[BamaPPC]

Please read the following excerpt of an article on Mortgage Servicing News, and then my comments;

Louisiana Senate Bill 752 was just signed into law by Governor Bobby Jindal on June 8. The new law addresses the maintenance of abandoned mortgaged properties and explicitly protects the rights of mortgagees, loan servicers and third party property maintenance companies from liability.

The bill states, “the mortgagee, loan servicer, and any third parties hired by them to perform maintenance on the property...shall not be liable to the mortgagor or the owner of the seized property or any other person for any financial or pecuniary loss or damage claimed to have been suffered by the mortgagor or owner of the property or any person by reason of the maintenance of the property.”

Now my thoughts, if I read this correctly, the field service contractor (as well as the bank and preservation company) is being protected from any pecuniary loss (pecuinary means financial or monetary) from any clainmed damage by "mortgagor, owner of the seized property or any other person..." That means the home owner, bank, or the company we work for cannot hold us (the contractor) liable for any damage that may occur during the maintenence of the property. And I define "maintenence" as anything we do for the company we work for (SG,FAS,Cyprexx).

Your thoughts?

 

[FremontREO]

I read this as the Bank, Service Company, Realtor and 3rd parties will not be held liable for any work BUT not being a lawyer I don't think this will supercede Federal Requirements. Example: a poor lead RRP job will not be overlooked and the contractor will still be responsible and the service companies when someone gets sick.

Personally I don't think this would hold up to legal tests BUT obviously more study will need to be done. I think this is part of the AG Settlement that was done that protects banks and the 3rd parties hired to maintain the property BUT the realtors, contractors and Appraisers are still being hung out to dry.

 

[BamaPPC]

I didn't mean to imply that shabby work would be overlooked. But, let's say a contractor is sent to a property and the work order states that the property is to be cleared of all debris. No restrictions on personals or value of personals, ect. Everything is removed. Mr. Homeowner comes back and says there was $2500 worth of his personal belongings that are now gone.

This would, on the surface, appear to deflect any claims/chargebacks to the contractor. Since the contractor was following the instructions given him by the bank, (i.e. performing maintenence).

Or, let's say, while performing an inspection of a property, while executing a lock/GC work order (presale property), a contractor is walking the roof, to get the required photos, and steps on a weak spot in the roof causing the roof to leak a month later and damages are caused on the interior of the dwelling. No way for the contractor to know he has now caused a roof leak, since he didn't step through the roof.

The wording of this, appears, to protect the contractor from the bank coming back to say the contractor is responsible for causing damage to the property.

But, like your say Fremont, a lot more vetting is needed to see just how these new laws are going to affect our industry. Louisiana is not the only state that has recently passed such laws.