The same thing happened to me 10 years ago, so this is something that has been ongoing for quite awhile. I winterized my house in Salmon Idaho, put a "for sale" by owner sign in the window and moved back east. I continued to pay my mortgage on the house as well as rent back east. About 4 months later my ex husband called to tell me the sign was out of the window and the locks had been changed!
I had left him a key to go in and check on the place.
I did the same thing, called the police in Salmon and informed them of what had happened.
They eventually called me back to tell me that my mortgage company had "hired" a local to break in, winterize the place, change the locks and take the for sale sign down!
I called the mortgage company furious that they had done this. I got the run around for weeks, being transferred from one "foreign speaking" person to another and getting no answers, in fact I got repeated denials that they had done this.
I finally got through to someone who admitted to it and told me that since the mortgage company had a "monetary interest" in the property, that they had the legal right to do this any time they choose and even claimed that this was in the contract I had signed with them! To make a long story short, I was lucky enough to have been able to take out another loan and paid this mortgage company every dime I owed them and forced them to send me the "new keys".
My ex was then able to regain entry and put the signs back up and the house did sell, not long after that. But yes, there are mortgage companies who apparently have this written in the "fine print" and will do something like this whenever they choose.
I still don`t know if they had planned to just "assume my house", or what they were trying to do!
Thank heavens I was able to do something about it, but maybe not everyone will be so lucky or even know it has happened, if they are out of State and no one watches the property for them.
