A botched REO sale just cost U.S. Bank and SN Servicing a six-figure judgment after they sold a buyer the wrong house.
The mix-up started with a foreclosure in Shelby County, Alabama. Elizabeth Ellison had taken out a loan back in 2007, secured by a mortgage on a Shelby County property. The loan eventually landed with U.S. Bank Trust National Association, as trustee of the Igloo Series IV Trust, with SN Servicing Corporation handling it. Ellison fell behind, and in April 2022, U.S. Bank picked up the property at a foreclosure sale. The foreclosure deed identified the address as 77 Wildwood Chapel Road in Columbiana.
Here is where things got messy. SN Servicing hired a real-estate broker, Paul Garris, to sell the property. Garris drove out to check who was living there, but he could not find any house or mailbox marked 77 along the road. That is not unusual for rural properties, he later testified, so he pulled the tax records, which pointed him to what looked like a bricked-over double-wide trailer. He knocked on the door and found Ellison still inside. She told him the address was actually 67 Wildwood Chapel Road, though it might have been 77 at some point in the past. She also said she did not realize the property had been foreclosed but figured it might have been since she was several months behind on payments…