Comments on: Bank Shot

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:22:43 +0000

That’s what they used to do in Florida, until the oil companies had the law “adjusted” to make it unnecessary. Not that there’s a conflict of interests or anything, but in my county, the county is the natural gas company.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 22:56:35 +0000

Oil and gas is another issue altogether. In Louisiana, even if you don’t own your mineral rights you still own your surface rights, and if someone wants to put an oil derrick on your property they have to pay you for the privilege. Of course, unless you own several square miles of surface this doesn’t get you much, since they just stick the derrick on your neighbor’s property if you try to hold’em up and slant-drill to suck the oil from under your own property.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:53:41 +0000

“That’s the way we’ve always done it” is one of the bedrock principles of American law. It is annoying down here that people in most cases don’t own the mineral rights to their property and you can end up with a natural gas well because the state decided to lease it to a corporation. You have the dangerous ugly contraption in your yard, but you aren’t making any money off of it.

That is, if the property was not an original Spanish land grant, in which case you own not only the mineral rights but any streams or rivers on the property. We have a wonderful amalgam of Spanish, French, and English property law in Florida. It keeps the lawyers off the streets.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 07:43:58 +0000

Out here nobody has a mortgage on their house. Instead, a scheme called “Deed of trust” is used. The deed to the house is actually held by a title company, which is merely allowing you to use the house as long as you make your payments to the mortage company. The mortgage company says you aren’t making your payments, the trustee sells “your” house out from under you at auction via a non-judicial foreclosure (no judge needed because they already had the deed to the house) and pays off the bank and gives you any left over money. ,Well, at least that’s the theory, the reality is that the only bidder at the Sheriff’s auction will be the bank because the auction is “cash only” and who hauls around $500K worth of cash, and the bank will be bidding the amount of the outstanding loan on the house, which they will then pay themselves, sell the house, and keep any profit for themselves. Your only recourse is to sue them for damages if they foreclosed fraudulently or in violation of the original loan contract.

It’s a really evil scheme. The person who devised it undoubtedly is roasting in hell right now, which is probably why deed-of-trust is illegal in most states east of the Mississippi River. But it’s how things are done out here in the West, and nobody questions it, because, well, nobody does, that’s all.