It’s time to get serious about getting your lender to “produce the note” – to provide actual proof of not only ownership of the loan but also to show that the company can truly foreclose on your home. Without that proof, the legality of your foreclosure can be challenged through the court system by “suing your lender”. The following is a general path to begin mounting your defense.
Scrutinize all of your closing documents carefully – the Good Faith Estimate and the HUD-1 statement. See if there is any difference between what you understood your mortgage to be and what it currently is. Look for any discrepancies, falsehoods, or deceptions that might give you a case.
Take note of what financial institution is listed on the foreclosure documents you’ve received. Do you recognize the lender? This is often the first clue homeowners receive that they are not dealing with their original lender anymore. For example, a name often seen on the foreclosure notice is “MERS” (Mortgage Electronic Recording Systems) and this would indicate that your mortgage has been traded to another company. It’s a system lending and financial institutions have set up to try and track the mortgage trail electronically. Even this system has been successfully challenged in court because even a paperless system is only as good as the data to support it.
Consult with an attorney to run a title search. See if you can tell who truly owns your property. This is a good indication if it’s even worth proceeding.
Come up with a workable solution to offer the mortgage company so that if they are willing to negotiate with you (or forced to do so by the courts), you will have a plan of attack. For instance, determine if refinancing or a loan modification would work. Look at and examine your overall financial picture and if you can truly afford to stay if certain details are hammered out. Look at the government assistance programs in place right now to see if you qualify for them or even to see if they offer referrals to information or non-profit agencies.
Contact your local “Clerk of the Court” and ask them what is necessary to file an official request for the lender to “produce the note.” Also, ask them what you will need to do if the lender ignores the request. Most likely they will explain to you how to file a “Motion to Compel” that will lead to you and the lender being given an actual court date to settle the matter. Keep in mind, if the motion is rejected, the foreclosure will proceed.
Battling your lender in court is not an easy decision or one to make lightly. Weigh your options carefully as it can be costly and it in no way absolves you of the debt amount. However, it can halt the foreclosure buying you some time and give you more negotiation power with the bank especially if they have walked away from trying to iron out something with you.
With the millions of WordPress blogs out there how do you compete for visitors? The first thing to realize is that there is hope. You just need to make a plan of attack and follow through with it. In this article you will find some useful tips on putting your WordPress blog the map.
1. Utilize permalinks. Notice how some blogs posts have url that resemble mathematical formulas? These urls are actually queries to your WordPress database. Human beings and search engines have a hard time figuring what your page is about by looking at that type of address. Think of it this way which makes more sense yourdomain.com/shoesthatfeelgreat or yourdomain.com/?P=12? The recommended permalink structure is either /%postname%/ or /%category%/%postname%/. Some people recommend that you put the date or the year in before the postname(e.g. /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/).
Which from a database point of view makes sense but from a SEO point of view it does not. Since your blog is probably new and does not have a lot of traffic don’t worry about it. Focus on SEO first. If you get a stampede of visitors you can always switch to a dedicated server.
2. Install a SEO plug-in. There are few great plug-ins on the market. All-in-one SEO is a perennial favorite. It gives you the ability to customize every aspect of your meta tags. Another plug-in is called Platinum SEO – a personal favorite. A key feature is that automatically adds a 302 redirect entry anytime you change the name of a post or page on your blog. This is critical when you have a post that is already indexed on search engines and people are linking to it. For more info on 302 redirects see this article.
3. Build a Sitemap. Having a sitemap for your website helps search engines catalog your site. The best plug-in to use is Google sitemaps. Its name is somewhat misleading because it actually builds and reports to all major search engines.
These are just a few strategies that will help make your blog visible on the net. Feel free to contact us to find out more.