The nation's zombie craze just found a new target: your foreclosed home.
According to CNN Money, "Borrowers who have moved out of their homes after their lending back scheduled a foreclosure auction are frequently finding that those auctions never took place and that their banks never transferred the deeds, leaving the borrower on the hook for property taxes, fees and homeowners' association dues."
Almost two million properties have started but never completed the foreclosure process since the housing bubble burst six years ago, CNN reported.
A lot of these so-called "zombie foreclosures" are in low-income neighborhoods where foreclosures are difficult to sell and lenders sometimes delay taking possession to save on taxes and other costs that stay under the borrower's name, the report stated.
Bill Purdy, a real estate attorney in Soquel, Calif., said borrowers can't always trust lenders to file foreclosure paperwork properly, the report said.
Mustapha Sesay believed he lost his home in Brandywine, Md., in 2008, but two years later, he was contacted by a debt collector wanting $70,000. The holder of his second mortgage had never forgiven his debt, even though the holder of his primary mortgage foreclosed on his home, the report stated.
The debt which he was unaware he had ruined his is credit rating.
"I could move to Alaska in winter and no one would lend me ice," he told CNN.
Because owners are unaware of the debts, they often go unpaid for years, which hurts the foreclosed person's credit even more and makes life after foreclosure even more difficult, the report stated.
Last spring a $25 billion settlement with the California Attorneys General and the nation's five largest mortgage lenders agreed to inform borrowers of any decision to forgo or delay foreclosure. But, the report stated, victims attorneys said the banks have not been following the policy.
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