Wed 2010-10-13 09:01 EDT
Foreclosure, Subprime Mortgage Lending, and the Mortgage Electronic Registration System
...Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., commonly referred to as ``MERS,'' is the recorded owner of over half of the nation's residential mortgages. MERS operates a computer database designed to track servicing and ownership rights of mortgage loans anywhere in the United States. But, it also acts as a proxy for the real parties in interest in county land title records. Most importantly, MERS is also filing foreclosure lawsuits on behalf of financiers against hundreds of thousands of American families. This Article explores the legal and public policy foundations of this odd, but extremely powerful, company that is so attached to America's financial destiny...The article culminates in a discussion of MERS' culpability in fostering the mortgage foreclosure crisis and what the long term effects of privatized land title records will have on our public information infrastructure. The Article concludes by considers whether the mortgage banking industry, in creating and embracing MERS, has subverted the democratic governance of the nation's real property recording system.
foreclosures; mortgage Electronic Registration System; subprime mortgage lending.