Nancy Becker, the Record of Deeds for Montgomery County, wants the county to stop doing business with banks that use the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (MERS):
Montgomery County Recorder of Deeds Nancy Becker is urging registers of deeds across state and the country to withdraw public money from any banks affiliated with the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (MERS), which she claims is undermining the practice of accurate land recording.In recent years, mortgages have been assigned and reassigned multiple times, and when a bank or other entity doesn’t properly report these transfers, it makes it very difficult for homeowners to determine who holds their mortgages.
“It clouds the chain of title, and it’s prohibiting (officials) from recording revenues they should be recording,” Becker said.
Since 2004, she estimates the county has lost $15 million in fees from 139,798 mortgages recorded via the electronic recording system that fails to reflect assignments. Becker said she fields calls about once a month from a homeowner seeking help finding proof a mortgage has been satisfied, so the person can sell their house.
Yves Smith has been methodically documenting all kinds of flaws in MERS. Since the Recorder of Deeds’ responsibilities fall under the purview of Andrea Naugle, the elected Clerk of Judicial Records in Lehigh County, it would make sense for this to become an election issue. Is Andrea Naugle seeing similar problems to the ones in Montgomery County? What’s happening in Northampton County? It would be good to have title searcher Bernie O’Hare weigh in on MERS since I have no direct experience with it.
Jon, the point on lost revenue from assignments is compelling on the surface. Except that one of the basic tenets of MERS was to avoid having to record assignments each time a mortgage changed hands.
The point about 1 call/month on problems with mortgage satisfactions is not. There were over 316,000 housing units in Montco in 2009, with a 73.5% homeownership rate. Even lowballing the figure by throwing out the rental units, that means 232,000 units, and 12 problems means an error rate of .0052%.
I'd like to hear Ms. Becker's proposed solution to MERS that won't result in a staggering level of increased fees and overhead on a real estate market that still working through problems. Just lobbing out a problem is pointless.