Under the best of circumstances, foreclosure is a painful process. But in Houston, Texas, one couple is now joining the unenviable ranks of those losing their home for reasons unrelated to payments.
Brian and Khanklink Pyron, as well as their 18-month-old daughter, may soon lose the family's first home despite allegedly staying current on payments because they were never technically transferred the title of the house, MyFoxHouston reports (h/t The Consumerist).
In 2008, shortly after the Pyrons purchased their home but before the title to the estate was transferred, the responsible company went bankrupt. Never notified of the situation, the family continued for two years to make mortgage payments to their lender Bank of America, according to MyFoxHouston. Those payments, however, never reached Wells Fargo, the mortgage-holder previous to the Pyron's purchase of the home.
"We did everything we were supposed to do," Brian Pyron told MyFoxHouston. "Nobody has communicated with us, notified us. We had been paying our mortgage and everything."
Stories like that of the Pyron's have become familiar since the recession. In August, a senior couple in Florida faced foreclosure not for missing a payment, but for sending a check too early.
In June it was reported that a man in Massachusetts faced foreclosure over a $0.00 payment that Bank of America said he owed. More recently, a Florida resident nearly lost her condo over what had originally been a fee of $4.70.
Millions have dealt with foreclosures since the housing bust. In August, foreclosure sales accounted for six times more home purchases than they would in a healthy housing market, according to experts.
Now some homeowners are fighting back. AOL Real Estate reports that protests organized by The New Bottom Line, a coalition protesting big bank foreclosure practices, have already taken place in Seattle and Boston and are set to begin in New York, Chicago and Minneapolis this week.
A pending foreclosure settlement against major U.S. banks has recently lost steam, with California pulling out of discussions and Attorneys General from Massachusetts and New York having expressed concerns that the current settlement too easily lets banks off the hook.