foreclosures
okay so i had to have this one explained to me. my position started out with the banks. homes are being foreclosed because the mortgage isn't being paid. the bank is not the bad guy here. the deadbeat "homeowner" is. and yeah maybe a different bank shouldn't have made the loan in the first place. so i don't have too much sympathy for either party. the problem is. the paperwork is so shoddy you sometimes can't get title insurance. ie there's no paper trail showing clear transfer of title and liens through all the different parties. so the nightmare case would be i buy a foreclosed home. then some time later another bank forecloses on it cause they think they own the mortgage. which i obviously haven't been paying to them. so my position should shift. shouldn't it? well no i'm not convinced yet. if that's really the worst case scenario, it's really an issue between banks. which they should be able to resolve with money. and enough time. during which you might not be able to sell the house. heh. which means the "screwed homeowner" is the pariah who buys foreclosed properties in order to flip them for a profit. another player with whom i have absolutely no sympathy. okay so the simple solution is for the foreclosing bank to guarantee the title. then it doesn't matter how shoddy their paperwork is. risk stops at a responsible party. and life goes on.