Biden Secures Reforms from National Mortgage Registry
Department of Justice | Date Posted: Friday, July 13, 2012
Department of Justice | Date Posted: Friday, July 13, 2012
Settlement terms increase transparency and accuracy of mortgage records
Wilmington, DE – Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden announced today that the national shadow mortgage registry known as MERS, which was at the center of the housing crisis, has agreed to implement important reforms – including regular reports on the accuracy of its records – as part of a settlement of a lawsuit Biden’s office filed against it last year. Biden filed the suit after hearing from homeowners throughout Delaware who were unable to have meaningful conversations about saving their home and who were unable to find out who owned their mortgage.
“MERS’ inaccurate and unreliable records raised serious questions about who owns what in America. The steps MERS will now take will help answer those questions,” Biden said.
Delaware is the first state to secure such concessions from MERSCORP Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiary Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. Specifically, the terms Biden’s office secured help Delaware homeowners by:
“Every homeowner should be able to find out who owns their mortgage, not just the company hired to collect payments,” Biden said. “The MERS System functioned to obscure this important information.”
MERS, which is incorporated in Delaware and based in Northern Virginia, was formed in 1995 to facilitate the growing mortgage securitization industry. Large banks, such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and other participants in the mortgage-lending industry, created MERS to speed up and reduce the cost of the securitization process by bypassing county Recorders of Deeds offices throughout America. With little to no oversight of MERS’ practices, MERS did not meaningfully audit its records and failed to enforce its own rules governing members’ conduct. MERS was thus a key player contributing to the lack of transparency in the foreclosure tidal wave that has affected tens of thousands of Delawareans, not to mention their neighbors who suffer when their property values decline as nearby houses are sold in foreclosure.
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Department of Justice | Date Posted: Friday, July 13, 2012
Settlement terms increase transparency and accuracy of mortgage records
Wilmington, DE – Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden announced today that the national shadow mortgage registry known as MERS, which was at the center of the housing crisis, has agreed to implement important reforms – including regular reports on the accuracy of its records – as part of a settlement of a lawsuit Biden’s office filed against it last year. Biden filed the suit after hearing from homeowners throughout Delaware who were unable to have meaningful conversations about saving their home and who were unable to find out who owned their mortgage.
“MERS’ inaccurate and unreliable records raised serious questions about who owns what in America. The steps MERS will now take will help answer those questions,” Biden said.
Delaware is the first state to secure such concessions from MERSCORP Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiary Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. Specifically, the terms Biden’s office secured help Delaware homeowners by:
“Every homeowner should be able to find out who owns their mortgage, not just the company hired to collect payments,” Biden said. “The MERS System functioned to obscure this important information.”
MERS, which is incorporated in Delaware and based in Northern Virginia, was formed in 1995 to facilitate the growing mortgage securitization industry. Large banks, such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and other participants in the mortgage-lending industry, created MERS to speed up and reduce the cost of the securitization process by bypassing county Recorders of Deeds offices throughout America. With little to no oversight of MERS’ practices, MERS did not meaningfully audit its records and failed to enforce its own rules governing members’ conduct. MERS was thus a key player contributing to the lack of transparency in the foreclosure tidal wave that has affected tens of thousands of Delawareans, not to mention their neighbors who suffer when their property values decline as nearby houses are sold in foreclosure.
# # #
Keep up to date by receiving a daily digest email, around noon, of current news release posts from state agencies on news.delaware.gov.
Here you can subscribe to future news updates.