What To Do If Your Home Gets Foreclosed? SQUAT

That’s right, be a squatter. In your own home. Best of all — it’s completely legal in a lot of cases.

Amy Goodman writes that a lot of subprime mortgages “were made, then bundled into securities and sold and resold repeatedly…The banks foreclosing on families very often can’t locate the actual loan note that binds the homeowner to the bad loan.”

OOPS!

Ever walk out of a movie theater and then find you can’t get back in because you didn’t save your ticket stub? Ever try to take an item back to the store without producing the sales receipt? That’s the position these banks are in right now. Twist in the wind, Suckers!

Banks of course are not anxious to spread this information, and most people don’t know about it. For all practical purposes, if you have a certain legal right but you aren’t aware of it — you don’t have it.

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) represents one of the hardest-hit regions of the country. Her solution to the foreclosure crisis is: “So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don’t you leave.”

She says people facing foreclosure should tell the bank “Produce the note.”

She continues: “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Therefore, stay in your property. Get proper legal representation ... if Wall Street cannot produce the deed nor the mortgage audit trail ... you should stay in your home. It is your castle. It’s more than a piece of property. ... Most people don’t even think about getting representation, because they get a piece of paper from the bank, and they go, ‘Oh, it’s the bank,’ and they become fearful, rather than saying: ‘This is contract law. The mortgage is a contract. I am one party. There is another party. What are my legal rights under the law as a property owner?’”

For people facing foreclosure, Kaptur recommends contacting the local Legal Aid Society or bar association, or dialing (888) 995-HOPE.

cross-posted at Bring It On!