We get letters!

[mangosteen]

We got the first postal mail at the new house.

The first piece of mail was "Your mortgage has been sold."

I love this country.

Comments

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

You too, huh?

(Although, in fairness, my bank told me before we closed they were expecting the would.)

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

In fairness, so did ours. At least, that's what I remember Beloved saying.

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

Hasn't it been almost two months now? What took them so long?

[skreeky]

Yeh, I think ours was sold in 3 weeks.

[mangosteen]

Actually, it has only been 5 weeks since closing. So, yeah, they slacked a bit.

[skreeky]

Come to think of it, it may have been that long. I think we made one payment to the original holder and the second check was written to the new people.

[caulay.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the wonderful world of home ownership (that is, the state of being owned by a home).

[skreeky]

What? No junk mail trying to sell you custom window treatments, carpet, lawn supplies? No envelopes of coupons for Home Depot, JiffyLube, and Gental Dental? Geez, the direct marketers in your neighborhood must not be as regular about gleaning information from the deed registry.

I'm highly amused by how much of our junk mail is addressed to Laura, who has never lived anywhere near here.

[mangosteen]

What? No junk mail trying to sell you custom window treatments, carpet, lawn supplies? No envelopes of coupons for Home Depot, JiffyLube, and Gental Dental? Geez, the direct marketers in your neighborhood must not be as regular about gleaning information from the deed registry.

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope.

I figure this will all change as soon as I file a Change Of Address. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

I've heard that using a temporary C O D helps to decrease your paper spam at the new address.

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

If that's anything like a PO Box, they are scarcer than hen's teeth round here. Last time I tried to open one, there was a 1.5 year wait list.

Suckful, but so.

[skreeky]

I'm pretty certain Laura never filed a change of address. =) She lives in Chicago, at the same address she's been for a couple of decades. And she's not on the mortgage loan note, either. They must have copied her name off the deed.

took them long enough

[frobzwiththingz.livejournal.com]

incredibly, the mortgage for our house was sold to another company *at the closing*.

Re: took them long enough

[magid.livejournal.com]

Mine too, or within a day or so. And I've been really happy with the bank that bought it, too.

Re: took them long enough

[awfief.livejournal.com]

why do the banks do that? Why is is SOP?

Re: took them long enough

[sethg]

As I understand it, the institutions that buy up the mortgages can then bundle them up and securitize them. Imagine a mutual fund that holds mortgages instead of stocks or bonds; investors can buy into the fund and get a cut of all the interest payments that the homeowners make. It's better to own a 1/1000 share of a pool of 1000 mortgages than to own a single mortgage, because if the homeowner behind that single mortgage defaults, you're scrod, but if some fraction of the 1000 homeowners defaults, that's a statistically manageable risk. (Well, as manageable as anything else in the world of invesments.) Furthermore, if those 1000 mortgages are for homes distributed across the country, an investor isn't so exposed to a regional economic downturn.

The institutions that aggregate the mortgages create separate bundles with separate risk levels. This fund has 1000 mortgages from good solid citizens who kept the same job for five years and are borrowing well within their means and who are only paying a pittance of interest; this fund has 1000 mortgages from flakes who are paying 18% on adjustable-rate mortgages because no sane banker would lend them money on any other terms.

Re: took them long enough

[magid.livejournal.com]

I never knew that. Thanks.

My mortgage was bought on origination by a local bank, though; I don't know why they'd want it, given what you've said.

Re: took them long enough

[awfief.livejournal.com]

hey cool!

And that's probably what the "real estate fund" that my 401(k) has to offer. I always wondered about that -- I didn't think an investment company went around buying houses and being landlords. . . . there may be some of that, but . . .

Thanx!

[huaman.livejournal.com]

That's just the norm -- there are almost no banks that actually hold mortgages, and holding 'em locally even usually just means selling them to a localized mortgage exchange. Some vanishingly small number of mortgages are actually held by the institution who makes the loans, and what's more, the actual funds involved in most cases do not, in the strictest sense of the world, exist. It's a giant government-backed Ponzi scheme.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Of course, without it, few of us would be able to afford homes...

[ceo]

We went through a mortgage broker, who was entirely up front about the fact that they were going to get rid of our mortgage as quickly as they could. Indeed, it had already been sold by the closing.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

My recollection is that it was about a month before mir_nyc's mortgage got resold. This seems to be standard practice.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

No owner of a wood-stove minds junk mail.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

"Your mortgage has been sold."

I keep hearing this to the tune of, "My angel is a centerfold."

[jss]

My (1997) mortgage was sold twice. From the builder (if I went with them, they paid 5 points and the base cost for all major appliances) to one bank almost immediately to a second bank a year and a half later. Get used to it.

(I think that's what happened. I don't think that bank₂ bought out bank₁. But maybe they did. Enh.)

[scromp.livejournal.com]

I traded a fraction of an interest point to the local bank that holds my mortgage to ensure that they would not sell mine. Had some bad experiences in the past with the credit industry underbelly, and I felt that fraction was well worth the human f2f service I could get from the locals. I had never heard of that option being offered before, but it seemed like a good idea to me, esp. since I didn't intend to hold the mortgage for anywhere near the actual term.