No Note, No Mortgage?

I came across an interesting post on Vox Day’s blog recently. Apparently people facing foreclosure are asking their banks to show them the original note for the mortgage. Because mortgages have been bought and sold many times, most notes are misplaced in distant warehouses. I have no idea how successful this tactic is. I have an idea how ethical it is though…

I once had trouble with my note. When I bought my house in 2001, somehow I did not get a copy of the note in my mortgage paperwork, even though it’s supposed to be provided. In 2002 or 2003, I went to do a VA Streamline mortgage, and while assembling my documents, I couldn’t find my note. I looked all over for it. At the time, our mortgage was serviced by Washington Mutual, who had the note, but wanted to charge $20 to pull it from archives, copy it, and FedEx it to us. I was fuming over this. If our note had been digitized, we could have gotten an email copy for free. The title company, which should have given us a copy of the note in the first place, did not maintain our records. I was fuming.