The Bristol County Board of Commissioners received a letter from Attorney Garrett Bradley notifying them that a complaint against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) was filed in Suffolk County on March 29.
Previously, the commissioners voted on Feb. 14 to file a lawsuit to reclaim millions of dollars from MERS for allegedly skirting public recording laws at the expense of the county’s three property registries.
Bristol County is joining Norfolk and Plymouth counties in filing lawsuits against MERS.
Commissioners have previously said the county won’t know exactly how much money they are looking to collect until the discovery process of litigation.
Plymouth County has filed a class-action lawsuit against a national electronic mortgage registry company it says has enabled banks to avoid paying Iowa mortgage recording fees.
Plymouth County Attorney Darin Raymond filed the suit on behalf of all 99 Iowa counties against MERSCORP Holdings Inc. and Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., known as MERS, which tracks mortgages sold and traded among banks that subscribe to the company’s service. The suit also names several of the nation’s largest banks and mortgage companies.
In the lawsuit, Raymond said MERS has allowed banks to skirt Iowa’s public information and recording laws by trading mortgages through an electronic registry that lists MERS as the mortgage holder, even though the banks are buying and selling the mortgages.
The Bristol County Board of Commissioners moved on Tuesday to file a lawsuit to reclaim millions of dollars from Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, commonly known as MERS, for allegedly skirting public recording laws at the expense of the county’s three property registries.
Commissioner John Mitchell said Bristol County is joining with Norfolk and Plymouth counties in filing lawsuits against MERS.
“MERS has hidden all the assignment of mortgages,” Mitchell said. “This (lawsuit) is to get fees back for the recording of assignments of mortgages. You don’t know how many times they did it. They did it privately. Supposedly, somewhere, this MERS has a registry of their own assignments of mortgages which show who is the true owner of a mortgage, except I guess in practice they don’t really have it. And that’s been a problem with foreclosures. When a bankruptcy court says, ‘Who owns the mortgage now?,’ they haven’t always been able to come up with it.”
Mitchell said it has been a “substantial” problem, but the county won’t be sure about how much money they are actually looking to collect until the discovery process of litigation — rough estimates put together by county registries last year indicate that the loss of revenue ranges well into the millions of dollars.
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