Lender Fraud
Sometimes a lender is more interested in taking the property than in having the loan and may make monthly payments difficult to make or hold payments until a default and then foreclosure is triggered. Wrongful Foreclosure can occur when the lender doesn't properly apply payments received or when the lender promises the borrower that they will not foreclose under a forbearance agreement, and then does foreclose on the property by frustrating the borrower's attempt to comply with the agreement.

Predatory Lending frequently involves giving refinance loans that have such high adjustable rates of interest and excessive or unnecessary fees rolled into the loan that borrowers are not able to pay the loan back. These loans provide no real benefit to the borrower and refinancing puts them in a bigger hole than they were getting buried by monthly payments. Tragically, often the refinance loan is subprime even though the borrower would qualify for mainstream mortgage loans.

Signs of Predatory Lending include excessive fees, abusive prepayment penalties, yield spread kickbacks, repeated refinancing, duplicative fees, unnecessary loan products, mandatory arbitration requirements, and steering to subprime mortgages.

You may be getting into a predatory loan if the lender or broker is telling you you are approved early on in the application process, you are told not to make your current monthly mortgage payment because the loan will be paid off with your new loan, and you have not seen the final loan documents until they are brought to you to be signed. By this point, if you haven't made your current mortgage payment, you may have no choice but to sign the predatory loan papers.

Broker Fraud
Brokers frequently have Conflicts of Interest where they attempt to get the highest fees for your loan. This means you may get a higher interest rate than you qualify for or an ARM instead of a fixed rate mortgage. At times brokers convince borrowers to make false statements about their employment and income to qualify for the refinance loan. False appraisals that inflate the value of your property are also a sign of fraud. At times even forging the borrower's signatures on false documents occurs.

Unless you have the HUD settlement statement to review all fees and the promissory note to review prior to closing to check if its fixed or adjustable or has a prepayment penalty, you should not close on the loan.

If you believe you were a potentially a victim of mortgage fraud in the Tampa Bay area or anywhere throughout Florida, contact Nick Ekonomides for a consultation.