Property Stuck in Limbo for 9+ years?
Backstory:
A little less than a year ago I purchased one of two dilapidated houses on a lovely quiet street in upstate NY. The houses are literally next door to each other which is somewhat of an odd coincidence, but I'm now in a situation after completing a full rehab on the property I purchased and finalizing on a BRRRR that I can devote a bunch of effort into trying to obtain the unit next door.
Throughout the past 9 months I've on and off I've been trying to get in contact with the owners of the property, who to my knowledge are since divorced and in foreclosure due to the paperwork on the front door. I've sent sms, facebook, tweets, etc trying to reach the owners, and finally this week I got a response from wife who ended up being quite helpful. She confessed that the house did go into foreclosure and she thinks at one point they did refinance the property. She does not however have any information in regards to the Loan, who it was through etc. She was however able to give me the address of her Ex-husband who has yet to respond to any of my inquires.
Next I've been on the phone with one Mortgage Servicer after another trying to track down what the status of this note is. I've been able to run my own title search through the city and all leads keep coming up cold. I did have success contacting Bank of America, who directed me to Mr. Cooper who purchased the loan back in '09. After repeated multiple calls over the past 5 or so months I finally got a lovely talkative agent on the phone who was able to tell me that the note had been paid off in FULL in 2015? She noted that it was definitely not on their books.
Lastly I've tried engaging multiple Attorneys to try and help me figure out here what is going on. The most recent piece of information I got from attorney was that its possible it never actually went into full foreclosure since the city has no record of a Referee's Deed? He was thinking it was possible that this title/deed is just lost in limbo, somewhere in the ether? The advice they both gave was "keep going". Whatever that means.
My next steps are:
* Continue trying to get through to the Ex-husband of the wife I've made contact with. Offering money in exchanged for information?
* I have an appointment later today to meet with a the town accessor trying to gain more information. Maybe tax records can help me?
I'd love to hear others input on this situation. What else can I do to figure out how to buy this property?