BSI Financial Services Foreclosure Defense

Servis One, Inc. is a company that does business as BSI Financial Services. The company has its headquarters in Irving, Texas, but they do business throughout the country, including right here in Florida. BSI Financial Services is a mortgage servicing company and not the original owner of mortgage loans. This fact in itself can serve as a foreclosure defense. As a mortgage servicer, the company receives monthly mortgage payments and pursues foreclosure cases when homeowners fall behind on their payments.

Options Provided by BSI Financial Services

If you have experienced a hardship that has made it difficult to stay current with your mortgage payments, BSI states on their website that they have options available that may help you keep your home. Counselors who work for the company are available to work with borrowers so they can make short-term payment arrangements.

Borrowers who are not able to make arrangements with BSI’s Collections Department may qualify for a workout option. With this option, the company sends you a workout package that must be completed and returned to BSI. The information contained within the package may qualify borrowers for a workout option. While companies such as BSI do state that they offer many options, they are not always as easy to qualify for.

For example, BSI lists pages and pages of documents that make it extremely difficult for borrowers to qualify.

BSI also states that their options include a short sale or a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. With a short sale, the company agrees to allow you to sell the home for a smaller amount than what is still due on the mortgage loan. A deed-in-lieu is an arrangement in which the borrower gives the mortgage company the deed, thereby avoiding foreclosure. It is important to note that neither of these options will allow you to keep your home. Instead, they will simply prevent a foreclosure from happening, which can keep it off of your credit report and help you purchase another home sooner than if you had a foreclosure on your record.

Complaints Against Servis One, Inc. (BSI Financial Services)

Like other mortgage servicers, there have been several complaints filed against Servis One, Inc. d/b/a BSI Financial Services. Perhaps the most notable one is the settlement the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau secured with the company. This settlement was agreed to after the federal agency found that the company had committed several violations of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010, the Truth in Lending Act, and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. These violations include:

• Managing mortgage service transfers with inaccurate or incomplete loss mitigation information, resulting in a failure to identify transferred mortgage loans with pending loss mitigation applications,
• Managing mortgage service transfers with inaccurate or incomplete escrow information, which resulted in ill-timed escrow distributions,
• Insufficient oversight of service providers, which resulted in ill-timed escrow distributions to help borrowers make property tax and homeowners’ insurance payments, and
• Failing to enter adjusted interest rates for ARM home loans, resulting in BSI collecting incorrect principal and interest payments.

Common Defenses to Foreclosure

In addition to showing that BSI Financial Services violated consumer laws, there are other defenses that can help stop a foreclosure.

When it comes to mortgage servicers such as BSI Financial Services, a lack of standing is a very common defense. A lack of standing means that BSI Financial Services does not have grounds to file a lawsuit against you. Due to the fact that Florida is a judicial foreclosure state, lenders and servicers must file a lawsuit against you before they can foreclose on your home.

Mortgage servicers such as BSI purchase bundles of home loans from other financial institutions, and they sell them to other servicers, as well. Due to the fact that the loans change hands many times, it is possible BSI does not own your mortgage, so they do not have standing to file a lawsuit against you.

Mortgage lenders and servicers must also provide you with a notice of default. This notice must inform you of the default, state the amount, and provide you with 30 days to bring your loan current. If you were not given this notice, the foreclosure case may be dismissed. If BSI Financial does have legal grounds to file a foreclosure lawsuit, a lack of notice may only delay proceedings. However, that delay may be long enough to give you time to make up the defaulted payments and keep your home.

All civil cases have a statute of limitations, and this holds true for foreclosures, as well. In Florida, lenders must file a foreclosure lawsuit against you within five years of the default. In foreclosure cases, the statute of limitations starts on the day of your last payment. However, if more than five years has passed since this time, the lender or servicer has lost the right to file a lawsuit against you.

Lastly, bankruptcy is an option that may allow you to keep your home. If you file Chapter 7 bankruptcy, Florida has very generous homestead exemptions that can protect the equity in your home. If you are not eligible for Chapter 7 or it otherwise would not allow you to keep your home, you can file Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Through a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, a repayment plan for debt is created.

Repayment plans extend between three and five years and your past due mortgage payments are distributed over this time. This can make your mortgage payments more affordable to pay. However, you must remember that you will have to make the payments as arranged by the bankruptcy, as well as any future mortgage payments.

Our Foreclosure Defense Attorneys in Fort Lauderdale Can Advise You of Your Legal Options

At Loan Lawyers, our Fort Lauderdale foreclosure defense attorneys know the defenses available in these cases and can advise on which one is most appropriate for you. Call us today at (954) 523-4357 or fill out our online form to schedule a free consultation and to get the legal help you need.