For the past five years, foreclosing lenders have been bound by a federal law that made it much more difficult to evict non-borrower tenants and occupants of the subject property following a foreclosure sale where the lender took title. The Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (the “Act”) attempted to address the plight of tenants caught unaware by landlords with pending foreclosure actions. In so doing, it instituted a national scheme that eschewed all state dispossessory laws when it came to non-borrower occupied foreclosure properties, allowing tenants to remain in possession of a property until the later of ninety (90) days or the expiration of their lease term, provided they could show they had a bona fide lease, were paying a fair market rent, and were not related to the former borrower. In short, if a residential tenant could prove he had a real lease, the foreclosing lender was stuck with its terms.

The law, first enacted in 2009 as Title VII of Pub. L. No. 111-22 §701-703, 123 Stat. 1632 (2009) was originally set to expire December 31, 2012. The Act was extended until December 31, 2014, however, by Section 1484(2) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Pub. L. No. 111-203). In the 113th Congress, Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced bills that would remove the 2014 sunset date and make the Act permanent (H.R. 3543 and S. 1761). But neither the House nor Senate acted on the measure, and the Act has now expired by its own terms.