Big Banks Begin the Refiling of Nearly 200,000 Foreclosure Affidavits

The big banks that have been in the news so much because of the robo-signing of foreclosure paperwork may need a forest of paper to get through the massive re-filing process.

Bank of America estimates it will re-submit 102,000 affidavits in which the foreclosure was pending. Wells Fargo is in the process of re-filing 55,000 affidavits. Citigroup (parent of CitiMortgage) has found 14,000 affidavits it will need to re-file. No word on how many JPMorgan Chase will redo or some of the other big contenders in the mortgage lender arena.

What all these firms are trying to skillfully avoid is to tell the public or even the lawmakers at the various Congressional hearings that re-filing wouldn’t be necessary if some grave errors had not been uncovered during that brief foreclosure freeze in October. While this freeze was self-imposed, so was the subsequent internal investigation of foreclosure processes and files.

And all the hearings and formal probes in the world are probably never going to get to the complete truth there. The only small comfort is the knowledge that affected homeowners were already far behind in their payments and foreclosure was inevitable.