Produce the Note: Stopping Mortgage Foreclosure 

Who Really Owns Your Mortgage? During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to other lenders or mortgage service providers.  The notes were sliced up and sold to investors as investment packages on Wall Street. During the rush to sell the notes as fast as possible, many lenders did not secure the proper paperwork to verify they own your mortgage note.

Today many lenders moving into mortgage foreclose against homeowners are finding out they have bigger problems, and don’t have all the proper paperwork, copies of mortgage documents that can legally prove they have right to foreclose on your property.  As a homeowner, your first goal is to demand a copy of your original mortgage note.  This will confirm the institution demanding your payment in fact is the official owner of the mortgage note. There is only one original note for your mortgage that has your signature on it. This is the document that proves you owe the debt.

Step 1. Send A Produce The Note Letter to Your Lender - Demand The Note

Challenge your lender or the court will allow the foreclosure to proceed even if they do not have all the correct paperwork. If the lender is allowed to proceed without proper proof, there is a possibility another institution, which could have bought your mortgage note will also try to collect the same debt from you a second time.

Certified Mail Envelopes a company that sends USPS Certified Mail has made it easy to send this 'Produce The Note Letter' to your lender. For $16.95 they will print and mail your letter by USPS Certified Mail - Return Rceipt Signature Service and save you the trip to the Post Office.  A copy of the lettter will also be sent to your lender and yourself by USPS First Class mail for your records.  USPS.com provided delivery proof and the Signature of the person that signed for your letter.  They keep a copy of your delivery for 7 years available online 24/7.  You can do all this from your computer and following this link to Certified Mail Envelopes - Produce The Note Letter.  

Produce The Note

This is not intended to help you get your house for free. The primary goal is to delay the foreclosure notification and eviction process and to put pressure on the lenders to negotiate with you. Despite all the hype about lenders wanting to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, most borrowers are finding out that’s not what is occurring.

Too many homeowners have experienced lender that are resistance to their efforts to work out a payment structure to keep them in their homes. Many lenders bear responsibility for these defaults, because they put borrowers into unfair loans using deceptive adjustable rate mortgages, hard-sell practices and then made the problem worse with predatory loan servicing. Today many homeowners just want these lenders to give them reasonable terms on their mortgages, and help them work through economic hardships. 

Follow-Up Action Steps:

If you are in default, but your lender has not yet filed legal papers against you:

Send a letter by USPS Certified Mail to your lender.  (See the form letter in this article or better yet mail it online) This fill-in-the-blank notification letter and should be sent to your lender as USPS Certified Mail.  You should request they produce your original note, before taking foreclosure action against you.

If the lender does not respond timely and files suit against you to then follow the next steps:

A  second letter is also a fill-in-the-blank form that requests your lender produce the original note before it can proceed with the foreclosure.  In some court jurisdictions, the original request should also be filed with the clerk of court and a copy of the request to be sent to the attorney representing the lender. To find out the rules where you live, call the Clerk of Court in your jurisdiction then send your letters by USPS Certified Mail – Return Receipt to document your request.

If the lender’s attorney does not respond within 30 days, a third letter to file a motion to compel with the court and request that the court set a hearing on your motion. That, in effect, asks the judge to order the lender to produce the documents.
 
Many judges around the country are becoming more sympathetic to homeowners, because of the prevalence of predatory lending and servicing.  In the past, many lenders have relied upon using lost note affidavits, but in many cases, that’s no longer enough to satisfy the judge. They are holding lenders to the letter of the law, and requiring them to produce evidence that they are the true owners of the note.