Wrong Service Agent In Title Search
Hi All,
I am in the process of foreclosing on a tax lien in Oklahoma county, and I served by mail all parties that showed up in the title search a couple of weeks ago. One of them is a corporation that holds a mortgage. I received today my letter back from the Service Agent, saying they are not the agent for that corporation. The person I talked to at the county clerk's office told me there is nothing else I need to do (I already also served the whole world by publication).
Does anybody on this forum think that might come back to haunt me if I do nothing else ? I am guessing that the corporation either no longer exists or has a different service agent. Could they, if and when I acquire the house, claim that I didn't serve them properly and that therefore their mortgage is not wiped out ? Anybody has had similar, good or bad, experience ?
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Abdenour--(MD)---------------------
I'd recommend you not get your legal advice from the Oklahoma County Treasurer's staff. They do things in such a way as to leave their buyers open to lawsuits. How do I know? I'm involved with one on the house I bought in that county last year.
My attorney showed me an OK lawsuit, that has been appealed, so it good precedent, that says that the county, in giving notices of a tax resale to the lender, must, if the notice comes back undeliverable, do more due dilligence to attempt to find that lender and give them actual notice.
I see your situation as being very much parallel to the county notice situatuion. Thus, I suggest to do a very thorough attempt to notice that lender.
Call the OK Secretary of State's office in the Capital Building--Rm 101, I believe--and ask them who they show for the service person. Also, ask them what address they show for the company. Send a notice to that address. Also, send a notice to the lender care of the secretary of state and ask them to forward it on to the lender at whatever address they have.
Search the internet for the company. Search in the OK county clerk's office for that company, looking for more recent documents related to them that might have a more up-to-date address for the company. I think that this is online.
You might even search in the county court for the company, hoping to find a new address for them. Plus, check the assessor's office for the possibility that they own property in the county, perhaps due to a foreclosure action. This is online.
My attorney tells me that many of the treasurer's deeds are hard to support in court cases, because the county treasurer's office prefers to take the short and easy way of doing things, not the constitutionally-required notices.
He said he once was asked to develop a new law for the state on tax sales procedures which would make attacking tax deeds much harder. When he presented his proposed law, the legislator who hired him killed the whole thing. It would have required a lot more work by the treasurers' offices staff and cost them more money. They just want, he says, to do things the easiest way possible. Why don't things change? Because few people's situations involve enough money to make it worthwhile to go to court and fight things out. So the counties just continue cruising along.
Do not short-cut the process. Better to get redeemed than to get a deed and then have a lender suing you to require their lien to be put back on your property. I think you can guess how I came to this conclusion. Just got in the mail today the response that I had to file in the lawsuit. In the future: big attorney bills. Sigh.
Good Investing***************Ron Starr*************
frequenlt available via the web
Hi Ron,
Thank you for your detailed explanation. In your case, have you considered buying the mortgage at a discount instead of fighting it ? The bargain element would include their expected attorney fees plus usual discounts for notes. Or is the mortgage amount too high. Did you go through some decision tree analysis ? If p is your probability of winning the lawsuit, the value of that mortgage to you is:
lawyers's costs + (1-p) * face value
the value of the mortgage to THEM is:
(1 - p) * market or face value - their lawyer's costs
It seems like their is some room (sum of both lawyers costs) for negotiation.
Here is what I found out in my situation, by examining the title search docs more carefully. The mortgage holder changed its name from "Old Name, Inc", to "New Name Corporation" (not the actual names). A lawsuit was filed 5 months ago by:
New Name Corporation, a Delaware corporation
fka Old Name Inc.
Plaintiffs
v.
Dead Beat Borrower, a single person
Defendants
I did serve New Name Corporation, c/o the lawyer representing them in the lawsuit, by restricted certified mail and got good service on that. I did NOT serve them at the New Name Corporation's address (not shown in the title search), and the title search says "Service Agent: None".
Do you think that's good enough service (since I also did a service by publication), or that I still should try to locate their address and their agent through the Secretary of State ?
My lazy instinct is leaning towards doing nothing, getting the deed (total cost $3,000), then, if the lender comes after me, buying the mortgage at a discount as shown in the 2 formulas above.
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Abdenour--(MD)--------------
I'd not like to give you legal advice here. I feel I would not be as cavalier as you seem to be about dealing with the lender after you get the deed. The problem is that they might well be able to reinstate their whole loan against the property. And it might not have been paid for months. I don't much care for negotiations. I probably will have to do so in my case, but I don't recommend you get into the situation where you have to do so.
You might want to talk to an attorney about whether you have good service or not with that attorney's address. Here is the attorney I am using. He is very familiar with tax sales and tax resales and the issues of notification.
Epperson, Kraettil Q
4334 NW Expressway St #174
Oklahoma City, OK 73116-1574
405-840-2470
My advice: try to find another address for the newcompany and send directly to them. You can call the OK secty of state's office and they can look up the address that they have for the company.
Secretary of State
2300 N Lincoln Blvd #101
Oklahoma City, OK 73105-4897
405-521-3911
Good Investing***************Ron Starr*************
Thanks Ron for the recommendation and the information you provided me with. I will try to track the down the mortgage holder by calling the secretary of both states (Oklahoma and Delaware - it's a delaware corporation).
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