With savings so significant, why is an assignment of mortgage only rarely used in residential sales?

A recent amendment to the state's tax law, however, may make an assignment of mortgage as lucrative for sellers as it is for buyers.

Mr. Weinstein pointed out, however, that sellers, buyers and their lawyers should proceed with caution when using an assignment of mortgage to avoid city transfer taxes.

Prior to that, he said, state law prohibited lenders from unreasonably withholding assignments of mortgages because the mortgage recording tax was only intended to be a tax on new money being borrowed.

Earlier this year, he mailed out "pledge forms" to more than 1,000 lending institutions, asking them to return the form if they were willing to promise not to unreasonably withhold assignments of mortgages.

The recent amendment to the tax law, which took effect Aug. 28, may change that, Mr. Wasser said, because it may provide significant savings to sellers when an assignment of mortgage is made.

Don Romano, president of the New York Association of Mortgage Brokers, pointed out that it should not be assumed that the lenders who responded are the only lenders who will agree to assignments of mortgages.

That means that for a property outside New York City, an assignment of mortgage starts to make sense when the seller's existing mortgage is more than about $140,000 (and the new mortgage is for more than that amount).

"Assignment of Mortgage PaymentS" or "Assignment of Mortgage Payment System": The name of an alternative financing strategy to acquire real estate, most commonly used by real estate investors.

One such company Lavalle targeted at the turn of the century was Fannie Mae whose servicers he found to engage in foreclosure fraud abuse by routinely filing false pleadings, affidavits, and assignments of mortgages in courts across America, not unlike the fraudulent paperwork that has since made "robo-signing" a household term.