Framingham real estate attorney Richard Vetstein recently
represented a family who had bought a house out of foreclosure
about a year ago, then invested in excess of $100,000 in
improvements to the property with the intention of selling it to
their daughter. Before they could complete the sale, a title issue
came up and put the transaction on hold.
The glitch was the downstream result of a controversial land
court decision in the US Bank v. Ibanez foreclosure case,
which will soon be heard by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court. The land court ruled that the foreclosure of the Ibanez
property was invalid because US Bank did not have an assignment at
the time of the foreclosure.