<div dir="ltr"><p style="margin:0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;font:14.0px Helvetica"><b> From 2009 to 2012, there were 2,342 foreclosures in Mendocino County. Most of those foreclosures were by the big banks which violated the law and settled with the States Attorney Generals in December 2012 in the National Mortgage Settlement: Ally/GMAC, Bank of America, Citi, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. </b></p>
<p style="margin:0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;font:14.0px Helvetica"><b> During that time those foreclosures caused a loss of home values in Mendocino County of $735,926,660 with a resultant loss of $4,489,153 in property taxes. Moreover, there was a cost of approximately $24,143,932 to the local government for costs related to the foreclosures including costs for maintenance of blighted properties, sheriff evictions, inspections, public safety, trash removal, unpaid water and sewage charges, and other costs. In other words, it cost the county approximately $19,229 for every foreclosure. </b></p>
<p style="margin:0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;font:14.0px Helvetica"><b> Thus, as is relevant to our request for an audit of foreclosure deeds, Mendocino County lost at very least $52,680 in recording fees, and probably much more since some mortgages changed owners a number of times and the big banks used MERS (Mortgage Electronic registration System) instead of recording change of ownership with the County Recorder as they were legally bound to do. It is estimated that 75% of the foreclosures went through MERS: that is, 1756 of the deeds in foreclosure cases were not properly recorded. MERS therefore owes the county those recording fees.</b></p>
<p style="margin:0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;font:14.0px Helvetica"><b> We are requesting, therefore, that $15,000 be put into the budget to fund an audit of all deeds of foreclosed property from 2009 to the present to find all evasions of recorder's fees though the use of MERS. We expect the county to recover those lost fees by suing MERS for illegally evading the payment of the requisite recording fees. Although the big banks settled with the states Attorney Generals on some issues, cases involving MERS are still viable. Therefore we would like to see the county to investigate and recover the money owed to it. </b></p>
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