NC Governor Mike Easely signed a law making NC the first state to ban mortgage brokers from charging borrowers for unnecessary and unneeded surcharges such as “yield spread premiums” which essentially gives a kick-back to brokers who guided borrowers into higher interest loans subprime loans - whether they need it or not. [...]

Mortgage brokers tend to charge more to place a loan than you would have to pay if you went directly to the lender, according to a recent HUD Study. This is not a surprise to consumer advocates but it tends to contradict the story told by mortgage brokers and their lobbyists. There’s a [...]

The sub prime loan crisis has caused a rapid decline in home values across the country.  This has depressed the middle class consumer and caused a cutback in many industries related to residential construction.  When consumers feel that they have less equity in their homes, they slow their discretionary purchases.  This slow down in consumer [...]

When shopping for a mortgage loan, most consumers are concerned with the interest rate of the loan. Within the past five years, interest rates on mortgages have hit historical lows and many home loans have been made. But there is more to a mortgage loan than the interest rate and a careful shopper [...]

Most of us receive them in the mail on a pretty regular basis - those official-looking envelopes that resemble a communication from a government agency, or our home lender, or someone else we cannot afford to ignore.  If we open the letter, it is likely to contain a solicitation for questionable financial services.
Having recently worked with a client [...]

According to the New York Times, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service have formed a task force to examine mortgages that were made with little or no proof of the earnings or assets of borrowers. Federal prosecutors in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas and Atlanta [...]

According to a recent article in Reuters, Many Mortgage Suits to Come, But Harder to Win, we can expect a number of class action lawsuits against those responsible for the subprime mortgage losses. Stanford Law School Professor Joseph Grundfest estimated that total investor losses resulting from the drop in stock prices and falling property values [...]

Many of us have blogged in vain thus far, as Congress and the Fed continue to dole out billions to bail out the mortgage companies and investment bankers, while ignoring bankruptcy law reform that would cost the taxpayer nothing.
And the Fed, who caused the sub-prime crisis with Greenspan’s bubble, [...]

Gretchen Morgenson and Jonathan D. Glater wrote an excellent piece in The New York Times which discusses the law firms that handle foreclosures for mortgage servicers.
These firms, known as “foreclosure mills,” crank out thousands of foreclosures every year, and the biggest mills may be illegally “kicking back” fees to the biggest default servicing company, Fidelity [...]

A rich man who oppresses the poor is like a devastating rain that leaves no food. Proverbs 28:3. As I was surfing through my Bible the other day I ran across this passage. The immediate picture that came to mind was the mortgage crises that is currently taking place. I continue to be overwhelmed [...]