The Massachusetts Court of Appeals recently reviewed an action brought by a home mortgage borrower against the lender and its assignee, alleging that they violated the consumer protection statute by modifying his mortgage, among other claims, and that they should be enjoined from evicting the borrower from his home. In…
In a newly issued opinion from the Massachusetts Land Court, Nutting v. Nationstar Mortgage, LLC (August 24, 2015), the homeowner-plaintiffs attempted to challenge the validity of a foreclosure sale of their home in their petition to try title pursuant to G.L. c. 240 §§ 1-5. They also argued that the…
The Massachusetts Court of Appeals recently decided whether a claim of unfair and deceptive review of a homeowner’s loan modification request could affect the bank’s title post-foreclosure. Bank of New York Mellon v. Fernandez arose out of a post-foreclosure summary judgment action filed by the bank, which was seeking to…
In a newly released opinion, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts took on the issue of illegal foreclosure sales. In an action filed by plaintiff-homeowners against their mortgage lender, Pinti v. Emigrant Mortgage Co., No. SJC-11742 (Mass. July 17, 2015), the homeowners challenged the validity of the foreclosure sale on…
The Appeals Court of Massachusetts recently issued an opinion in Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Cook, 87 Mass.App.Ct. 382 (2015), evaluating whether the procedural and substantive requirements set out in the United States House and Urban Development (HUD) regulations were satisfied by Wells Fargo in a foreclosure case. The homeowners…
In a relatively surprising turn of events, in the case of In re Safina Mbazira, which was heard before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts, the court found that the bank, an assignee of the mortgage, lost the mortgage because of a faulty acknowledgment appended to the mortgage document.…
In another recent real estate case from the Appeals Court of Massachusetts dealing with mortgage foreclosure, Hoyt v. BAC Home Loan Servicing, L.P., the individuals who mortgaged a property attempted to challenge a foreclosure decision reached in the lower court regarding the legality of assignment and foreclosure. The homeowners in the…
At the end of last month, the Attorney General announced that a court had reached a decision in an alleged predatory foreclosure company that had been conducting business in Massachusetts. The announcement stated that a legal and financial services company was ordered by a judge to pay in excess of $1.9 million to…
In a recent opinion entered by the Appeals Court of Massachusetts, Webster Bank v. Ragge, Mass. App. Ct. (2014), the court ruled on a situation involving the enforcement of a default judgment in a real estate foreclosure case. A default judgment is what happens when a party institutes a legal claim,…
In the recent Massachusetts Appeals Court case, The Bank of NY Mellon Corp v. Wain, 85 Mass. App. Ct. 498 (2014), the court had before it the issue of rightful ownership of a home that had been mortgaged. In the case, two individuals owned a property that was subjected to a mortgage. The plaintiffs…