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Be aware of the risk of Mortgage FraudThere are 2 type of mortgage fraud.
The first is were someone lies about facts to get a loan to buy a property. The second is where someone lies about facts to make a profit. Fraud is committed by falsifications in the following ways:
The flipper fraud.This occurs when someone buys a property in bad shape for a cheap price. Say $50,000. They make some cosmetic repairs spending say $1,000 and then sell it at an inflated price say $80,000 to a buyer who puts little or no money down. The seller takes a mortgage back for a large amount, say $78,000, and gets a phony appraisal based on the inflated sales price. You are then offered the mortgage at a discount at what looks like an attractive yield. Soon afterwards the buyer stops making payments and moves out. Leaving you with a trashed house. The key to this fraud is the inflated appraisal. Remember that appraising is an art not an exact science. Nonetheless an appraisal should be within 10% of the true value of the property. This fraud can be hard to spot. Many legitimate investors DO buy properties for much less than their true value and are able to genuinely sell them for a higher price.
Equity skim fraudThe real estate investor gets a high loan to value loan then doesn't make any payments on the house while renting it out and keeping the money, of course, during the collection and foreclosure action. Pretend Homeowner loan fraudThe borrower is really a real estate investor who intends to rent out the property, but they pretend they are going to live in it to get the lower interest rate and higher loan to value. This might not concern you as long as the payments are being made. But remember that interest rates to home owners are lower than interest rates to investors for a reason; lower risk. The are some special mortgage clauses we recommend you consider in your seller financed mortgage. |