Pleading and local rules demand different documents for each state and in some states they are different for each County within the State.
In addition the form of response is different in state court (regular
foreclosures) and federal court (some governmental agency foreclosures).
If you start answering complaints on behalf of homeowners you will be practicing law without a license. You will also make plenty of mistakes if you start filing answers. For example, to properly answer a foreclosure complaint you would need to review all loan documents signed at closing to see if defenses are available to the borrower under federal statutes such as the Truth in Lending Act, RESPA, your state banking laws, and a multitude of other state and federal statutes. If you file an answer without pleading all available defenses you could be sued by the homeowner for your omission.
If you insist on doing this unwise practice, the way to see the format is to go to your local courthouse and look at some contested mortgage foreclosure cases. Look at the papers filed by the defendant and make something in the same format.
My advice is that you do not file answers for homeowners or advise them on how to do it. Aside from it requiring a law license to file answers, you would need to have a very broad knowlege of common law, contract law, tort law, lending law and all applicable state and federal statutes to file a proper and complete answer. The only way you would even approach any working knowlege would be to go to the Law Library and read practice guides. A good guide to begin your research would be the "Repossessions and Foreclosures" guide available from the national consumer law center at http://consumerlaw.org .
If you want to pursue filing answers please do your research. It is not anything that I can answer any further without writing a guide that would be many many pages and I would be writing about something I don't even want to encourage investors to do.
Posted by Bob Diamond, Real Estate Investor and Attorney
http://bobdiamond.com
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Mastering Foreclosure
The complete set of foreclosure strategies are buying notes, mortgages and judgments, short sales, taking under and subject to, and straight equity purchases. We covered all of those topics at the Orlando seminar.
The "magic" in my business is taking those techniques (often in
combination) and applying them to a specific homeowner's situation.
Once you know the strategies (or at least know they exist and figuring it out or hiring someone to help you with it when you have an actual deal) then the income you derive is more related to how much time you are spending talking to sellers than anything else.
The business is competitive right now. Real estate is hot but there are still deals to be had and over time the competition will cool down dramatically.
My advice is to spend your energy looking for homeowners to talk to rather than the next technique.
For more information:
http://bobdiamond.com
The "magic" in my business is taking those techniques (often in
combination) and applying them to a specific homeowner's situation.
Once you know the strategies (or at least know they exist and figuring it out or hiring someone to help you with it when you have an actual deal) then the income you derive is more related to how much time you are spending talking to sellers than anything else.
The business is competitive right now. Real estate is hot but there are still deals to be had and over time the competition will cool down dramatically.
My advice is to spend your energy looking for homeowners to talk to rather than the next technique.
For more information:
http://bobdiamond.com
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