Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter, Part 53

Republicans are doing their dead level best to punish American's homeowners for Foreclosuregate  There can't possibly be any way the banks could be wrong about who to foreclose on to these guys, and as a number of states now are completely controlled by Republicans, look for those GOP-controlled states to do what Virginia did over the last two years.

Since the meltdown in the housing market began more than three years ago, Maryland and the District have changed their foreclosure laws to give borrowers greater protection. Virginia has moved in the opposite direction.

Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law making it easier for lenders to defend themselves when accused of giving homeowners too little warning of impending foreclosures.

The process moves so quickly in Virginia - one of the fastest states in the nation - that homeowners can receive less than two weeks' notice that their house is about to be sold on the courthouse steps.

That confronts homeowners with an almost impossible deadline. To get a court to stop the sale in that narrow window, they must gather evidence, file a lawsuit and potentially post a bond with the court that could total thousands of dollars. Instead of trying to find a lawyer and prepare a suit, many borrowers run out the clock trying to deal with their lender.

At a time when lenders have been cutting corners and using phony documents to seize huge numbers of houses, the hurdles can be insurmountable, according to lawyers, consumer advocates and borrowers who have tried to save their homes.

"There's no question that people are losing their homes when they should not be," said James W. "Jay" Speer, executive director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, which is part of a legal-aid network.

In many states, homeowners facing foreclosure automatically get a day in court, a chance to tell a judge why they should keep their homes. The judicial process provides at least a modest check on error and abuse.

But in Virginia and 28 other states, as well as the District, according to the RealtyTrac foreclosure information service, borrowers have no such luck. They face "nonjudicial" foreclosure processes, meaning lenders can foreclose without going through the courts. 

Wham, bam, out on your ass.   Remember, the entire MERS system of computerized foreclosure documentation must be considered suspect here.  The burden of proving the banks are owed must fall on the banks.  But in states like Virginia, the burden falls on the homeowner to prove why they shouldn't be thrown out, even with the increasing instances of banks not having anywhere near the required legal paperwork...and in some cases the paperwork they do have is robo-signer fraud.

For many states, there's no judicial recourse.  And Virginia Republicans went out of their way to create legislation specifically to allow banks to foreclose faster, despite the very real concerns about the accuracy of MERS.

Banks are getting away with stealing people's homes.  And increasingly they are getting away with it.  Republicans in Virginia are just the beginning.  Merry Christmas, indeed.