It's important to inquire about a mortgage assignment at the very beginning of the refinancing process, mortgage experts say, because locating and transferring all the necessary paperwork could be time-consuming.
HOMEOWNERS looking to refinance their mortgage will need to compare interest rates, loan terms and fees, but some who live in New York may also want to arrange for what's known as a mortgage assignment, when the balance on the loan is transferred to the new lender from the old.
In New York State, especially, refinancing can take longer if the borrower is transferring the balance on a loan to a new lender to avoid paying a second mortgage transfer tax, a process known as "mortgage assignment".
A woman named Linda Green signed the mortgage assignment in Szymoniak's case in her capacity as the vice president of American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc.; she also signed as the vice president of at least 20 other financial institutions, according to public records Szymoniak compiled.
Mr. Bennett said he thought he might be able to save his home, despite falling behind on his loan payments, because the mortgage assignment was signed by a mortgage company employee, Marti Noriega, who was previously involved in a foreclosure that had been halted.
The developer also agreed to a mortgage tax assignment, a complex legal maneuver that saved the couple about $20,000 in mortgage taxes.
But doing so will be costly and time-consuming, requiring banks to comb through every mortgage assignment and secure proper signatures at each step of the way — and it surely will take much longer than a few weeks, as banks have contended.
But when she finally received her mortgage assignment, it was dated October 17, 2008, three months after Deutsche Bank filed for foreclosure.
Adding to the chaos, one of the so-called witnesses on Szymoniak's mortgage assignment, Korell Harp, was in state prison in Oklahoma at the time he supposedly signed the document.
US attorneys there would ask for 200 examples of a law firm signing mortgage assignments after they filed their foreclosure case, or 30 Linda Green documents in a certain region of the country.
Even the managers professed that they were trying to meet LPS demands and accomplish an impossible task of completing millions of mortgage assignments.
