Ownership Status Uncertain

[Richard Haiber]

Looking for some advice here guys and gals!

Ive come across a property thats clearly been sitting vacant for a long time. When I got to the door I read the paperwork and saw the usual fines/notices the county puts on most vacant property.

The neighborhood is great. It's a community that was built in the 80s and the homes have great size yards. Everyones yards are neatly manicured and the houses are very well maintained. So it popped out like a sore thumb and felt unusual to find this in such a neighborhood. 

Now that Ive painted a basic picture of the house I want to move on to my real question about the ownership status of it. The fines are written to the Veterans Affairs Office and the online county records also indicate that theyre the owners. A friendly neighbor passed by and told me that the previous owner passed away in 2009 and the family let it foreclose. Court records also indicate the foreclosure did in fact occur.

But when I call the VA offices theyre saying that they have no current record of it (and that unless I can legally present the previous owners social security number, they cant look into it any further).

And when I call VRM Mortgage Services (the guys who take care of their foreclosures), they also claim to not have it on their records.

Almost feels like both parties (the VA office and the servicer) each think the other owns it? The VA employee told me she thinks the property is unintentionally/accidentally in their name and that it should be in the lenders name. S she thinks the solution could be to obtain a quit claim deed from VA office and then it'd be up to me to deal with the lender?

I know this is kind of vague and if you have any questions for me so you can help out then let me know and I'll get whatever info needed. Maybe some of you have crossed this scenario before!

Thanks in advance for your time and attempts to help me identify ownership of this property.