Most of the "victims" mentioned in stories about foreclosure during the housing crisis aren't victims at all, just people who didn't pay their mortgages trying to take advantage of paperwork errors by the bank to stay in their homes without making payments.
With several clients in the real estate business, I've read hundreds of these stories and can count the number that included someone who was foreclosed on despite being current on his or her payments on one hand clenched into a fist.
Today, Michelle Conlin, the former workplace-beat stalwart at BusinessWeek, writes on "zombie mortgages," and to her credit, she finds actual victims who have been wronged by the system.
So was Shantell Curtis of Utah. She showed up at her accountant's office last year only to learn that she had been sued for foreclosure on a house she had sold years before. Bank of America reported the delinquency to credit bureaus, tarring Curtis's credit. It turned out the entire saga stemmed from a bank coding error. The amount the bank falsely alleged Curtis still owed on her mortgage? One dollar.
Vietnam vet Dwight Gaines fell behind on his payments on his Birmingham, Alabama, home. Gaines paid off his entire mortgage, plus all the fees and expenses he owed the bank in March 2010, as a part of a Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan. But Bank of America kept sending Gaines notices that he still owed $6,842.37. Nearly two years later, Gaines is still fighting the bank in court.
In fact, she finds so many verified cases of people who had paid off a mortgage in full - let alone remained current - who were being tagged by the banks, she devoted almost half the article to that problem alone.
This should be the minimum standard for reporting on foreclosures, and yet this story stands out for being well-researched and sourced. This type of advocacy journalism is important to fix the system - and to point out that not all people fighting the banks are created equal.
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