Iowa Couple Owns Home After One Payment Due To Foreclosure Glitch
Facing foreclosure and fed up with the banks trying to take back your home? Well, a foreclosure loophole that helped an Ankeny, Ia., home construction worker and his mortgage loan originator wife win a 2009 court judgment against CitiMortgage, giving them title to their $278,000 house free and clear after only one mortgage payment, just might apply to you, too, even if you live in Arizona, Florida, Nevada or one of several other states.
The Iowa couple, Matt and Jamie Rae Danielson, are now under scrutiny from skeptics who are wondering if perhaps the couple devised a "win-a-free-home" scheme from the get-go.
There was no pre-planning, the couple told AOL Real Estate during a phone interview Monday night, but they wish they can convince their bashers who "are spreading gossip and making accusations" after they became aware of this nearly three-year-old issue when the Des Moines Register wrote about the couple twice last week.
"People are threatening to burn our house down. There are nasty blogs going around where people are outraged," a distraught-sounding Matt, 33, said as a baby cried softly in the background. He says he and his wife didn't seek this loophole when they purchased their house (pictured) in May 2007. "You don't make this kind of thing happen. It happens to you."
It all started when Matt Danielson and his broker, Jason Larson, arranged an impromptu meeting at a mall food court to sign the CitiMortgage financing documents for their new construction 3-bedroom, 2½-bath home that they had been negotiating for a while. Matt dialed his wife's cell but didn't reach her; so in a rushed session he signed the papers without her, finalizing a $320,000 mortgage for 100 percent of the sale price, which included an additional $50,000 to finish the basement.
Mar 23, 2011 at 4:36 PM
Reader Comments (7)
But you read it here first: the WSJ and other banking shills will shortly begin using this story to buttress their asinine claim that the servicer abuses and fraudclosure scandals are nothing but "paperwork problems." Count on it.
http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2011/03/tower-at-reagan-national-goes-silent-as.html
I find it strange that "people are angry".
Banks do this for billions. And not many people care.
Strange place that America is.
What I don't see is how it's a good thing when a couple dishonestly enters into an agreement to borrow money for a home and then, because of a technicality, refuses to repay more than a tiny fraction of what they had promised to pay.
These people should be ashamed.
How about fraud to cheat people out of their homes. There is plenty of fraud-closure being committed by the banks. Using a technicality is not a crime, fraud is.