Mortgage Audit Services Offered To Homeowners In Financial Trouble

The Boston Herald recently ran a story on the mortgage audit industry, a group that is offering their services to homeowners in trouble with their mortgages:

• [M]ortgage auditors review customers’ loan papers for forged signatures, sham home appraisals or other illegal acts. Any wrongdoing can strengthen financially strapped homeowners’ hands in negotiations with lenders.

• Many customers are seeking “loan modifications,” where banks agree to cut homeowners’ interest rate or otherwise change mortgage terms to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Others want lenders to OK “short sales,” where borrowers sell homes in today’s weak market for less than their unpaid mortgage balances and banks simply “eat” the difference.

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• Common flaws include math errors on federal Truth in Lending Act forms, which by law must accurately list a mortgage’s total lifetime cost within $35. While such mistakes can seem minor, they often give homeowners just enough leverage to get out of fraudulent loans.

Reportedly, one firm featured in the story performs about 100 checks on each customer’s loan, producing five- to 15-page reports and charging about $350 to $600.

For more, see Mortgage ’auditors’ help people fight foreclosure. missing mortgage foreclosure docs gamma UndoMortgageLoans TILAdelta