FBI Expands Probe of Mortgage Fraud — Now Involving 19 Mortgage Companies and 1,300 Cases. Reverse Mortgages Also Under Scrutiny.
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Bill Cameron | January 29, 2009 at 7:14 pm | Reply
Andrea Guice , I just saw your story on CNN and I have to say that they butchered the facts. Your situation is far worse than they reported. I have been in the mortgage industry for 20 years and the way CNN presented the numbers made no sense. In fact, the numbers they presented would make it impossible for your payment to jump like that. I have to guess here but it sounds like your “down payment” did not go towards the purchase price of the house but instead went to FEES. You stated that you have a $147K 1st mortgage and a $7k second yet the house was purchased for $147K??? Something is wrong and I would love to see the loan docs, especially the good faith estimate. Unfortunately Freemont Lending is out of biz and its a good thing as they were know for this type of crap.
Keep fighting and make sure those who you talk to understand the whole story. All your “down payment” went to fees like Origination Fee, Document Fee, Fax Fees, Broker Fee….
Basically you take the purchase price of your home ($147k) and add all the fees to it. That comes to somewhere around $177k. Subtract your “down payment” and now we are back to where you started. The Lender (Fremont) in order to make your loan more acceptable to future investors split your purchase into two loans. 80% of the purchase price in one loan and 20% in another loan at much higher rate because your Fico score “indicates” that you are a risk. This is called a piggyback and its common.
The real question is did any of these companies exceed the State Lending Laws in the amount of fees they charges. That is what I would be looking at. Oh, one last point. Freemont is the main culprit here. While your broker can charge an outrageous origination fee, its the lender (Freemont) that approved the loan they you got it. You should have a copy of your loan docs. How much did Homeland make? What about the Real Estate agent? Appraisal? Title? Sounds to me like everyone had a big bite.
Hope that helps…maybe you could pass this info onto Drew Griffin and Lou Dobbs at CNN as they really portrayed a different situation.
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