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PARK CITY — Georgene Clotfelter recently hired a realtor to sell her Park City home, but was surprised to find out country records showed she no longer owned it.
When she contacted her mortgage lender, Chase Bank, she says a representative told her the bank had no record of a sale.
"I don't even want to hear the word bizarre anymore, because everybody I talk to uses the word bizarre," Clotfelter said. "It's stupid. It really is stupid."
Having spent decades working in the mortgage finance business, Clotfelter said she's yet to see anything like the mess she finds herself in today.
The problems began back in 2009 when she was having trouble making her mortgage payments and began the process of applying for a loan modification. To be eligible for a modification, she said the bank told her to skip mortgage payments, declare hardship, and go into default.
Since 2009, Clotfelter says Chase has approved her for three different loan modifications.
"Chase never followed through on any of those," she said. "They never got back to me with a permanent mod. They never got back at all. It was like, we've got to apply all over again."
But Clotfelter said six months ago, Chase did get back to her with an answer: her modification application had been declined.
"I said, ‘How could you decline me when you've already approved me three times?'" she said.
Frustrated and fed up with trying to keep her house, Clotfelter decided she would give up and sell. She hired Karen Curtis, a Prudential realtor and founder of Center for Homeowner Support.
Curtis is a self-described expert in helping homeowners delinquent in their mortgages either obtain a loan modification or sell in a short-sell. But when she checked the Summit County recorder's records, she found Clotfelter was not listed as the owner of the property.
"I've never seen anything like this," Curtis said. "I went back to Georgene and I said, ‘Did you know your property had been sold?'"
Clotfelter soon discovered a trustee's deed showing Deutsche Bank bought her home at auction in July 2009 for $388,000.
But in another strange twist, Chase sent Clotfelter a letter in March of this year asking her to sign an agreement rescinding the sale that allegedly took place nearly three years ago.
The document, Agreement to Rescind Trustee's Deed, claims the "trustee's deed was inadvertently recorded after the foreclosure sale had been cancelled" and offered to restore Clotfelter "as being the owner of the property."
Clotfelter refused to sign it, believing doing so would interfere with her right to sue. She then hired an attorney and filed a lawsuit in April naming Chase Bank, Deutsche Bank and the trustee, Salt Lake Attorney Marlon Bates, in 3rd District Court.
KSL News contacted Chase Bank, Deutsche Bank and Marlon Bates for a comment. Bates referred us to Chase, and a Chase spokeswoman said the company could not comment, citing the pending litigation.
We did not receive a response from Deutsche Bank.
"Having been in this business, I cannot imagine any kind of real estate sale instrument being drawn up with the name, a price on it, and being recorded and all of it being a mistake," Clotfelter said.
Looking back, she says there were clues that things weren't right. For instance, she did not receive a tax notice from Summit County for 2010 or 2011.
In the meantime, Clotfelter remains in what she calls "the modification mill" as she applies for another loan modification through Chase. She calls herself a "paper collector," sending off thousands of pieces of paper to her mortgage lender.
As for Chase, the company has agreed to halt any further foreclosure proceedings until the issue is resolved.
"You feel like you're standing on one foot like those funny birds in Florida that stand on one foot all the time," Chase lamented.
