These days abusive practices conducted within the mortgage lending vertical have increased drastically along with the hefty growth of the subprime market. Listed below are seven common predatory practices that more and more home owners are realizing they too were treated unfairly and unlawfully.
1. Inclusion of excessive fees into loans.
2. Unrealistic and higher than warranted Interest Rates.
3. Ignoring the borrowers true ability to pay.
4. Loan to Value Issues.
5. Prepayment Penalties (most common in subprime loans).
6. Negative Amortization Loans.
7. Unfair Balloon Payments.
Inclusion of excessive fees into loans. Borrowers whose loans fall into the predatory lending category often have huge fees financed into the loan by digging into the equity of the property with future additional interest to come. The bank average to originate loans is 1%-2% and routinely those who are victim of predatory lending have fees in excess of 8%.
Unrealistic and higher than warranted Interest Rates. It makes sense that subprime lenders “should” charge a higher than normal rate because of the bigger credit risk that coincides with borrowers whose credit is anything other than excellent. However, as the subprime market exploded so did the number of borrowers who were unnecessarily slotted into a subprime loan. Higher interest rates means more money for the lending bank. Borrowers with perfect credit are regularly charged interest rates 3 to 6 points higher than the market rates; with some subprime lenders, there simply is no lower rate, no matter how good the credit.
