Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick signed into law new legislation on foreclosure rules on August 3, 2012. For those of you counting, this is the second major change in Massachusetts foreclosure law in the last two years.
The ink isn’t really dry on the new law yet, so its hard to even find the exact wording to study. But I have been poking around at it, and will try to put up a series of posts here offering some tidbits.
First up is the type of mortgages that the new law applies to. The law is protecting residential property, which is a dwelling house with four of fewer units. The debtor actually has to be living in one of the units as a principal residence. Not protected are investment or vacation properties, or properties that are partly commercial.
Next up I will take a look at what happened to the provision for mediating loan modification cases. Hint: it’s not in there anymore. . .
By Doug Beaton