Default & Foreclosure Support

It depends on priority and on the state. The general rule is that interests recorded junior to the foreclosing lien are extinguished and senior ones survive, but the exceptions are what matter: property taxes and municipal assessments typically survive regardless of recording date, a federal tax lien carries a redemption right for a set period after the sale, and several states give homeowners association assessments a super-priority position ahead of a first mortgage. That is why the analysis is done per jurisdiction rather than from a general rule.

Most often the assignment chain. Enforcing a mortgage requires showing the right to enforce it, which means an unbroken recorded path from the originator to the current holder. A gap, an assignment recorded out of order, or one signed by an entity that had already merged away all create the same problem: the party bringing the action cannot show on the record that it is entitled to. Finding it before referral is a document retrieval exercise; finding it after is a dismissal and a restart.

The documents and findings counsel needs to open the file: current ownership and lien position, the recorded instruments in the chain, tax and assessment status, any bankruptcy or litigation of record, and the exceptions identified - each one with the source document behind it rather than a note asserting it. It is assembled so the first thing the attorney does is read it, not request it.

No. Legal strategy, filings and the decisions that go with them stay with your attorney, and curative work here is coordinated to their direction. What is delivered is the research, the documents and the tracking around those decisions - which is the part that otherwise consumes a paralegal's week per file.

A trustee's sale guarantee, or its equivalent in judicial states, is ordered for the foreclosure itself: it establishes who currently holds an interest in the property so that everyone entitled to notice actually receives it. Missing a party is not a technicality - it can leave that interest unaffected by the sale, which means the buyer did not get what they thought they bought.

Whatever the sale did not clear has to be resolved before it can be resold: surviving liens, ownership records that have not caught up with the sale, and any exception an underwriter will raise on the resale. That work is the third part of this service, and it is the same title exception clearing done anywhere else on this site - applied to an asset that has just been through a sale.