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Permalink Reply by Janet Nation on October 24, 2013 at 6:56am

Brian thank you for your response. Just to be a little clearer, and I'm the selling agent by the way, the attorney for the 80 year old seller and agents are not  proficient and missed everything. The seller refinanced 9 years ago and during that time the outstanding liens were satisfied by HSBC.  HSBC's internal record are therefore correct but they neglected to file the satisfaction with Land Record.  In order to close that needs to be.done. We need a contact at HSBC for the attorney from the mysterious Lien Department to get the letter of satisfaction so that we can close. 

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Permalink Reply by Janet Nation on October 24, 2013 at 1:54pm

No, we are at a stand still. The whole selling side are incompetent and the perfect recipe for disaster. My only hope at this point is that HSBC come to some kind of realization of what they need to do before the lady seller goes into foreclosure and everyone loses.

 

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Payne on October 25, 2013 at 5:55am

Fire the title company NOW and find one that will close this.  Non sense

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Permalink Reply by Janet Nation on October 26, 2013 at 11:29am

It's the sellers attorney that need to be fired, see my response to Sarah.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Eakes on October 25, 2013 at 12:50pm

who is conducting the closing for the buyer?  That company ordered a title search and discovered the unreleased liens....and unless you're on one of those weird states, that company would also order the 'payoffs' for the seller.  In your case, there will be $0 due, but the process to order a $0 balance letter from HSBC is very similar to how you order a payoff statement.  All title companies and closing attorneys should know how to do this - this is title/closing 101.  Discovering unreleased liens is fairly common and all title companies/closing agents should really know how to do this...if they do not, RUN from that company because it calls into question everything else they do...

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Permalink Reply by Janet Nation on October 26, 2013 at 11:28am

Sarah,

In New York, the buyer's attorney always order the title then sends to the seller's attorney who apparently in this case took no action to get a satisfaction letter from HSBC.  The buyers attorney has no control over the action of the seller's attorney, The problem is not with the Title company, the problem is what the sellers attorney that either doesn't care and/or totally incompetent. The Title company just need a letter from HSBC showing $0 due and the sellers attorney can't seem to get it. The title company cannot get it directly unfortunately.  I guess NY is one of those weird states.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Eakes on October 26, 2013 at 12:47pm

gotcha...so it sounds like the sellers attorney perhaps doesn't normally do RE closings so they didn't know what to do...Perhaps your borrower's title company can provide the sellers attorney the phone number for the HSBC payoff dept (they should be able to share the number)...unfortunately, that's back to waiting for the sellers attorney to do their job.  At the end of the day, this seller will never be able to sell their property if this isn't resolved so hopefully he will step up (or step out of the picture if he isn't familiar with real estate closings).  Unfortunately, once the request is finally made to HSBC, their turn around time will likely be 10 days or more...these types of requests require research on their part.  One final possibility: whatever year those loans were paid off, HSBC might have sent the release or a letter stating 'congrats you paid off your loan' letter directly to the seller.  If you are lucky, she saved them....

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Permalink Reply by Janet Nation on October 26, 2013 at 1:36pm

Sarah the seller is 80 years old I doubt it,  and it was 9 years ago but we can ask her, we have to try everything.   We are also going to see if she has younger family members to put the heat under the attorney but we're thinking that's unlikely she seems alone.  We can have the sellers attorney try this payoff department also but the truth of the matter is, he doesn't seem to care which is really very unfortunate for his senior client who is non the wiser of his indifference.  I have to believe and hope that HSBC would come to some realization or react eventually when they see we can't close..

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