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Quick question. I live in Los Angeles County (in a city located in Los Angeles county, California), is there a way to see if my mortgage lender (Bank of America) has filed my Notice of Default (NOD) with the county in which the property is located online?
I ask this, because today, I just received my first piece of mail from a law office that claims they want to help me, since their records indicate that my lender has already started foreclosure proceedings on my home.
Wilson
Last edited by WestCoastWilson; 03-11-2011 at 01:17 PM..
Hopefully someone from your area comes on and can give you more specific advice. In my area, the information is public record, but not available to the general public online. As a real estate office, we have access to a title company's website, where they have the docs available, but someone without that access would not be able to get there.
Barring someone coming in and telling you a website to visit, I would say you could call a title company and ask them to check for you, or you could visit the records office for your county, and might be able to find out there.
However, I will say that you can't possibly miss them serving notice. They will send you a copy via certified mail, regular mail, and posted on your front door or served in person to you. Then a few days later, they may do the same thing again. We have seen people get as many as 8 notices served.
Does the letter from the attorney have any details or is it just a vague letter that might get sent to every homeowner on the CHANCE that they are having trouble? Does it have qualifiers, like "may have", "could have" "appears to be", "possibly", etc?
Thank you so very much Lacerta. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to provide me such good and detailed answers to my question. Thank you so very, very much.
Since I am pretty desperate right now, I have joined several online foreclosure forums, so I just received the following answer to how that lawyer may have found me:
“The last time I looked at the Los Angeles recorder's office online, they were not providing any online information. However foreclosure data services mine the recorder's information, then publish those records on a subscription basis. That's most likely where the law office obtained the information.”
Since I am sick, nervous, and have a big pit in my stomach over this right now, since that letter from the lawyer came out of the blue and made me just sick . . . I will try to go down to my Los Angeles recorder's office next week, when I feel better. Yet in the meantime, I was trying to see if I could find this information online.
One thing about my situation, since I have a more detailed question about my foreclosure problem online already, I would like to add that I received my NOD 5 times in late August of last year. 1 was certified, 1 was delivered FedEx, the following 3 were delivered by regular US Mail. All 5 NODs were delivered in 6 days, one day after another almost, and they had a mid October response deadline. Yet when the B of A robo doc scandal broke out around early October, that is when I explored my options for BK, since I had no money to pay my mortgage to B of A or do one of the options to stop the NOD, with the mid October deadline. So it was on this Wednesday, the first time I received any notification from them about the foreclosure, as they have been sending a mortgage bill every month . . . even during the robo doc scandal.
Yet at this point, I thought I would have received a letter from B of A (by now) saying something like . . . "Now that we have foreclosed on your home, these are the next steps you need to take . . . "
Since I live in California, I had heard that a sheriff or process server does not serve (I guess the 30 day foreclosure eviction paperwork). Yet below, someone else said this is what happens in California:
“The Notice of Default is the beginning of the foreclosure process in California.
Notice of Default period runs three months followed by an approximate 3 week Notice of Trustee's Sale period, then the public auction. There is no redemption period after the Trustee's Sale.”
So I am guessing that nobody comes out to my house to serve notice.
Upon reading the lawyer letter, it seems that it is specifically for someone that is in pre-foreclosure or in foreclosure. It was sent with a first class 44 cent stamp and not via the cheaper bulk mail. I wish I could try to post the front and back of the letter, but this website does not allow it.
However the haunting words in the letter are “Our records indicate that your lender has already started foreclosure proceeding on your home ”, plus looking at the back of the letter, it seems that the lawyer “may” know about my back property taxes that have been due since December 10, 2010. Plus the lawyer lists all of the payment options that the NOD included, minus the payback plan to catch up on the past payments that B of A offered me. Though I am 8 months behind, I owe less than $9,000 total, which includes the monthly late charges. Yet I figure the lawyer must have access to the public information, if he was able to send that letter so quickly to me. Yet since I had been unable to pay my homeowners insurance the last 2 months, my insurance company canceled my policy and then contacted B of A over this, so this may have been what started all of this.
Thank you again for your help Lacerta, and please let me know your thoughts. Have a good weekend.
If you already received your notice of default, then you should be in the process already, and the NOD is probably public record.
Your notice of default should say who the trustee is who is handling the foreclosure. Google them and see if they have a website. For example, most of the foreclosures in my area are handled by either Recon Trust or Northwest Trustee Services, both of whom have public access websites, where you can look up the date of an upcoming auction by address.
If your trustee does not have a website, you can try calling them. You can also look for the name of a title company on the NOD, which might be who would call the sale for the auction. They should have records as well, so you could try calling them.
It sounds like you are in the foreclosure process, and paperwork has likely been filed. The notices you got last August are the notices. In my state, they have to post one on the door also, but maybe not in your state. In my state, when it actually forecloses, yes you get a notice on the door that says who the new owner is, and what the next step is. There usually is no communication given between those two points. NOD, which you've already gotten, and then new owner, which you have not gotten yet.
AGAIN, and I have to emphasize this, I am not in California, and not familiar with California foreclosure law, so this advice is general.
Thank you so very, very much Lacerta. I greatly appreciate your additional help and feedback. Thank you once again for providing me with good detailed answers.
WestCostWilson, I am sorry to hear what is happening. It can be very confusing and sometimes very scary to deal with such things. As you have found your NOD info can be had from a title company. They collect information from the county registrar's office. The banks are required to report NODs and NOTs to the registrar. The documents they filed can also be found via title company. You probably don't have access to a title company's web site.
Ask a realtor to look it up in their tax records database. It will show if there is a recorded NOD. It does take a couple weeks to show up in the database after it's recorded.
Thank you ThinkHomeTeam, Zpatz, and NinaN. I greatly appreciate your comments, input, and help.
Well I have some good news to report. Since late April, my family is loaning me money to help me out of my foreclosure. Though it is going to take some time to totally get out of this mess, yet at least with my family’s help, things are looking very good towards fixing this mess.
Thank you ThinkHomeTeam, Zpatz, and NinaN. I greatly appreciate your comments, input, and help.
Well I have some good news to report. Since late April, my family is loaning me money to help me out of my foreclosure. Though it is going to take some time to totally get out of this mess, yet at least with my family’s help, things are looking very good towards fixing this mess.
Thanks so much for the help and support.
Wilson
Wonderful. Congrats to you.
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NOD info in Los Angeles CA
, yet at least with my family’s help, things are looking very good towards fixing this mess.
