Forum Post: Squatting:More prevalent with awareness? (Millions of Vacant Properties!)
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 7, 2011, 3:50 a.m. EST by economicallydiscardedcitizen
(761)
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Today I saw something that surprised me: Berlin Germany's OWS protesters carrying a banner that read "Let's Break Free and Squat the World!" here's the link to the photo: http://tinyurl.com/7ohcpgr (if Yahoo.com took it down I did save it as a copy). If anyone reading here can translate any German articles about those protesters' 'Let's Break Free and Squat the World!" message please share them here!
Also, got a copy of Countryside magazine this week and found the following article link fortunately posted online which gives a brief synopsis that anyone outside of the real estate and financial industries can understand and which also begs the question: As Occupy Wall Street generates more public awareness of the situations in economies here and abroad how soon before we see the momentum of 'squatting' as a broader 'movement' with people like Kenneth Robinson of Flower Mound, Texas as mentioned in the article as a shining example and symptom of what is wrong in our economies?
http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/95/95-6/squatter_nation.html
Squatter nation
By Jerri Cook Countryside Staff
why are signs in english?
In 3 years the squatter in the article,Kenneth Robinson will own a home that was or is worth $300K for a mere $16. Yep, it's bizarre and with millions of people JOBLESS/UNDER-EMPLOYED, HOMELESS/ABOUT TO BE and millions of properties both residential and commercial VACANT, HEY! The time is RIPE for a SQUATTERS' MOVEMENT! http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/95/95-6/squatter_nation.html ....."On June 17, 2011, Robinson filed an Affidavit of Adverse Possession in Denton County, Texas. It cost him $16 to take possession of a $300,000 home in the upscale neighborhood of Waterford Drive in Flower Mound, Texas.".......
........"In Texas, the law requires the adverse possessor be in continuous and exclusive possession for three years if they have claimed possession under "color of title." As long as the adverse possessor believes they have some sort of document which gives them title (legal or not), the requirement is satisfied. If they don't have color of title, but are just laying claim to abandoned real estate, the statute of limitations runs for 25 years. If the owner doesn't object to Robinson's presence, in as little as three years, the $300,000 property will be Robinson's.
So, why doesn't the owner step up and put a stop to this? Hang on, we're about to feel one of those banking tremors. As far as anyone knows, there is no owner other than Robinson. Before the cave-in, before the ivory towers of the elite crumbled, banks were selling mortgages to bundlers who in turn used those mortgages as assets in order to take huge risks in the securities market. In their rush to raise collateral, bankers and traders made mistakes—billions of dollars worth of mistakes. It seems that paperwork for hundreds of thousands of properties has been lost. There are missing deeds, missing contracts, missing financial forms, improperly signed loans, and in thousands of cases, all of the mortgage documents are gone. This is a problem because The Statute of Limitations for Ejectment allows a foreclosing mortgage lender to eject an unwanted tenant or occupant only if they provide the original loan documents signed by the buyer and the original mortgage lender. Insiders in the banking industry have began to publicly worry that there are so many homes with no readily discernable owner due to banking errors that banks stand to lose even more in 2012 as more squatters claim ownership of mismanaged properties. States like Texas, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Florida and Washington are particularly vulnerable to this tidal wave of savvy squatters who were untouched when it all came tumbling down.
Urban areas aren't the only ones ripe for squatting. Remember all those McMansions built on acres of prime farmland? Well, that land is being claimed by adjoining farmers using the doctrine of adverse possession. In fact, it's gotten so bad in the rural areas of Northern California that the legislature has had to step in.".........
That's amazing. If more people found about this, those bankers would start having heart attacks. How does one go about finding out if a particular piece of property was missing its paperwork? Is there a way? Or would a person just have to 'roll the dice' by picking one at random and hoping for the best?
There have already been a few suicides over it-it would take me several hours to dig through materials I've collected since 2008 but I'm confident there will be many more banker heart attacks and suicides up to 2017/2020 or maybe 2030? This time around I'm having a more difficult time predicting a turn around since this time the problems in the US and national economies are gargantuan.
Here's more from a fellow poster concerning MERS and title which I was going to explain but this person couldn't have sited a better area for OWS activism : http://occupywallst.org/forum/everybody-walk-away-from-your-debt/
tulcak (Prague, Prague) 1 points 16 hours ago
Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) is a privately held company that operates an electronic registry designed to track servicing rights and ownership of mortgage loans in the United States.[1] MERS in turn is owned by a holding company called MERSCORP, Inc. The real estate law and real estate transactions in the US are subject to state regulations and county level recordation requirements, since the time of the establishment of the US as an independent country. The conservatives of "less government" who like to privatize everything for their rich corporate buddies turned over the tracking of mortgages to a private company. This has been a disaster because MERS has done an awful job of tracking who owns what mortgage. The old public system was reliable and slow (not inefficient). But, to know who owns what seems to me to be very critical. However, this may be a blessing in disguise. If a bank can't show the correct paperwork legally validating their ownership of a property or mortgage, then they have no legal recourse in the eviction process nor can they demand payment on a mortgage they cannot prove they own. I think it would be great to have protesters from the occupy movement, move in (occupy) at the request of home owners to provide legal and financial advise while the homeowners dispute the ownership of the mortgage with the bank. This would be another way of "walking away from the debt" and forcing change.
Occupying on behalf of homeowners is a great idea. A noble gesture. Definitely worth pursuing. A side benefit would be the positive image it would portray of OWS.
Bizarre