Debt Hacker: Tools for a Debt-Free Life » Mortgages http://www.debthacker.com News, information and talk about money and debt management, credit and personal finance Sat, 28 Jun 2008 07:00:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en http://www.debthacker.com http://www.debthacker.com/wp-content/mbp-favicon/debthacker.ico Debt Hacker: Tools for a Debt-Free Life Do Not Climb the MortgageTree http://www.debthacker.com/do-not-climb-the-mortgagetree/ http://www.debthacker.com/do-not-climb-the-mortgagetree/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:59:13 +0000 Mark http://www.debthacker.com/do-not-climb-the-mortgagetree/ Now if there is a consumer finance warning in PC World, you know something has got to be afoul. In an article titled Consumer Alert: Questionable Online Lenders Demanding Upfront Fees, PC World investigates what can best be defined as unscrupulous lending practices by a San Jose, California-based mortgage lender named MortgageTree. The article cites several questionable practices including some sort of nutty fee scheme where the company is apparently “asking its customers to wire money to Canada to cover miscellaneous loan and finance charges”. The targets appear to be cash-strapped, financially troubled borrowers who wind up getting a lot more than they bargained for when they arrange an online loan with MortgageTree.

The article profiles one borrower in particular, a Lekiesa Willis of Hope, Arkansas. The exchange allegedly went down like this

Willis found Mortgage Tree Lending in September when she typed in the questions “Where do I get a $5000 personal loan with bad credit?” into the Ask.com search engine. She followed a link in the search results and was taken to a site that prompted her to provide an e-mail address and phone number. The next day Willis says she received a phone call from MortgageTree Lending asking her to fill out a formal loan application and fax it back.

At first she was told to wire $950 as an “insurance premium” and she would get that money back. Days after Willis wired the money, a MortgageTree Lending representative asked her to wire an additional $680 in taxes and fees. She wired the money and waited, and waited.

The fact is that there is a lot of this going on online, particularly in the wake of the subprime meltdown. If you are considering borrowing from this company read the full article at PC World.

]]> http://www.debthacker.com/do-not-climb-the-mortgagetree/feed/ The Subprime Situation is Still Really Bad — No Kidding http://www.debthacker.com/the-subprime-situation-is-still-really-bad-no-kidding/ http://www.debthacker.com/the-subprime-situation-is-still-really-bad-no-kidding/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:59:22 +0000 admin http://www.debthacker.com/the-subprime-situation-is-still-really-bad-no-kidding/ On Condé Nast’s Portfolio.com, there is a post telling us something that we, unfortunately, already know: The subprime mortgage situation still sucks. The post points out that while mortgage lender Countrywide shares have gone up recently, that ‘victory’ is relative and hardly an indicator that happy days are here again. The so-called subprime meltdown is an extremely complex financial matrix with many factors including interest rates, the construction industry, foreign credit and last but not least, politics. As the post’s author put it

[…] We might have passed the “chaos” part of the credit crisis, when no one had a clue what was going on and very short-term interest rates, especially, started behaving crazily. But some very big bond-market losses might yet still await us – and those, as we’ve seen, can have nasty systemic implications.

Check out the full post on Portfolio.com.

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