Many Kentucky and Indiana homeowners are surprised to learn that their monthly mortgage payment check is not made out to the owner of the mortgage note. The company that receives your money is the servicer of the loan, but is not necessarily the legal note holder. This distinction can become important if you need to modify or change the terms of your loan. In order to answer your question of, “Who owns my mortgage?”, we provided this blog.
A loan servicer is a company that collects and processes your monthly payment for a percentage of the interest payment. While a mortgage note’s owner may change, the loan servicer may not change. Buying and selling mortgage notes is common, and sometimes a mortgage note is bought and sold in rapid succession. This makes it difficult to determine the current owner. So, how can you discover the current owner of your home’s mortgage?
Since the loan servicer is the owner’s agent for handling the day-to-day tasks associated with managing your loan, call the servicer and request your note’s owner. MERS, or Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, tracks the identity of servicers that registered loans on its system. You can search their registry for your current loan servicer at www.mersinc.org/homeowners/. Once you have called your loan servicer, follow up by contacting the mortgage company and request verification that it holds your mortgage note.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Loan Lookup
If Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac guaranteed your loan, you can search for the note holder via the Internet. Statistically, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently hold about 50 percent of U.S. mortgages. The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) guarantees about 30 percent.
Fannie Mae’s website is: https://www.knowyouroptions.com/loanlookup.
Freddie Mac’s is: https://loanlookup.freddiemac.com/.
Knowing the current owner of your mortgage note is especially necessary for filing bankruptcy in Kentucky and Indiana. The federal bankruptcy law places the burden on the debtor to make reasonable efforts to obtain accurate information. Additionally, providing inaccurate information could cause delays in your case and you may miss out on needed financial relief. Our skilled and experienced lawyers handle both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 Indiana and Kentucky. If you have questions concerning your mortgage debt, call the O’Bryan Law Offices at 502-339-0222 for a free consultation.
