Camera on Foreclosures: The Dirty Little Cheaters

Portable digital video cameras are now ubiquitous. Whether on an IPad, cell phone or GoPro attachment, we see their fallout on the daily news, Funniest Home Videos, Right This Minute, talk shows, and YouTube.

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The usefulness of these in foreclosure auctions has not yet been fully realized.

A growing part of the commercial service sector in mortgage-related activities is the area where a firm offers to help homeowners postpone or prevent mortgage foreclosure.

This often involves a complex web of loan modifications, refinances or short sales, following a thorough review of the matters of record for flaws in the notice process, legal descriptions, and other paperwork.

A new and simple bonus is added to the mix by forcing the trustees to adhere to the proper auction protocols. This is done by using mobile video cameras.

The "dirty little secret" that many trustee firms don't want the public to know about is their frequent failure to properly call out a property auction on the posted auction day. Their auctioneer shows up late at the sale site having been delayed in traffic; a situation already sufficient to cause a delay and rescheduling of the auction when the homeowner and other public bidders have acted in good faith to be there at the appointed time. Secondly, the auctioneer calls out the wrong address, reading it or the parcel number incorreclty, causing another flaw in the auction process. This is assuming that he is not rushing to play "catch-up" and skips calling it out at all, on the presumption that it is "underwater" and going to revert tot he bank anyway. Finally, the auctioneer fails to realize that he called the property for auction at the wrong start time when most counties have multiple customary start times for the various auction sessions.

All of this presumes that the paperwork has been filed in the correct county; a situation that is handled wrong on a weekly basis even in small, low volume counties.

Naturally, the mobile video cameras offer a solution of proof that a PUBLIC process had been handled correctly. Make no mistake, laws barring surreptitious recording of private persons do NOT apply to this legal, public process that the Citizens of the State have a right to access. Indeed, posting this online daily would be a tremendous public service and perhaps the trustee firms should now be lawfully required to do so every day. Ideas?

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	Verifyd
	There is a company called Verifyd which has transformed the sales being read from paper and instead they are read from a phone or tablet and the app captures the time, date, and location of where the person was standing when the started the auction and all of the same info for when they finished the auction. It is used extensively in Georgia. Should be used everywhere as it is the best evidence that a sale was cried legally.
	by Michael Watkins \| 2014/10/13 \| log in or register to post a reply

	Who takes the video?
	I think the effectiveness of this method would depend upon the source of the video record. If it were to come from a private citizen, it would not preclude the possibility that the video were edited. It is hard to prove a negative and with the ability to be able to delete part of the video, it may be difficult to prove that it did not happen.
	by James Newberry \| 2014/10/13 \| log in or register to post a reply

	Is it Really Necessary, or just something new added in?
	Is it really THAT much of a problem? I think any Law firm dealing with trying to avert a foreclosure on the part of a homeowner really isn't going to care much one way or the other as to video evidence of whether the FCL Sale was cried "flawlessly" or not. If it came down to some sort of allegation that the FCL had FAILED on such grounds, the party foreclosed out would STILL have to foot the Attorney's fees for at least filing such a claim, and you'd have to FIND an Attorney willing to handle such a case in the first place. The Court would more than likely find that a "stumble" in crying a FCL sale was problem no more fatal than a scrivener's error in a Court filing or on a Deed, the intent is the question, and., there isn't any contract liability protection running in favor of the distressed homeowner that I can see.. All the pre-sale notice to the buying public is given by publication, so anyone fishng for distressed properties is going to be looking to that publication for their info, and if they happen to go to the sale, they're gonna know right off the bat whether the property they are bidding on is the "correct" one for their purposes. If they can't figure it out, seems to me that's THEIR own liability. The video record might be nice to have, but does it actually accomplish or prove anything? I mean, in Judicial and non-Judicial sales all of this has been accomplished by signed affidavits for DECADES. Is an ele ctronic device an improvement somehow?
	by Donald Petersen \| 2014/12/22 \| log in or register to post a reply

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