It's axiomatic that credit unions and other mortgage lenders don't want to foreclose on houses. They are not in the real estate business. But George Shipman has seen more than his fair share of the problems that credit unions and other lenders face while owning houses.

One of the biggest challenges Shipman has often faced has been securing the houses that his employing institutions owned. He recalled instances where a team was sent to a foreclosed property to get it ready to sell and found someone else had moved into the property.

Then there was the time a broker whose buyer was bidding on a property called the credit union to report that someone else had moved in there and was making changes to the property, such as landscaping and some minor renovations. When confronted by officials from the credit union, the new occupant said he lived there and threatened to sue the credit union if it took action to evict him.

“Twice we changed the locks on the doors and twice he had them changed back,” Shipman said.

But the most memorable incident might have been the time a credit union found that the occupant of a foreclosed property claimed to be renting it from a nearby church. The church, located a few blocks down the street, had started renting the property, Shipman explained.

“That one might still be in the courts,” Shipman said. “It got very complicated because there were renters involved and that is another whole section of law,” he added.

–dmorrison@cutimes.com

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Foreclosures Bring Their Own Problems

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