Roswell Georgia Real Estate

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Good morning. I hear a lot of stories about real estate fraud in Los Angeles -- like the cash-back-at-closing scheme, in which the borrower gets the cash back, never opens the door of the house, never makes a single mortgage payment, and walks away with the cash. But I don’t hear a lot about real estate fraud investigations or prosecutions. Maybe I’m not listening carefully enough.

I’m waiting for a California official to do what the Attorney General in New York is doing -- that is, start making some noise about fraud. Andrew Cuomo has been sending out subpoeanas -- some to California companies -- as part of an investigation into whether mortgage brokers pressure appraisers to inflate property values.

(Pressure on appraisers? Next you are going to tell me Barry Bonds didn’t get those muscles by doing push-ups).

News item: the mortgage bankers are blaming the mortgage brokers for the subprime mess. ‘Who made this mess? The short-term folks,’ said John Robbins, chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Assn. ‘People who get a commission when the deal happens. For them, it’s the number of loans that counts. Good loan? Bad loan? Who cares? For them it’s all about their commission.’

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