Obtaining Lender Information

We have a small townhouse HOA. One of our homeowners is delinquent with his assessments. We would like to contact his lender to make them aware of the situation prior to hiring an attorney to place a lien on the property. Does anyone know how to obtain lender (noteholder) or mortgage information for individual homeowners?

There are 2 things certain in life: Death and Taxes. I suggest you contact the Tax Assessor's office with the lot number of the property. They may be able to tell you who owns the property.

My experience, the HOA is better off placing the lien on the property anyways. They should be sending the letter to the home in the HOA. This is the legal HOA address. If they don't respond, then that is their problem. They will when they notice the lien when they try to sell.

I also hesitate notifying the lender about the money owed. If the owner owes the bank as well, the bank may start their own foreclosure process. That means the HOA could be left out in the cold if they don't have a lien in place prior to that. Plus it can be a problem if considering the HOA doing their own foreclosure. If the owner owes both the HOA and the bank, the bank is going to get paid first no matter what. So the HOA risks paying for a foreclosure on the bank's behalf. Better to keep a lien on the property just in case.

As far as warnings go, the owner's should know they owe assessments. They also should know if they don't pay them, they risk getting liened or foreclosed upon. It's part of the contract of living in a HOA. You don't pay, you don't play. So be careful these owner's aren't playing the HOA and seeing how long they can get away with not paying.

Instead of just "notifying" the lender that they are delinquent couldn't you place a lien on the property and send a copy of that Lien (which is recorded and public information) to the lender?

I seem to recall someone on this website saying this might work because somewhere in the ton of paperwork the homeowner received at closing is language requiring him/her to pay assessments to homeowner associations if required, because not doing so puts the lender's interest at risk and therefore it's considered a violation of the mortgage agreement. You might want to talk to your attorney about that - if it can be done, the letter should come from the attorney.

Even so, I would hesitate because of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (which I've also heard DOES apply to HOAs), so as others have suggested, it may be best to file a lien. Sooner or later the lender will find out about that, especially if you foreclosre, as the lender has to be contacted anyway.

Post is from 2007... We have a Troll reopening old posts again...

She probably did not. There was a spammer on this site today who resurrected numerous old posts. The administrators pulled the spammer's posts but the old threads now show as being active. We all need to look at the date of the first post before diving into these old threads.

Yes we have been spammed but this is an interesting subject and worth revisiting.

In one HOA I was a member of, we had a home go up for sale. The Pres. of the BOD called the realtor and informed her that were outstanding fines on the listing and the BOD was preparing to file a lien on the property. He asked the realtor is she wanted to waste her time on this listing as it could get sticky.

She called the owner and told him that the sale could get sticky. Within a very short time the owner contacted the BOD and the fine issue was settled.

Not a tactic that might work in all cases, but a tactic worth consideration such as informing a lender that there could be issues. What harm does it do?

Good point John ... did not cost anything but the time spent making a telephone call.