There is an article in today’s Las Vegas Sun by Steve Green that I think you will find interesting. It details the efforts of Bank of America to overturn a judicial order that effectively froze nearly 9,000 foreclosures in the State of Nevada. First a little backstory:
A January 20, 2011 ruling by Nye County District Court Judge Robert Lane imposed a temporary restraining order and temporary injunction on ReconTrust. The ruling bars ReconTrust from moving forward with any foreclosures on behalf of any lenders before a February 28 hearing on the matter.
The defendant (Suzanne North) claimed that Bank of America and its default management arm, ReconTrust wrongfully foreclosed upon her home in 2009. As with most of these type of cases, the matter hinged on whether ReconTrust had standing to foreclose on behalf of Bank of America, and who owned the promissory note for the mortgage. The judge said: “there is a substantial likelihood that plaintiff will establish at trial that ReconTrust does not have any contractual privities with respect to the contractual relationship between the plaintiff (North) and the other defendants regarding the promissory note and deed of trust.” There are obviously other matters at play here, but I don’t wish to get bogged down in the legal specifics.
Attorneys for Bank of America and ReconTrust moved the case to federal court this week and said that the lawsuit will ultimately fail because B of A and ReconTrust were in compliance with the law. They would like Judge Lane’s injunction altered so that it only applies to North’s foreclosure, and not the other 8,900 foreclosures Bank of America and ReconTrust have in process in Nevada. As always the bank claims that the delay of foreclosures has an enormous cost, and that it is causing harm to “the public interest.” I would think that the public would be very interested in making sure that long established property laws are followed and that people aren’t illegally thrown out of their homes. But I digress.
Nevada is at ground zero of the foreclosure crisis. Home values have declined as much as 50% from their 2006 peaks, and has the highest rate of foreclosure in the nation. In Las Vegas, nearly 1 in 9 homes is in foreclosure. This map illustrates the severity of the problem.
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