I’ve written about the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) a couple of times around here. The post I remember most is this one. It’s basically a holding company that mortgage companies would sign up with that allows member companies to trade mortgages among themselves without bothering with paperwork such as recording transfers at the county recorder’s office. MERS would be the lienholder of record as “nominee” for whoever the real owner was.
Matt Taibbi has a post discussing MERS. I particularly liked this observation:
The problem with MERS is a paradox at the heart of the “ownership” question. On the one hand, MERS is the legal assignee of a lot of these mortgage notes. On the other hand, it’s not the “real” owner of the notes, in any way that could ever help you, or the state, or the investors in mortgage-backed securities.
. . .
In short, the mortgage industry considers MERS owner enough to foreclose on you, but not owner enough to be sued, or reasoned with, or even to provide basic customer service.
We all have heard enough about this MERS problem. We also know who started MERS, and who the Board of Directors are. In essence, the Board of Directors are not members of MERS, rather, the owners of MERS. Therefore, in order to become a member of MERS, you have to become a subsciber, which can cost up to $ 7,500.00 per year.
Like any other corporation, it has to make a proffit, and who gets the proffits from MERS activities? The Board of Directors.
Therefore, to become a MERS member, all of the members mortgages have to be assigned to MERS. and all of the borrowers personal information, which includes the social security numbers are put into the MERS database. Which means that any MERS member that has the borrowers MIN number can access this information.
MERS states that it has 62 million mortgages, which means 62 milion social security numbers. We need to get a clue regarding MERS. It is going to evolve into a credit rating system, where the Lenders do not have to rely on obtaining credit reports, and pay to get them. This will all be included with their membership fees.
The owners of this shell corporation will be making millions doing other things with your personal information, while claiming that they only record mortgages.
No one gave the lenders any authority to devulge your personal information to a third party without your consent.
Hopefully, some wise attorney will see thru this for what it is, or what it may become.