Homeowner Asked To Pay $0.00 In Order To Avoid Foreclosure (VIDEO)

Of all the foreclosure warnings issued during the housing crisis, perhaps oddest is the one demanding no money at all.

Earlier this year, in Northampton, Massachusetts, a man, referred to in reports only as Mark, received a notice demanding that he pay $0.00 to his mortgage lender, Bank of America, or his home would be seized, according to local television network News 22 WWLP. The notice surprised Mark, who had consistently made his mortgage payments, yet it was indeed no joke, as Mark found his credit score had been downgraded.

Despite the gravity of the situation, Mark understood the absurdity of it all.

"It says, you owe us zero dollars, zero cents. I'm going to write a check to them for zero dollars and have it clear? I couldn't help but laugh," he told News 22 WWLP, who, in turn, informed Bank of America of the story after Mark himself had struggled to get in contact with the bank. Turns out, an electronic filing error caused Mark's payments to end up in the wrong place.

Bank of America made right after the mix-up, making sure Mark's credit score was restored and, of course, allowing him to keep his home. For his trouble, he also got a little extra in the form $150 and a gift certificate.

The story is only the latest in a string of bizarre foreclosure incidents.

In Jacksonville, Florida, home flipper Perry Laspina ended up not having to pay the remainder of his mortgage on an investment property first purchased in 2006, AOL Real Estate reported in April.

After the value of his investment plunged, the story goes, Laspina found no buyers or renters and so simply stopped making payments. His lender, Wells Fargo, was apparently not at odds with the idea, and the loan was written off, the house subsequently given to Laspina.

Others have found success by taking more direct action against banks. Instead of being foreclosed upon, one couple in Naples, Florida actually foreclosed on Bank of America. After the bank failed to compensate Warren and Maureen Nyergers for legal fees leftover from a wrongful foreclosure lawsuit, the couple, with the help of their lawyer and two sheriff's deputies, began legally seizing assets from the bank's branch office.

Then of course, there's the Bank of America that foreclosed on itself in Charlotte, North Carolina. In that case, Bank of America has filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the owner of a building housing one of the bank's own branches.

Watch the News 22 WWLP news segment here:

I-Team:Man gets a $0 foreclosure notice: wwlp.com

Comments

[DA A Man]

07:38 PM on 06/09/2011

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[Ayngel Overson]

04:35 PM on 06/09/2011

We come to the faceless generation. The Corporate Age dawns. As corporations grow bigger, the individuals become smaller. Soon we will be specks of dust, not even really existing until something in the system goes wrong.

[mdlawyer2]

01:38 PM on 06/09/2011

I'm not a fan of BofA, but the ancedotal evidence of their operating ineptitude that is presented is farcical and highly misleading. BofA services tens of millions of loans. Mistakes happen, that's understandable. What's telling is BofA's responses to mistakes brought to its attention, not the mistakes themselves. BofA suffers less from systems failing than it does from lack of customer service.

[Maceo Brown]

01:33 PM on 06/09/2011

and they say bureaucracy is dead...

[Dragontech]

01:00 PM on 06/09/2011

Could there be any better story to highlight just how corrupt the banking industry and their foreclosure mills are. They are so daft they do not even know what they are foreclosing on, or even whether the foreclosure is correct. They have places with people rubber stamping the documents without even reading them, and not even in their own name. Law requires the documents be read, and that the signature be the valid signature of the reader verifying that they have read it. Rather than rewarding the banks with billions in bail out money, they should be prosecuting them for fraud.

[Cindy Tregan]

12:43 PM on 06/09/2011

Why does it seem to be the majority of these stories have Bank of America as the doofus who can't keep their accounting straight?

[unifiedgroup]

12:09 PM on 06/09/2011

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[HeadlessHessian]

11:54 AM on 06/09/2011

ha....Local news on HP. Love it....I live in this area.....
The story is typical of BoA. clueless...should be sued for harrasment.
$150.00 bucks is peanuts...it took a local TV station to have BoA scramble. Otherwise...six years from now he would still be in deep 'kimchi' for owing...nothing?

[notalwaysfittoprint]

11:21 AM on 06/09/2011

A $150 gift certificate. My, BoA's generosity knows no bounds!

[Nel Pineda]

10:35 AM on 06/09/2011

All BOA branches should be burned down to the ground.

[Shain Eighmey]

10:01 AM on 06/09/2011

I think that the banks do not realize just how bad these types of things look to their customers. So this guy who did everything right had his credit rating damaged because of a computer error. That's nifty! I love the idea that some peerless automated system could be messing up my credit, which I've worked so hard to build, without my knowledge.

I know it seems redundant, but can they not hire some people to just read these things and make sure that they're not making absolutely silly errors? Yes, it is what the machines are for, but they can't possibly realize that when I see a bank make a mistake like this I put them on a list of banks I will never do business with. The foundation of banking is trust, and if I cannot trust a bank then why would I ever do any business with them?

[gabbybaby8705]

01:18 AM on 06/14/2011

Shain, I'm telling you, the people make more silly errors than the computers.

[Shain Eighmey]

09:13 PM on 06/14/2011

I know they do, but the idea is that if you have overlapping systems with low error rates then the error rate decreases in a manner larger than simply the sum of the two rates. This is why the buddy system for checking systems works more than 10 times better than a single skilled inspector.

[Shain Eighmey]

09:29 PM on 06/14/2011

Also, much more importantly, I think we've reached the point of over efficiency in the economy. I don't believe there is enough work left for a low unemployment rate unless we create some intentional inefficiencies.

[DMDAY44]

08:40 AM on 06/09/2011

I wonder if you could send a certified check for $0.00?

[NHGranite]

10:10 AM on 06/09/2011

How about a money order?

[DMDAY44]

10:24 AM on 06/09/2011

I don't know if a bank could even process a check for $0.00.

[Nel Pineda]

10:36 AM on 06/09/2011

Makes sure it doesn't bounced or else you'll be charge with $35.00 fee.

[DMDAY44]

10:56 AM on 06/09/2011

I would not put it past a bank to do it. About a year ago I had a bank bounce a check when I had more than enough money in there to cover it. I ended up getting the NSF fee credited back, but they had the nerve to act as though they we doing me a favor!

[Mahi Joe]

06:52 AM on 06/09/2011

If I was that guy owing $0.00 I would have written BOA a check in that amount just so I could get a copy of the cancelled check and would hang it on the wall for people to see.

[MikeyJaii]

11:53 PM on 06/08/2011

Am I seeing this wrong? 0.00$? He's paying what? Invisible money?

[Dragontech]

01:04 PM on 06/09/2011

Aren't we all?

[bigfun]

10:40 PM on 06/08/2011

i don't understand why this guy is being so stingy with the $0.00 that was being demanded - sheesh a guy like that ought to lose his home. it seems like the bank is the nice guy in this story.