IPFS News Link • Housing

Foreclosure-Gate: Beware the Predatory Pro Se Borrower!

03-23-2011 • NakedCapitalism.com/

I’m a little surprised at that; perhaps enough judges have patience in dealing with pro se clients that the time spent in court is protracted. But irrespective of the cause, the outcome is that these pro se clients mess up foreclosure mill economics by behaving in non-standard and time-consuming ways; hence they need to be dealt with. There are some revealing, as well as amusing threads in this presentation. The authors make strong declarations about the motives of borrowers that range from incomplete to biased. For instance, it notes a meaningful uptick in the number of pro se defendants. It blames this development on “negative press….emboldening borrowers to pursue legal action”. It bizarrely makes them sound like the instigators when they are responding to legal action taken against them. And it further contends that many are unwilling to hire attorneys, when the more obvious explanation is they can’t afford counsel and there aren’t enough Legal Aid lawyers to go around. The presentation also makes a “good defendant/bad defendant” parse, or in this case, “frustrated borrower” versus “predatory borrower”. The only borrowers depicted as having legitimate complaints fall into a short list: those who want a loan modification versus those who are (presumably” trying to get a free house. While there are always scamsters, the idea that there are a significant number of people going to court pro se who are trying to pull a fast...