Foreclosures recorded last week
198 sheriff’s deeds were filed with the Cuyahoga County Recorder’s Office last week (August 6 through August 10).
Here’s who filed five or more of them:
Deutsche Bank (24)
Dept of HUD (23)
Wells Fargo (20)
US Bank (14)
Bank of New York (12)
Federal National Mortgage Assn (8)
CitiBank (7)
Wachovia Bank (7)
Lasalle Bank (6)
Third Federal S&L (6)
Keybank (5)
P.S. I started checking these numbers six weeks ago, i.e. with the week that started June 29. If you’ve been following along, you’ve noticed that a few institutions have consistently appeared on the “five or more” list. You’ve also noticed that two particular out-of-state banks are always at the front of the pack, along with HUD and Fannie Mae.
Here are the six institutions that took title to the most foreclosed Cuyahoga County homes in the last six weeks:
- Deutsche Bank — 158 sheriff’s deeds since June 29
- Wells Fargo Bank — 118
- US Department of Housing & Urban Development — 108
- Federal National Mortgage Assn (Fannie Mae) — 72
- US Bank — 69
- Bank of New York — 57
One of the things I quickly learned from talking to more experienced researchers, and then from the data, is that the party that brings the foreclosure action and gets the deed in its name is often not the party that made the original loan. Deutsche Bank has seldom if ever lent money directly to a Cleveland homeowner — it buys pieces of other lenders’ mortgages, and often acts as the “trustee” for partnerships or “pools” of secondary investors, which is why its name ends up on so many deeds. Wells Fargo does a lot of mortgage origination, but it’s also an active secondary investor. HUD and Fannie Mae aren’t lenders at all; HUD (FHA) guarantees private-lender mortgages and takes them over when they go bad, and Fannie Mae is in the business of providing a secondary market for private lenders’ paper.
But whether these guys are predatory lenders themselves, or just enablers for other institutions who actually originate the loans — loans to shyster mortgage brokers, to property-flipping “investors”, or to ordinary consumers afflicted by greed, desperation and/or ignorance — doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters is that these guys are ending up with the titles to hundreds of homes in Cleveland neighborhoods.
Which means that, by what they do with these titles, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, HUD, Fannie Mae and the others will decide whether some Cleveland neighborhoods survive…
Which means it’s important for Clevelanders to know their names.