Getting Foreclosure Information

How to Get Information about a Foreclosure

A landlord may or may not tell her tenant that she is losing the property in foreclosure. If your landlord does not share information about her financial trouble, you may not know that a foreclosure is likely, or even that one has already taken place. There are a number of ways to get more information about your building and who owns it.

Look for Emergency Contact Information

You can start by looking for the owner's contact information in the common area of your building. The new owner is required to post this information so that you know who to call for repairs.¹⁹ Unfortunately, lenders who buy buildings at foreclosure sales rarely follow this rule.

Notice from the Lender

After a foreclosure sale, you may receive a written notice from the lender. A lender that forecloses on a property is required to inform all tenants of this within 30 days.²⁰ Therefore, you may receive a letter from a bank or one of its representatives, such as a lawyer or real estate agent, telling you who is the new owner of the property where you live and providing you with contact information. Frequently, tenants do not receive these notices because the lenders do not send them or because they are sent to the wrong person or address. You should make sure to hold on to all correspondence you receive from the lender.

Ask the Real Estate Broker or Lawyer

Sometimes the new owner's real estate agent or lawyer will contact you in person or over the phone. If you ask this person who the new owner of your apartment is, she might tell you.

Check the Property Records

If you suspect your landlord may have lost the property in foreclosure but have not been contacted by the new owner, you can do some research on your own. Lenders are required to notify the local tax assessor's office when they take possession of a property through foreclosure.²¹ You can check to see if the tax assessor's office received such a notice from the lender by looking up the address of your building in your local office. Some tax assessors' offices allow their records to be searched online.²²

You can also check the property records at the local Registry of Deeds, which are available online by county.²³ If a foreclosure is in process, you will probably find a 'Servicemembers Civil Relief Act' application or judgment in the file. Under federal law, a foreclosure sale is not valid if it happens during, or within 90 days after, an owner's military service.²⁴

To ensure that lenders do not violate this law, Massachusetts law requires them to file a Servicemembers Civil Relief Act petition in Land Court before conducting a foreclosure sale. Once the Land Court rules on the petition, it issues a judgment. The lender is required to file that judgment at the Registry of Deeds. A Servicemembers Civil Relief Act petition would tell you two things. First, it tells you that the lender is in the process of foreclosing on the property you rent, although it does not tell you whether or not the bank actually went or will go through with the foreclosure. Second, it gives you the names of the lender and its lawyers.

The Registry of Deeds file might also contain a foreclosure deed. If there is a foreclosure deed in the file, the property has been foreclosed upon and the foreclosure sale is complete. The foreclosure deed also gives you the names of the new owner and its lawyers. But the new owners do not always record the foreclosure deed right away. The foreclosure sale may be complete even if you cannot find the foreclosure deed at the Registry of Deeds. If you find a Servicemembers Civil Relief Act judgment but no foreclosure deed, you could call the lender or the lender's lawyers to ask about the status of the property.

Auction Listings

You can also check lists of foreclosure auctions. Some auctioneers have websites on which they list upcoming and recently completed auctions (such as Harmon Law Offices, Real Estate Auction Professionals, Bay State Auction Co, Inc.), but you may want to run a general search for the address on a search engine like Google. Auctions are also listed in printed publications such as Banker and Tradesman and your local newspaper.

Companies that Mortgage Lenders Hire

Mortgage lenders often hire specialized companies, called 'servicers,' to administer their mortgages on a day-to-day basis and to manage the foreclosure process. The servicer may be managing the sale of the property and any court cases related to the building, including eviction cases. In most cases, you can find the servicer who is associated with your apartment by calling the toll-free hotline run by MERS, a private company that works with mortgage lenders and servicers, at 888- 679-6377. You can also look up your address in MERS' online database.