Errors in loan documents can save strapped homeowners

[rumpel]

Los Angleles Times

Even small mistakes in the paperwork may give borrowers the legal leverage to persuade lenders to rework their mortgages.
By Lew Sichelman, United Feature Syndicate
October 12, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Homeowners who are having difficulty getting the attention of their lenders to discuss their troubled mortgages might want to obtain a forensic loan review to determine if their lenders made any mistakes when the mortgage was issued.

Even a $30 miscalculation on the lender's part could be an actionable offense, and the threat of a lawsuit can be enough to persuade the lender to deal with you in trying to find a way to help you work through your financial difficulties.

In a forensic loan review, a legal pathologist scours your loan documents looking for errors in, among other things, the truth-in-lending statement the lender provided shortly after you applied for your mortgage and the lender's annual percentage rate calculation so you could compare loan costs.

snip

They say that well over 80% of the recent audits performed by Loan Safe have revealed major truth-in-lending violations, errors in the good-faith estimates required under the Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act, illegal predatory lending practices or even fraud.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lew12-2008oct12,0,701114.story

[Xipe Totec]

1. Yess!!!

Get 'em , boys!

:bounce:

[shrike]

2. I've said this all along

There was bound to be illegal activity, violations of the truth-in-lending act, outright fraud in a lot of the lending activity. I've been told, over and over again, especially by my freeptard brother, that it didn't matter, that people went into these deals with their eyes open, and who cared if the lenders committed fraud? The law will care, I said, and according to this article at least some members of the legal profession do.