Lucky and Not

Talk about a reversal of fortunes.

Several of the local papers told the story of a Columbia woman who won the county's housing lottery this week. She now has the right to buy a discounted home on the Oakland Mills street where she was reared, where her parents still live, where one brother returned recently and another owns investment property. Talk about a cosmic coincidence.

Meanwhile, the Sun has a piece on a poor guy who lost his west Columbia home to foreclosure through apparently no fault of his own. Despite making regular and timely monthly mortgage payments, there was a screw up when he refinanced and there is no legal record that he ever paid off the original loan. Oh, there is a photocopy of the front of a check, showing one had been written to pay off the original loan but not the back showing it had been cashed, which the court requires. The title company involved is now defunct, and according to the story, the owner has pleaded guilty to fraud charges in an unrelated matter. And the mortgage company has lost the original Deed of Trust.