Regarding MERS, Inc., a lot of lenders are assigning mortgages to them rather than directly to another lender; naming MERS as the mortgagee on the assignment eliminates the need for a long "chain" of assignments, thus the potential for savings of hundreds of thousands in recording fees.  It also makes for easier tracking of loans.  Each loan is assigned a "Mortgage Identification Number" (MIN), and when a registered user wishes to track the status of a MERS loan, they simply plug in the MIN, and the desired information is then delivered to the user.  Just about all of our county Recorders index these loans using both MERS and the lender, e.g., "MERS, Inc. as nominee for Next to Last National Bank..." would also be indexed under "Next to Last National Bank".