Lender Forecloses on Wrong Property
Here’s another example of a bank’s ineptitude. I just read an article about a case of mistaken property identity that got all the way to the Nevada Supreme Court, Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., v. Thitchener, 192 P.3d 243 (Nev. 2008).
According to the article, the lender’s foreclosure division confused the condominium unit of a National Guard member who had been serving in Arizona with another unit in the same building. The soldier and his family returned to find the property emptied of all their possessions and the utilities changed into the listing agent’s name.
If it had been in northern California, this is one where I might have been retained as a Bay Area real estate expert witness to testify about the listing agent’s standard of care.
In this instance, the real estate licensee acted properly by alerting the lender to, what seemed to him to be, a probable mistake. His concerns, however, were not heeded and he was instructed by the bank to hire someone to remove all of the owners’ personal property.
In the end, the homeowners were awarded almost $1,000,000.