The Shady Ways People Are Losing Their Homes--Even If They Don't Have Mortgages

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on July 14, 2011, Printed on July 16, 2011

Millions of American homeowners owe more to their bankers than their properties are worth. With incomes stagnating and unemployment pushing higher, foreclosures are projected to hit a record high this year.

But some are learning the hard way that you don't have to stop paying your mortgage to lose your home. In fact, in some cases you don't need to have a mortgage in the first place – people are losing properties they own free and clear to the foreclosure process.

Some Americans are losing their homes to screw-ups on the part of banks and loan servicers. In March, an exhaustive investigation by the Federal Reserve was, incredibly, unable to come up with a single example of a "wrongful foreclosure." According to the Huffington Post, consumer advocates “criticized the central bank's examiners for narrowly defining what constitutes a 'wrongful foreclosure,'” and warned that “the public would not take the Fed's findings of improper practices seriously.”