The government announced yesterday a multi-department effort to crack down on mortgage scams - pulling desperate people into phony modification programs, promising them ways to keep their home from foreclosure, then ripping them off. I asked Dallas bankruptcy attorney Rustin Polk if he has seen any evidence of this hanky-panky in Dallas — and he said unfortunately, yes. Too many: One client was working on a loan modification with a “loan counselor”, paid several fees and appraisals during a six month period of time. The lender went ahead and posted the home for foreclosure today. Yesterday at noon, the loan counselor said to his client, “Oh by the way, we just found out that your mortgage lender doesn’t do modifications.”
Another client paid a local “law firm” that advertises on a local Dallas radio station $3,000 to get his mortgage modified; the firms first piece of advice was to intentionally get behind on his mortgage. The mortgage company posted him for foreclosure, the modification people told him that they couldn’t help him. Now he now faces the prospect of losing his home if he does not pay three months of payments all at once, plus all of the bank’s legal fees related to the foreclosure, and he’s out the $3,000. What a scam.
Then there’s the “foreclosure rescue specialist” called North American Foreclosure, LLP. Folks need to be careful, says Polk, a bankruptcy attorney and home foreclosure expert for 15 years.
“Sadly, a person will try whatever they have to in order to keep their home and a roof over their kid’s head. And who can blame them?,” says Polk. “But a con artist can sense that kind of desperation. The number of so-called “loan modification counselors” has quadrupled in the last 18 months as the hucksters have opened up shop. These fly-by-night operators target desperate homeowners– the easiest mark, but also the least able to afford such a scam.”
I called Lone Star Management, the company that collects home association fees for Casa Bella Owner’s Association, to see if the Nagins have made a last-ditch effort to save their cute little Frisco abode, but no one would comment. Here is the list of properties on today’s auction block in McKinney.
From here to the other side of the world: Dallas-based Lone Star Funds is going bargain shopping in Japan’s distressed real estate market, while I am hearing reports of folks from China looking at our bargain tables in Florida, Nevada, — Dallas?
Otherwise known as the C Streets and one of the hottest little ‘hoods east of downtown. This is the land of the charming 1920’s and 1930’s Tudors, 16 blocks of darling homes ranging in price from below $200,000 to over $600,000 — most original and well-maintained, some new construction that blends well with the old, like 7053 Coronado.