Improper Recording of Mortgage?

[eloxley]

What is the name of your state? Ohio

Refi'd our mortgage in 12/04 with a company called Concorde Acceptance. They immediately sold the note to Citifinancial (ugh). We did a title search recently and noticed that only the Concorde mortgage is recorded - nothing from Citi. Skipping some unnecessary details, we also recently requested a copy of the assignment to Citi, and Citi replied with a "Lost Assignment" motion. I find it interesting that not only have they not recorded the mortgage lien, but also cannot produce evidence of the assignment.

What do you think? Shouldn't Concorde have released the lien when it sold to Citi, with a new lien then subsequently filed by Citi? I'm not very knowledgable in this area, but that seems common sense to me. What would happen if we went to refi again? Who would get paid?

Thanks for any input.

 

[danno6925]

Not to give you a short answer, but - nope. Mortgage company doesn't have to release the lien, since it wasn't yet satisfied by being paid in full. What they did was assign the right to collect payments to another mortgage service provider. Happens all the time. What doesn't happen all the time is the new service provider losing the document that allows them to collect the payments!

Send Citi a slip of paper in lieu of your next payment that simply states "Lost Checkbook"
Or, you could send Citi a letter CRRR stating that until they can produce documentation that they bought the servicing rights to your loan, all payments will be suspended and held in escrow by a neutral third party until such time as the proper documents are duly recorded in the county land records, and CitiMortgage can provide proof that they are the lien-holder of record. That's sure to get their attention!

BTW: You should run this past a local attorney and see what they advise as far as litigation goes.

I am NOT an attorney. I have worked in Pa title insurance since 2000.