Since then, Moran and her neighbors have been fighting Fannie Mae’s eviction with the help of a tenants rights group. But they've dealt with three management companies and two sets of lawyers without a resolution.
"Lenders aren’t set up to be owners of real estate," says Richard Green, Director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at USC. "They don’t know how to manage the management companies."
But lenders are indeed landlords, with hundreds of thousands of tenants. Nearly half of people living in foreclosed homes are actually renters. Green says bad loans are what got lenders in this position in the first place. Even so, Fannie Mae isn’t the only one responsible.
"The person who’s most to blame is whoever the original borrower was," says Green.
That person, Moran's old landlord, is nowhere to be found. So, where does that leave Fannie Mae?
"It just may not be in their interest to come to any resolution, they’re better off ignoring it, not having the tenants pay rent."