House Mortgage
The house mortgage is one of the oldest ways to borrow money or to buy a home. In common law, a house mortgage was a conveyance that was conditionally. One could not own the land unless the person met all of those conditions. The entire repayment of a debt had to be made to the original landowner or your agreement was "dead."
In fact the word dead is where the word mortgage comes from. It means, "dead pledge" in French. At first the house mortgage was not so much about the house but about the land and what you could raise on it. This type of house mortgage was grossly unfair and impossible to pay off compared to today's standards. There was also a loan program called a live gage in those days and it meant that you could borrow money that was dependent on how much milk, eggs or meat you could produce from the livestock on your property. The mortgage or "dead gage" was in effect whether or not your livestock could produce income to pay off your debt. It had to do with the land and the home on it.
This ancient type of house mortgage was problematic as it made it difficult for the lender to sell a property to someone else or allow reconveyance of the property that the borrower had been farming on. Over time the justice system became more concerned with protecting the rights of the borrowers rather than protecting the feudal lords. Eventually the house mortgage came with what is known today as the equity of redemption, which means that the borrower has the right to buy the property through the use of the loan. This process defines reconveyance as it typically operates today in the typical house mortgage contract.
In theory the lender, also known as the mortgagee would always be the absolute owner of the home but practice had very little to do with the property. It is out of this situation that the position of the lender was altered so that ownership was retained. The owner would still retain some ownership rights such as the right to have power of sale, the right to take possession and the right to foreclosure. These terms are also written into today's typical house mortgage agreement.
There are all kinds of conditions in which your house mortgage can be foreclosed on. In many places a lender can foreclose on a house mortgage if certain conditions such as the non-payment of the mortgage loan apply. The property then can be sold and any outstanding debt from the original house mortgage will be paid off the proceeds.
In some jurisdictions, house mortgage loans are non-recourse loans: if the funds recouped from sale of the mortgaged property are not enough to cover the outstanding debt, the lender may not have recourse to the borrower after foreclosure. In other jurisdictions, the borrower remains responsible for any remaining debt, through a house mortgage deficiency judgment. Foreclosure on a house mortgage can take months or just one month depending on the circumstances. In some countries, foreclosure on a house mortgage can take years!
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