You would think this to be a pretty straight forward questions, but the waters are muddy my friends and there are too dang many hands in the pot.
REO transaction was to have closed tomorrow. Contract expires tomorrow. The date of contract acceptance was March 23, 2011.
Title reveals that the Trustee's deed has not been recorded despite the fact that the sale ratified with the court on December 28, 2009 and the Auditor ratified the sale on March 10, 2010.
Now we have tried diligently for the past 2 weeks to get this deed out of the hands of the Trustee for a simultaneous recording at the time of closing and have been told that they need permission from their client to release the deed. They further state that they have been unable to get their client to respond. BUT, let me give you the rundown of the number of companies working on this little transaction:
- Note holder (Bank) assigned to
- Trustee- tasked with foreclosure and eventual recordation of the deed
- Default servicing entity- they assigned the matter to the listing agent and to the title company that was to act on behalf of the seller
- Seller's title agency- tasked with title clearance and settlement liasion services. Title clearance does usually include insuring that the seller actually has title to the property, just saying....
- Me- Buyer's title agency
None of the above can reach the actual seller to get permission to release the deed to either myself or the seller's title agent. Now who do you suppose the seller might be? Hm.... just take a guess.
Despite my many calls today including calls to the Underwriter for the national default servicing entity, the foreclosure attorney and the seller's title agent, I have gotten exactly nowhere. The foreclosure attorney simply will NOT release the deed to anyone unless and until the seller gives them permission to do so.
Is it not reasonable to think that most of us can actually reach our CLIENT????!!!
I fully understand that they (the f/c attorney) needed the funds to record from their client, but will you please try to explain to me, with a straight face, why you wait more than a year to begin to make inquiries as to the delivery of the money.
To make matters worse, the listing agent advised me that he was asked to advance monies to pay environmental citations and open water bill MORE THAN A YEAR AGO to enable recording of this deed.
Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a better way to handle REO. Get rid of these large entities and let someone handle your work who actually cares about time lines, vesting and so on.