The Federal Trade Commission has stepped up its investigations and prosecutions of mortgage relief scam artists. Since the start of 2013, the FTC has obtained settlements from over 20 individuals and companies involved with scamming distressed homeowners. In the most recent cases, two individuals and seven companies settled FTC charges that they victimized more than a thousand people through “mass joinder lawsuits” and “forensic loan audits.” They violated the Mortgage Assistance Relief Services (MARS) Rule, which was set up to curb deceptive and unfair practices related to such services.

The FTC contends that Sameer Lakhany, Brian Pacios, Precision Law Center, Inc., Precision Law Center LLC, National Legal Network, Inc., and Assurity Law Group, Inc. targeted consumers with a mass joinder scam. They promised homeowners that they could stop their foreclosures or obtain some other mortgage relief if they joined together to sue the lenders. The defendants represented themselves as a law firm called Precision Law Center, charging between $6,000 and $10,000 in up-front fees. But every suit was dismissed soon after it was filed; the victims saw none of the promised relief.

One of the scam artists, Lakhany, was also involved in a “forensic loan audit” scam, along with The Credit Shop, LLC, Titanium Realty, Inc., and Fidelity Legal Services LLC. These defendants called themselves nonprofit organizations, with domain names like “FreeFedLoanMod.org,” “HouseholdRelief.org,” and “MyHomeSupport.org;” but really they sold people an auditing service, which supposedly found lender violations in mortgage documents. The defendants charged $800 to nearly $1,600 for this service, which never led to a single favorable loan modification for the victims.

How to choose a reasonable Florida mortgage loan

If you are looking for a Florida mortgage loan, you will find that not only are there numerous lenders that will provide you with the loan, there are also many financial institutions that work both as mortgage brokers and lenders.

So before you actually get yourself a Florida mortgage loan, it is better for you to find out if any broker is involved with the mortgage company. If there is a broker working with the company, find out how much compensation is awarded to the broker so that you can make calculations and compare the different fees and interests of the various mortgage brokers in Florida.

All home mortgage loans are profitable to the lender, at least in average. So it is your job to pick the home mortgage loans, which bring the benefits, which are important to you. Note, that the home mortgage loans are longterm investments and their benefits can fluctuate a lot during rough economic times.

1. The Fixed Rate Home Mortgage Loans.

Their idea is, that the interest rate will stay the same during the whole running time of the loan. This brings the benefit, that these loans are predictable and secure and the borrower knows exactly, how much is the next payment. These are ideal for people, who do not want any financial risk and are not interested to follow the interest rates or the economy in general.

How has the credit crunch affected you?’ is going to be one of the biggest and most often asked questions of 2008, and only a lucky few will likely be able to answer -not at all’.

More likely is you’ll receive an answer from one of the unlucky many whose finances have been stretched and tested – especially those with mortgages. In just a couple of years, the face of the mortgage market has changed dramatically, with banks and lenders desperate to pull something back in the wake of some reckless credit lending in recent years.

These changes are reflected in the results of recent studies into the mortgage market, in particular the facts showing the limiting of mortgage products available. March 2008 alone saw a drop of 2026 mortgage products (from 7726 to 5700) across the residential and buy-to-let markets, while home-loan deals have seen a fall from the 15,600 available in July 2007, to just 4,700 available today. Overall, then, mortgage lending has declined to an estimated 24 billion, a 6% decrease from February 2007, while February 2008 saw the lowest number of new mortgages approved since July 1995.