By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
Karina Lopez belongs to a club nobody wants to join: foreclosure defendants who once thought their mortgage problems were over.
They most definitely are not.
Lopez, 51, is fighting a third foreclosure against the modest home she bought for cash in North Miami’s affluent San Souci district more than 20 years ago. Her mortgage issues began in 2008 when Bank of America offered her a $200,000 home equity line of credit and, later, a loan modification.
She never got the loan modification but late fees and insurance mounted until they doubled her outstanding balance. Bank of America filed the first foreclosure but voluntarily dropped it in 2012; a second foreclosure filed by a different nominal creditor popped up in 2017, apparently soon after the filing deadline expired. And so on.
Lopez represents a legion of foreclosure defendants whose creditor adversaries have trouble proving they’re the legitimate mortgage holders or that they acted quickly enough. Without such proof they aren’t empowered to sue for the unpaid debt.
Despite their vulnerability, the creditors almost always win because homeowners either don’t try to challenge them or, if they do try, they’re outgunned. The plaintiff in Lopez’s case is a federal savings bank named Wilmington Savings Fund Society (WSFS), a powerhouse foreclosure litigant with a spotty but largely successful track record.
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