
As you are reading this, it is likely that Melissa George of Frazier Park may be standing in court, representing herself, challenging the practices of some of the largest and richest corporations on the planet.
Earlier this month she sought a Temporary Restraining Order to stop foreclosure proceedings on her home until the foreclosing company did something that you or I would have to do if we claimed to own a property: show the deed which proves that ownership is properly vested in our own name.
At issue is the principal, recently reported by Scot J. Paltrow for Reuters, that investors must have the original promissory notes, not copies, to be able to foreclose.
Melissa George says she is a cabinet finisher who worked in the construction trades. She had a reasonable mortgage of about $1,200 a month and had not overreached or tried to use her home as an equity ATM. She was doing fine until the Wall Street debacle caused the economy to implode three years ago.
As the real estate market dropped into free fall, construction jobs dropped with it. Her income was a casualty of the practices of the same financial industry that is now seeking to foreclose on her home.
“The big banks gambled and lost with the housing crash through mortgage backed securities and shady loans and re-fi’s, then expected and got the government (us) to bail them out,” George says.
“They pocketed the cash to make their books look like they were in the black to keep their stock prices up,” she adds. Now, she says, the big banks “have the arrogance to start stealing homes with no proof of ownership. What happens after 30 years when your house is supposedly paid off, and there isn’t an original promissory note to prove you paid it off?”
George says that she has started a log, alleging that an attorney for the Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae, has made harassing calls.
Her original loan was for $185,000. She stopped submitting payments about May 1, 2010. Three months later a Notice of Default was filed.
On November 30, 2010 a Notice of Sale was recorded with the County Recorder’s Office of Kern County. She was notified that a trustee’s sale was completed on December 22, 2010.
George says she was notified that nobody actually bought her home on that day. She also reports that a Bakersfield realtor came to her home offering her a “cash for keys” deal.
She said that her letters and requests to see an original of the deed to the house has never yet been acknowledged by any of the agents for the bank with whom she has talked or in any of their written correspondence.
“The banks ignore your request,” she said.
On January 12 the judge did not grant her the restraining order, but he said the attorneys for the bank must meet with her in a hearing to look further into the issue. That hearing was scheduled for January 28. We will report the outcome next week.
This is part of the January 28, 2011 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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