Eviction & Foreclosure Study — Methodology

Last updated: June 10, 2026

1. Overview

This study examines the distribution of eviction and foreclosure cases across Bell County, Texas judicial officers. The goal is to measure whether case filings are concentrated in specific courts and to provide transparency into the volume and disposition of housing-related civil litigation in the county.

The analysis proceeded in two phases: (1) identification of mortgage servicers, lenders, and property managers active in Bell County, ranked by federal consumer complaint volume, followed by (2) systematic search of the county's Odyssey public court records portal for case filings matching those entities over a four-year period.

2. Data Sources

2.1 CFPB Consumer Complaint Database

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Consumer Complaint Database contains approximately 15.7 million complaints filed against financial institutions. The full database (complaints.csv.zip, 1.37 GB) was downloaded from files.consumerfinance.gov on June 9, 2026.

Complaint counts were aggregated by the company name listed on each complaint. Where subsidiaries or DBAs appeared separately in the database, counts were noted but not merged to preserve the CFPB's classification. For example, Nationstar Mortgage (19,296) and Mr. Cooper (15,430) are the same entity but the CFPB assigns separate complaint records to each label.

2.2 Odyssey Public Court Records Portal

Bell County's Odyssey Public Portal (Tyler Technologies, version 2017.1.61.2) provides public access to civil, criminal, and traffic case records. The portal's Smart Search feature was used to search by party name (plaintiff, defendant, or law firm) across all case types and all court locations.

The search window was set to a four-year filing period (March 1, 2022 to present), matching the term length for Justices of the Peace in Texas. All searches used the "Party Name" criterion with exact-match and prefix matching, limited to case types containing "Eviction" or "Foreclosure."

3. CFPB Complaint Findings

The following table ranks mortgage servicers, lenders, and noteholders by their total CFPB complaint count. Entities were selected based on their appearance on the Bell County Clerk's website and Odyssey court records as parties in foreclosure or eviction proceedings.

Rank Servicer CFPB Complaints Relative Volume
1 Bank of America 179887
2 Wells Fargo 168815
3 Ocwen Financial 37488
4 Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing 18275
5 Select Portfolio Servicing 16115
6 Nationstar Mortgage / Mr. Cooper 34726
7 Ditech Financial 14947
8 HSBC 12361
9 M&T Bank 9814
10 Freedom Mortgage 9673
11 Specialized Loan Servicing 8770
12 LoanCare LLC 8027
13 Carrington Mortgage Services 6878
14 PennyMac Loan Services 5998
15 Caliber Home Loans 4742
16 Flagstar Bank 4707
17 Seterus Inc. 4487
18 PHH Mortgage 2450
19 U.S. Bank 907
20 Deutsche Bank 164
21 NewRez LLC 0
Key observations:
  • The three highest-complaint servicers (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Ocwen) account for 386,190 complaints — 63% of the servicers tracked.
  • Nationstar Mortgage (dba Mr. Cooper) ranks 4th with 34,726 combined complaints — placing it among the most-complained-about mortgage servicers in Bell County's foreclosure ecosystem.
  • Law firms and trustees (Zwicker & Associates, McCalla Raymer, Barrett Daffin, etc.) rarely appear in the CFPB database, as their work is foreclosure processing rather than consumer lending.
  • NewRez LLC (formed 2018 from New Penn Financial / Caliber merger) has no CFPB complaint history but appears in Odyssey foreclosure records.

4.1 Search Methodology

The following process was used for each search term:

  1. Session initiation. A fresh browser session was established with the Odyssey Public Portal (GET request to /Home/Dashboard/29), which sets an ASP.NET_SessionId cookie.
  2. Form submission. A POST request was sent to /SmartSearch/SmartSearch/SmartSearch with form fields replicating the browser's exact submission format: party name search with the "Party Name" criterion enabled, "Business Name" unchecked, "Sounds Like" disabled, "Advanced Search Options" collapsed, "All Locations" selected, and "File Date Start" set to 03/01/2022.
  3. Result retrieval. The server responds with a 302 redirect to the WorkspaceMode page, which sets a SmartSearchCriteria session cookie. An XHR GET request to /SmartSearch/SmartSearchResults (with the session cookie) returns an HTML page containing a Kendo Grid JSON data payload with party records and their associated case details.
  4. Data extraction. The Kendo Grid Data array was extracted via bracket-depth matching, parsed as JSON, and each party's CaseResults array was examined for case type descriptors containing "Eviction" or "Foreclosure."
  5. Pagination. Where results exceeded one page (25 records), additional pages were fetched up to a maximum of 5 additional page requests per search term.
  6. Deduplication. Cases were deduplicated across search terms by their case_number field (e.g., "42CV2500941").

4.2 Search Terms

Search terms were derived from three sources:

SourceExamples
CFPB top-complaint servicers Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Ocwen, Nationstar, Shellpoint, Select Portfolio Servicing, Ditech, HSBC, M&T Bank, Freedom Mortgage, Carrington, PennyMac, Caliber, Flagstar, PHH, U.S. Bank, Deutsche Bank, NewRez, LoanCare, Specialized Loan Servicing
Trustee and law firms from county clerk records Zwicker & Associates, McCalla Raymer, Barrett Daffin, Hughes Watters, Mackie Wolf, Orlans, Shapiro, Shapiro Schwartz
Property management plaintiffs from early search results Marie Curtis FLP, MCG Homestead, Pleasant View, ALL ZIP LLC, Brad Martin / Real Star, Mike Pilkington, Shine Residential

4.3 Case Classification

Cases were classified using the Odyssey case type descriptor. The following case type strings triggered inclusion:

  • Eviction: "Contract: Evictions - Residential", "Contract: Evictions - Commercial", "JP Appeal Contract: Evictions - Residential"
  • Foreclosure: "Contract: Foreclosure - Home Equity - Expedited", "Contract: Foreclosure - Other"

Each case record includes: case number, case style (plaintiff vs. defendant), file date, case type, current status, court location, party name, defendant name, and an encrypted case identifier for detail-page retrieval.

5. Results

5.1 Overall Volumes

CategoryCountPercentage
Residential Evictions46384.6%
Home Equity Foreclosures (Expedited)5710.4%
Other Foreclosures193.5%
JP Appeal Evictions71.3%
Commercial Evictions10.2%
Total547100%

5.2 Distribution by Court

CourtJudgeCases%Bar
Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 0 0.0%
Place 2 Nicola J. James 154 28.2%
Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 0 0.0%
Place 1 Gregory Johnson 137 25.0%
Justice of the Peace Precinct 3 0 0.0%
Place 2 Larry Wilkey 136 24.9%
146th Judicial District Court (Various) 42 7.7%
169th Judicial District Court (Various) 34 6.2%
Justice of the Peace Precinct 1 Ted Duffield 24 4.4%
Justice of the Peace Precinct 3 0 0.0%
Place 1 Rosanne Fisher 12 2.2%
County Court at Law #1 (Various) 7 1.3%
Justice of the Peace Precinct 2 Cliff Coleman 1 0.2%

5.3 Case Status Distribution

StatusCases%
Disposed34963.8%
Dismissed16029.3%
Active315.7%
Appealed71.3%

5.4 Concentration by Judicial Officer

Three Justice of the Peace courts account for 427 of the 547 eviction and foreclosure cases identified (78.1%):

JudgeCourtCases% of Total
Nicola J. JamesJP4 Place 2 (Killeen)15428.2%
Gregory JohnsonJP4 Place 1 (Killeen)13725.0%
Larry WilkeyJP3 Place 2 (Temple)13624.9%

5.5 Top Plaintiffs by Filing Volume

PlaintiffCasesType
MARIE CURTIS FLP68Property management
Pleasant View PLNDV TX LLC50Property management
MCG Homestead Rentals and Sales17Property management
ALL ZIP LLC7Property management
Ditech Financial LLC16Mortgage servicer
M&T Bank12Bank / lender
NewRez LLC11Mortgage servicer
PennyMac Loan Services9Mortgage servicer
Nationstar Mortgage LLC8Mortgage servicer
Carrington Mortgage Services7Mortgage servicer
Deutsche Bank National Trust6Trustee / noteholder

6. Discussion

6.1 Geographic Concentration

The concentration of eviction filings in Precinct 4 (Killeen) and Precinct 3 Place 2 (Temple) is consistent with the population distribution of Bell County. Killeen, the county's largest city and home to a significant population affiliated with Fort Cavazos, has a large rental housing market. Temple, the second-largest city, has also seen substantial rental property development in recent years.

The three JP courts that handle the majority of eviction cases serve the two largest population centers in the county. The remaining JP precincts (Precinct 1, Precinct 2, and Precinct 3 Place 1) cover more rural areas with lower population density and correspondingly fewer eviction filings.

6.2 Foreclosure Venue

Foreclosure cases in Texas are filed in District Court, not JP court. All 76 foreclosure cases identified (Home Equity - Expedited and Other) were filed in the 146th Judicial District Court (42 cases) and 169th Judicial District Court (34 cases). These cases involve mortgage servicers (Ditech, PennyMac, Carrington, NewRez, Nationstar, Deutsche Bank) and typically proceed under the Texas Home Equity expedited process.

6.3 Eviction Filing Patterns

The majority of eviction filings come from a small number of property management companies and real estate investment entities, not from individual landlords:

  • Marie Curtis FLP (68 cases) and Pleasant View entities (50 cases) together account for 21.6% of all eviction filings in the dataset.
  • Rental property investment firms (MCG Homestead, ALL ZIP LLC, Brad Martin / Real Star) account for a significant share of filings.
  • Mortgage servicers rarely file evictions in Bell County — their presence in JP court is minimal compared to property managers.

6.4 Limitations

  • Search-term bias. Cases were identified by searching for specific plaintiff, servicer, and law firm names. This methodology will undercount cases filed by entities not included in the search list. The concentration figures should be interpreted as the share of identified cases, not the share of all eviction/foreclosure filings in Bell County.
  • Date range. The four-year search window (March 2022 to present) captures approximately one full term for JP judges. Cases filed before March 2022 are not included.
  • Data completeness. The Odyssey Public Portal returns results through the Kendo Grid interface, which enforces server-side pagination. Very large result sets (e.g., MCG Homestead: 44 parties) required pagination and may not capture every related case.
  • Case type classification. Classification relies on the Odyssey case type descriptor text. Cases with atypical descriptors (e.g., "Other Contract" or "Debt/Contract: Debt Collection") that nonetheless involve eviction or foreclosure were excluded.
  • Party name matching. The Odyssey Smart Search uses prefix-based matching on party names. Variants in entity naming (e.g., "Pleasant View PLNDV TX LLC" vs. "Pleasant View TX LLC") may produce duplicate or incomplete results across search terms.

7. Context & Motivation

This study was conducted independently. The domain and project were initiated following personal experience with a judicial system in which an appointed (rather than elected) judge presided over civil proceedings that resulted in the loss of the author's residence. That experience led to a focus on judicial accountability and the principle that judges should be elected rather than appointed, so that communities retain direct democratic control over those who adjudicate their civil and criminal matters.

The study does not publish party membership information for any judge. The analysis is limited to case volume, filing patterns, and case disposition data available through public court records. The goal is to inform voters about the performance of their local judiciary regardless of party affiliation.

8. Data Access

The full deduplicated dataset (547 records) is available at:

This page will be updated as additional cases are identified and as case statuses change in the Odyssey portal.

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