06.26.08
Posted in Industry News, Mortgage and title Fraud at 9:36 am by Jeanne
A Philidelphia online Newspaper, RoxReview has a must read story about title theft and how they plan to combat the bad guys. Here is an excerpt about the ploy:
…thieves find houses that are vacant and obviously have not been looked after.
They use public records to learn when taxes and water bills have last been paid to make sure the properties’ owners have had little involvement or have not been paying any attention to them…
(then) a house thief simply gets some legal stationery, types up a deed and gets the property transfer notarized … He then presents that paperwork to the city’s Records Department, pays some fees and in a matter days becomes listed as the owner of record.
The article suggests title insurance as a protection from the problem, but it wants the government to do more. Learn what laws or regulations Philadelphia is considering to curb the growing problem.
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06.23.08
Posted in Education, Value of a title searcher at 10:18 pm by Jeanne
Here is a post from a Tulsa, OK paper that is typical of the misunderstanding of the Abstracting Industry. It’s claims are ridiculous, absurd, unfounded and downright annoying. Read it to see why we need to educate the world about our jobs as title abstractors.
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06.21.08
Posted in Education at 3:16 pm by Jeanne
From online blogs today, we see horrendous discussions of “how do we get around the RESPA Law?” Here are some prime examples:
Builder Incentives
Any ideas on how to give an incentive to get a builders business RESPA legal? As an incentive for the builder to give me his business, I would like to purchase the buyers home warranty. Is there a way to show this transaction on the hud that I am paying for it, or does it have to disclose that the builder is paying it but then I slip him under the table which I know is a violation of RESPA. Does any one have any ideas to get a builder’s business and for those of you who are successful with builders?? Ahh….other than giving good service!!!!
I have always used a ABA (affiliated business agreement) or AMA (affiliated marketing agreement) where I would give the builder half a point to a point once the loan sells. Always seems to work when you dangle the carrot in their face.
I used to work for Countrywide and for their builders they give major incentives for the builder to send them business. Some include but aren’t limited to: Having a seasonal crawfish boil where the originator and branch office cover the total expense for the party, cut all lender fees except the origination, hosting wine and dinner parties for the builders realtors and office staff. And from what I understood when I was working for C/W, to make it RESPA legal, all the builder had to do was put up a C/W banner at their model homes and the builder and C/W called it a JOINT MARKETING AGREEMENT.
Not only do we need RESPA reform, we need RESPA Education and some serious RESPA enforcement.
It is UNBELIEVABLE to me that conversations like this are taking place online. Are these people CRAZY? Do they not take RESPA seriously? Do they want to go to JAIL? Obviously, they have no ethics. Go get em RESPA police. They deserve whatever they get.
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06.20.08
Posted in Mortgage Problems at 9:39 pm by Jeanne
Situation: An acquaintance of yours plans to walk away from her four-bedroom house in a close by subdivision and let the property fall into foreclosure. But before doing so, she hopes to lock in the purchase of another home nearby. She comes to you for advice. She can find the same exact house now for half the price she claims. She says she soon will be unable to afford her monthly payments, which will jump to $4,000 from $3,300, and she doesn’t want to continue to own a home that is now worth $200,000 less than what she paid for it just a couple of years ago. What to do?
Across the country with falling home prices and rising foreclosures, lenders are discovering this new trend - borrowers with good credit, who buy a second home at a much lower price than the one they have, then default on the mortgage for their first home. We are not talking sub-prime mortgages here, we are talking market fluctuation.
Homeowners are even being coached through the process by unethical real estate agents. A few unethical agents, looking to obtain a commission encourage clients to run, not walk away from their mortgages. They are told to make payments only until they close on the new house. Rarely are they told the downside of significantly damaged credit. The agents quip it is not the buyers fault. The lender appraised it too high! The lender is unreasonable. The lender is refusing to forgive the debt or restructure the loan. The agent does not mention the fact that in order to legitimately qualify for the new loan, the borrower will likely have to dishonestly hide the liability on the existing loan application and can be subject to serious legal penalties for fraud.
Notwithstanding the mortgage industry’s frenzy as it tries to restructure billions of dollars in mortgages, it appears fraudsters have been able to “buy ‘n bail” with ease. The lending industry is just catching up to the latest scam.
The End Result?
Lenders and government agencies are once again forced to draft more and tougher regulations so that homeowners cannot qualify for new mortgages as they bail on old loans that going into foreclosure. Accordingly, Fannie Mae is making changes that will likely take effect in July, so that borrowers with a mortgaged first home have to produce signed leases to prove that they can pay both mortgages, property taxes and insurance on both residences, or they will have to provide proof of sale for the first residence to qualify for the new loan.
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06.18.08
Posted in Education, Money and Finance at 1:46 pm by Jeanne
Americans are failing. It is happening right before our eyes. A Nation once so proud is failing quicky. We are happy to spend money on Fancy Coffee Drinks and Nintendo Games. We are happy to run up credit card debt to get what we want today . But when it comes to paying higher taxes for better roads, education and health care we balk. We spend more time watching TV than planning our futures or helping our children plan theirs.
Have Americans become arrogant, because we think we are the best? We have lost a proud focus on what our parents and grandparents taught us - to evaluate and plan for what is most important to us. We should learn to SAVE for a rainy day. We should PLAN for retirement. We should BUDGET our expenses. We should TEACH our children good habits about money. We are not setting a good example.
Point in case - How much time have you spent educating your children about money? Do you know if they can define “interest rate?” How about “Annual Percentage Rate.” Can they tell you how long it takes to pay off a credit card when they only make the minimum payment with a 21% interest rate? Can they tell you how much that $1,000 hi-def TV really cost on that same credit card?
And the older we get, the worse it gets, apparently. We are lazy. On the most important decision of most people’s lives, their mortgage (note I didn’t say house.) Studies from the FTC show us that in reviewing standard mortgage documents:
• Half the borrowers surveyed couldn’t correctly identify the loan amount.
• Nine in 10 couldn’t figure out the total up-front loan costs.
• Two-thirds did not recognize that they would have to pay a penalty if they paid off the mortgage within the first 3 years. And 95% didn’t know how much that penalty would be.
• Three-quarters did not know when substantial charges for FHA or PMI insurance had been included in the loan and monthly payments.
• One in five couldn’t correctly identify an annual percentage rate, the amount of cash due at closing or the monthly payment, nor did they know if their payment included charges for taxes and insurance.
And why can’t we read and interpret these documents? Partially, because we do not educate our children about economics. Not in the home. Not in school. At home, we are setting bad examples. At school, only 17 states require students to take an economics class to graduate from high school and only seven states require a basic personal-finance course, according to a survey by the National Council on Economic Education
With the economy as it is, and all the worry about gasoline prices, we have more than just oil to worry about. We need to take a better look at our priorities. Let’s look in the mirror and recognize where we are going. Then stop, and think, where do we really want to be.
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06.14.08
Posted in Education at 10:24 am by Jeanne
Only occasionally do we find news with facts that point out that title insurance is a good and valuable product. In this blog article, and comments, we see that someone has an understanding of a real estate title problem and of a product that takes card of the problem. Kudos to Larry Cragun at Seattle PI.
Read the article here. Seattle PI
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