Do you know who owns your mortgage? Wanna bet?<\/p>\n
In 2004, the nice New York couple who rented me my house decided to retire to San Diego instead of Las Vegas. They asked me if I wanted to buy. It sounded easier than moving. I asked the folks at my bank, then called Bank West of Nevada, if they issued mortgage loans, thinking it would be nice not only to patronize a local business, and also to be able to go down the street and visit my mortgage holder in person if there was ever a problem. They told me they did.<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t quite true. When I sat down to sign the forms, it turned out my lender was an outfit called RBMG, which had been acquired in 2001 by NetBank, an Internet-only outfit which was to fail massively in 2007.<\/p>\n
Within weeks, my \u201cRBMG\u201d mortgage was turned over to Countrywide, or so I thought. Then, when Countrywide tanked, I was told to start sending in payments to Bank of America.<\/p>\n
By this October, my checks were heading to an outfit called \u201cseterus\u201d — yes, lower-case \u201cs\u201d — apparently in Pasadena, California, though I now learn that address is a glorified mail drop.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve sent them three checks, each one for a different amount. For the payment due Oct.1, I was told to use the old Bank of America invoice and payment amount — $1,572.64. For Nov. 1, they billed me $1,535.33. For my payment due Dec. 1, the coupon said to pay $1,498.02.<\/p>\n
On Dec. 5 — despite the fact the payment is not considered \u201cpast due\u201d till Dec. 16 — one Christopher Hill called me at work from the seterus office in Beaverton, Oregon, complaining my payment due Dec. 1 had not been received. I told him I\u2019d mailed the check Nov. 28.<\/p>\n
Lo and behold, Mr. Hill searched his computer files and found such a payment HAD been received, but that it had not \u201ccredited.\u201d It was being held \u201cin suspense\u201d because it was short by more than $10 from the $1535.33 required.<\/p>\n
I told him I wouldn\u2019t have made up a figure like $1,498.02 out of thin air; that must surely have been the amount requested on their coupon. He asked me to check. I told him I would.<\/p>\n
At home that evening, I found the statement. But of course the coupon wasn\u2019t there — I\u2019d mailed it in with my payment, as instructed.<\/p>\n
I tried to call seterus back at 9:30 the next morning, at the only number they provide, 866-570-5277. After \u201cpushing 1 for English\u201d (Spanish language service is provided for illegals whose mortgages have been acquired by the federal government) I spent 22 minutes listening to the kind of instrumental music they play at skating rinks.<\/p>\n
I checked online. No other phone numbers. Now pay attention, because this works:<\/p>\n
I proceeded to call information for Portland, Oregon. Under \u201cstate government,\u201d I asked for the number of the Oregon state Division of Finance and Corporate Securities. These nice folks answered their phones immediately, and were happy to tell me \u201cseterus\u201d isn\u2019t an Oregon corporation, at all. All the corporate contact information was in \u201cResearch Triangle, North Carolina,\u201d where the main number for the CEO, CFO, and corporate counsel (all good people to speak to if you can\u2019t get through on the skating-rink line) is 888-576-5277. Furthermore, the \u201ccorporate contact person\u201d is one Karen Pollock, at 919-517-1217, e-mail kbpolloc@us.ibm.com.<\/p>\n
No \u201ck.\u201d Also no \u201cseterus.\u201d Instead … \u201cIBM.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018NOT THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS. THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS AND THIRTY-ONE CENTS\u2019<\/p>\n
I left a message for Karen Pollock in North Carolina. I then tried the telephone boiler room in Beaverton again, finally reaching not Christopher Hill but one Julie Knox, who wanted the last four digits of my Social Slave number. Since my Social Security card says right on it \u201cNot for Purposes of Identification\u201d and I had no intention of seeking any government retirement benefits, I declined. (Anyone who knows when and where you were born can reconstruct the first five digits of your Social Slave number in a heartbeat. And no, they don’t already have it. Seterus recently sent me a W-9 “request for Social Security number,” the only “servicer” ever to do so. I asked my accountant why. He said, “That means they’ve lost your Social Security number. Don’t give it to them.”)<\/p>\n
Eventually she relented, insisting the \u201camount due\u201d showing on my November coupon had been $1,535.33, and I would be considered delinquent unless I mailed them another $37.31.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you sure?\u201d I asked. \u201cIsn\u2019t it possible that because the first amount I sent you back in September was $1,572.64, based on the old B of A invoice which you instructed me to use, and you\u2019ve decided to reduce the amount of escrow in your monthly bill and are now billing me $1535.33, you didn\u2019t end up with $37.31 sitting \u2018in suspense,\u2019 and to take care of that you didn\u2019t simply send me a November monthly statement asking me to pay $1,498.02?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
Absolutely not, said Julie Knox.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK. I\u2019ll mail you the thirty-seven dollars,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot thirty-seven dollars,\u201d she said. \u201cThirty-seven dollars and thirty-one cents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, well. Talk about precision.<\/p>\n
So, including $4.50 \u201cto buy Christopher and Karen and Julie each a cup of coffee,\u201d I wrote out a check for $41.81, along with a lengthy hand-written cover note, which will require them to spend hours sending me a written reply.<\/p>\n
Why? Because seterus is governed by labyrinthine U.S. government protocols on how to handle disputes and inquiries, because seterus doesn\u2019t own my mortgage, any more than Countrywide or B of A ever did.<\/p>\n
I asked everyone I spoke to Tuesday who owns that note. In the end, everyone agreed my note is owned by the Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae, the actuarially bankrupt government mortgage devourer. All these other outfits — including the latest one, which is a division of IBM, as hard as they may work to conceal that — merely refer to themselves as \u201cservicers,\u201d like the gals down at the local Asian Massage parlor.<\/p>\n
By the time I had my check for $41.81 ready to go, the phone rang again.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve already guessed, haven\u2019t you? Karen Pollock in \u201cResearch Triangle, North Carolina,\u201d anxious not to talk to me, had contacted one Michelle Patterson, in seterus\u2019 Consumer and Government Affairs office in Beaverton, Ore., who can be reached at 503-270-4036. She\u2019d looked into my account, and what do you suppose she figured out?<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause your first payment to us was for $1,572.64, off the old B of A coupon we told you to use, we had an extra $37.31 sitting \u2018in suspense,\u2019 so the amount on your payment coupon due Dec. 1 was $1,498.02, which was the amount you sent us. They billed you that lesser amount to make it all come out even.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just like I told Christopher and Julie?<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. Unfortunately, that $37.31 had sat there for so long that it got credited as an additional payment against your principle, and that\u2019s why they didn\u2019t see it on their screens and were telling you to send in an extra $37. So what I did is I grabbed that back and applied it to your December balance, so now you\u2019re even and you don\u2019t need to send us anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yeah, and she\u2019ll still respect me in the morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho owns this note?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cFannie Mae.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Fannie Mae bought this note, did they pay full face value, or did they pay an amount discounted to market?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
Michelle Patterson told me she didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause if they paid full face value for a bunch of Las Vegas mortgages, when the majority of houses here are upside down, that\u2019s in effect a government bailout for the issuing banks, which would never have been able to collect full value on these loans, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Michelle Patterson told me she didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
\u2018THAT\u2019S WHY WE\u2019RE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE NOW …\u2019<\/p>\n
So I called Fannie Mae in Washington, and spoke to their chief PR flack, Amy Bonitatibus, at 202-752-4144. Amy said she couldn\u2019t be sure, since she didn\u2019t have my file in front of her, but in all likelihood she believes Fannie Mae bought my note very shortly after it was issued, and that everyone I\u2019ve been dealing with since then is merely \u201ca servicer.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Fannie Mae doesn\u2019t get these notes at a discount, given the odds that some of them will default or show losses through short sales?<\/p>\n
No, Ms. Bonitatibus said. \u201cWhen we buy the loan presumably we pay full face value. That\u2019s why we\u2019re in so much trouble now, why we\u2019re showing these huge losses, because there are so many defaults.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, why in heck WOULDN\u2019T a mortgage writer sell a mortgage to the federal government at full face value, reducing their risk of loss to zero, since all the risk now belongs to taxpayers? Who dreamed that up, Barney Frank?<\/p>\n