Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 392: Listen and Learn -- Recording Statutes (Real Property)
Bar Exam Toolbox Podcast Episode 146: Listen and Learn -- Mortgages and Priority
In a recent decision, the Colorado Supreme Court reversed the Colorado Court of Appeals and held that a discharge in bankruptcy does not trigger the statute of limitations on a claim to foreclose based on a deed of trust....more
As we previously noted, the statute of limitations on actions to enforce a note or deed of trust can be a brutally effective sword for borrowers in Washington State. Under the six-year limitations period of RCW 7.28.300, a...more
Recently, a unanimous panel of the United States Circuit Court for the Fourth Circuit issued an unpublished opinion shooting down a borrower’s claim that the substitute trustee of his deed of trust breached its fiduciary...more
Modifying a loan can sometimes cause a loss of lien priority. It all depends on the facts underlying the modification, and even the original loan....more
Welcome back to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast! In today's installment of our "Listen and Learn" series, we're focusing on Real Property. In particular, we're diving into the tricky subtopic of mortgages and priorities. In...more
Can a California real property owner challenge a lender’s authority to foreclose before a foreclosure sale has occurred? It’s looking less likely with each new appellate opinion....more
Flashback: Five years ago, Money and Dirt covered the Salazar v. Thomas opinion from California’s Fifth District Court of Appeal holding that a Notice of Default does not “disturb possession” sufficiently to start the...more
Everyone is familiar with the “Rock, Paper, Scissors” method of resolving disputes where scissors cut paper, paper covers rock, and rock breaks scissors. In Futuri Real Estate, Inc. v. Atlantic Trustee Services, the Virginia...more
Borrowers looking to invalidate a foreclosure sale often come up with interesting theories. One frequent strategy is to attack the validity of a prior assignment of the underlying note and deed of trust. As explained in...more
Lenders who prevail on claims arising from a deed of trust can always recover their attorney fees from the losing party as long as the deed of trust says something about fee recovery, right? It’s not that simple....more
Consider this scenario: You loan money to a borrower. You intend to secure the loan with a deed of trust encumbering real property. Your borrower signs a promissory note dated November 7, 2006. But your deed of trust is...more
When a foreclosure sale generates more money than needed to pay off the lien, the excess proceeds usually go first to creditors in the order of their priority, and second to the owner after creditors are paid in full. So, in...more
Arizona’s trustee’s sale statutory scheme provides for the waiver of all defenses and objections to a trustee’s sale that: (i) are not raised prior to the sale, and (ii) do not result in an injunction against the sale going...more
A recent appeal to the Fourth Circuit may shed light on whether Virginia borrowers can assert federal mortgage servicing requirements as a defense to foreclosure when the mortgage instrument pre-dates the federal requirement....more
On August 30, 2017, an amendment to North Carolina’s foreclosure statutes took immediate effect. The amended statute, Section 45-10, concerns substitute trustees under a deed of trust. As amended, Section 45-10 now prohibits...more
An annoying question for lenders is whether or not a lender can enforce two loans to the same borrower and secured by the same property. The nagging issue is usually raised when a lender makes (1) a first loan and an...more
On March 16, 2016, California’s Fourth Appellate District issued its opinion in Saterbak v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., Case No. D066636, finding that a borrower does not have standing to challenge an assignment of her Deed of...more
Action Item: In a ruling last week, the California Supreme Court supported Glaski and issued a narrow holding that, post-foreclosure, borrowers have standing to assert wrongful foreclosure based on allegations that an...more
A new decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit poses a serious threat to mortgage companies that service mortgages of chapter 13 debtors. Mortgage servicers should be aware of the case's implications and...more
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently handed Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) another victory against challenges to MERS’ authority to assign a mortgage. In Ferguson v. Bank of New York Mellon, the...more
The Virginia Supreme Court recently expanded the grounds under which a private borrower can sue a lender for violations of HUD regulations. In Squire v. Virginia Housing Development Authority, a decision issued on April 17,...more
Nearly three years ago, in M&I Marshall & Isley Bank v. Mueller, the Arizona Court of Appeals held that the Arizona anti-deficiency statute protects a borrower who started, but never completed, construction of a single-family...more
Loan servicers often receive payments on open-end home equity lines of credit (“HELOC”) that pay the balance down to $0. Sometimes that is because the borrower intends to pay off the loan through a refinancing or sale of the...more
In the case of Ashley Martins v. BAC Home Loans Servicing, L.P. and Federal National Mortgage Association (No. 12-20559, 2013 WL 3213633), the Fifth Circuit Court of Texas was first asked to decide whether the...more
In Enloe v. Kelso, 2013 WL 3357884 (2d Dist. 2013), the Second District Court of Appeal wrote a (characteristically) “short and sweet” opinion holding that the prohibition on obtaining a deficiency judgment under a deed of...more