Well, they are spamming at least one unlikely place, anyway. This keeps showing up in my bulk Doom mail:
Your credit doesn’t matter to us!
If you OWN real estate and want IMMEDIATE cash to spend ANY way you like, or simply wish to LOWER your monthly payments by a third or more, here is the deal we can offer you TODAY (hurry, this offer will expire TONIGHT):
$343,000+ loan
AND EVEN MORE: After further review, our lenders have established the lowest monthly payments!
Hurry, when this deal is gone, it is gone.. Simply fill out this one-minute form…
Don’t worry about approval, your credit will not disqualify you!
I know Sen. Shuman wants to increase federal oversight of mortgage brokers, [Hat tip L!] but in this case, I’ve gotta say that anyone dumb enough to fall for this ad deserves what they get.
And if anyone knows who these guys [Trust Savings] really are, let me know- I’m not even certain they are a real lender!
This points out an important distincition that often gets overlooked. Brokers are not lenders. They are intermediaries (leaches in some cases) between the lender and borrower. And most of these lenders with low interest 100% financing are NOT banks. The funds are from Wall Street, not Main Street. Lost in the meltdown rhetoric is the fact that no federally insured bank is in trouble. Sure, some have taken a beating for losses on their CDOs that they bought from the street, but federal capital and asset allocation requirements have kept losses down for the bank itself. The losses we do hear about from the likes of HSBC, Citi, BOA, etc are from their mortgage units. Technically they are not even subsidiaries since these units must be held by a holding company. It is the holding company that owns the bank, the banc (with a “c”), secutity unit, the morgage brokerages, title companies or any other affiliated business. The stock prices quoted are for the holding companies that own all of these assets including the banks. The bank could be doing just fine and the stock could get hammered from losses in another subsidiary.
The real losers will be the final buyers/investors in these mortgage backed securites and the hybrids they spawned. Exactly who/what owns the bulk of this paper is unkown at this time. Best guesses are that they are owned by hedge funds, retirement funds, small investors??
Tobby -
Believe it or not, one of the most important holders of this paper will likely turn out to be the Japanese Postal Service! (it’s a long story)
Brokers can be good, accunet called me up when my target rate of 5.5% came up so they could lock me in. I Ditched my PMI and am happily building equity faster than ever. Meanwhile I know people who have cashed out until they couldnt cash out anymore and could care less what rate they have! Why I do not know.
twist-
The second link you posted was registered to a Mr. Gordon Metcalfe in Calgary on April 29th, 2007. The email address he used is through coldmail.ca (think: hotmail).
Having a website up that quickly, with a nonsense URL, registered to an individual (not a company), using a free email address… I believe you’re correct, it’s a scam.
For future reference, whois.net can look up the information on any site. It’s freely available, something many don’t realize when they make their website
Sandman-
I appreciate you looking the website up for us. With many borrowers anxious to refi, they are likely to try responding to guys like this.
Toysarefun is right- there are great brokers out there (I know a couple!) but not all of them, and some of these guys can be dangerous to your finances.
hi the mail lady is back. I work in a big mail sectional center in Northern California. Something must be going on because if it weren’t for real estate mail we would be going home early for low mail volumne. Also why are so many companies getting certified mail from loan servicing companies. Especially home building companies. If there is one thing I know certified mail is rarely good news. They are usually a formal notice something bad is going to happen and probably soon. Home foreclosure servicing, liens, the IRS, property tax units for the state, people are getting sued left and right, storage units and car repossesions. The volumne is so high until it’s not just a joke anymore. This is so serious. All this mail is certified. Hey and at first the predominate names on foreclosures were hispanic now everybody is getting foreclosed. When I saw Asian names on the certs I knew we had a problem. This housing crash is a equal opportunity destroyer. On the street around the corner there are 4 preforeclosures, 3 empty houses and 3 for sale on one steet. Not even a very long street at that. So now that we know all of this what exactly are we to do with all this information. We can do nothing about it and I have the most compassion for some of the people tricked into signing away their houses with the promise of low mortgage payments. Who really is the winner? You know you still can’t rent without perfect credit so where do these people live. Oh by the way I have also noticed alot of letters from the IRS I think they are some sort of payment plan. There are an awful lot of them. So you still gotta pay the IRS even when you have just about lost the shirt on your back. I don’t understand how so many people owe to the IRS. Trust me I work mail for a 1500 square mile radius of mail. Probably more so I see alot of mail. Not the handfuls at the local post office. There is something going on that is mighty scary and from the volumne of certain types of mail I think I messed up when I bought a new truck and took out a loan against my property because a REAL ESTATE agent told me 2 1/2 years ago (a countrywide r.e. agent)there is a problem with real estate. If you want to get a loan against your property you’d better hurry and do it because you won’t be able to if you wait too long. How did he know this 2 1/2 years ago and now everyone is acting so surprised. I didn’t know him well enough to get any more information out of him, now I wish I knew an IRS agent to find out why the surge in taxpayers oweing so much. Claiming too many dependents to cover the cost of the mortgage and then not having enough deductions at the end of the year. Lost house, lost car, lost storage, family split up, but I still owe the IRS. Also what is the deal with the adds on TV to buy stocks and then the next commercial is an ad to sue if you lost money in the stock market. What’s up with that. Something is up and I get a feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach when I think too hard on it.
The IRS letters are not what you think. Most of those letters are, “Why didn’t you file letters” or “please update your address with us” or “this social security number doesn’t match this name”, letters. Because of the massive illegal immigration invasion, most of them are claiming lots of dependents for withholding and not filing income taxes and sending there money back to Mexico. They don’t have problems stealing identities or forging documents.
So I don’t really think the flood of IRS letters has anything to do with the housing bubble but I sure would like to know more about the flood of certifieds though.
hey 343,000 = 70 ^ 3! -s
I love getting that home loan spam in my email! What happens is that those leads are sold to lenders. I fill out all the blanks with names like Sp@mmer R@tb@stard and addresses like 69 Sunset Boulevard, and send ‘em back in. When enough of those hit the lenders who are paying for the leads, they won’t pay any more!