Rose Prophete thought the second mortgage loan on her Brooklyn home was resolved about a decade ago — until she received paperwork claiming she owed more than $130,000.
“I was shocked,” said Prophete, who refinanced her two-family home in 2006, six years after arriving from Haiti. “I don’t even know these people because they never contacted me. They never called me.”
Prophete is part of a wave of homeowners who say they were blindsided by the start of foreclosure actions on their homes over second loans that were taken out more than a decade ago. The trusts and mortgage loan servicers behind the actions say the loans were defaulted on years ago.
Second loans were packaged and sold, some multiple times. The parties behind the court actions that have been launched to collect the money now are often investors who buy so-called distressed mortgage loans at deep discounts, advocates say. Many of the debt buyers are limited liability companies that are not regulated in the way that big banks are.
finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/zombie-debt-homeowners-face-foreclosure-050502362.html