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Atlanta Mortgage Fraud - Con Man Caught

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Master con artist Matthew Bevan Cox was captured within the last 24 hours at his home in Nashville, Tennessee, according to the U.S. Attorneys office in Atlanta. He was running a business called the Nashville Restoration Project. Authorities have him in custody in Nashville, and he will likely stand trial in Atlanta, where he faces a 42-count indictment carrying a 400-year jail sentence. Cox has stalked his prey through MLS (multiple listing service) real estate ads. Authorities suspect he has stolen at least $15 million through fraudulent mortgages, although the figure could be much higher. His victims have been forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers to save their property from foreclosure on unpaid fraudulent loans.

A Bad Loan Application Could Cost your Home.

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Loan officers work on straight commission. There is no base salary and they make their livelihood off the commissions paid to them. In short, they want and will do everything they can to make your loan happen but sometimes, they can cross the line.

Real estate has been good to many in recent years and never before have there been so many loan officers hitting the streets. Often, many lack training or experience and their only goal is to get your loan done no matter what it takes.

While this may be what you want to hear upfront, if the bank should later learn that your documentation was incomplete, inaccurate or faulty, they have the right to call the loan due. Even if it was the fault of the loan officer. Stated income loans are especially susceptible to this situation and any loans where the buyer, seller and agents make ANY deals on the side outside of the sales contract. This can include kickbacks at closing or even something as simple as agreeing to purchase the appliances afterwards.

If your loan officer ever asks you to do ANYTHING outside of your stated contract, ask that he/she provide written and signed documentation in regards to what they are asking you to do.

Some experts feel that 1 in 10 loan documents contain some level of irregularities or information that does not accurately portray the financial picture of the buyer and the sales contract. Remember, it is your mortgage, your investment, your money. Nobody else is responsible in the end other than you.

ould Rising Interest Rates Sink the Atlanta Real Estate Market

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Manhattan condos are taking a dump in prices this month and with the rise in interest rates being hailed as the number one factor. But is this a bump in the road or a sign of things to come in some of these pricey markets around the country?

In the case of New York City, there is a very real issue of supply and demand. In the case of Manhattan in particular, unless the waters begin to recede making new land available, there simply is no place left to build. For that matter, the majority of older buildings have already been torn down and neighborhoods that were once sketchy just 10 years ago have become extremely pricey. Prices will most likely see some pull back from time to time as rates rise but ultimately, continue their march higher. In short, there are more people coming into New York than there are homes available for purchase. To make matters worse, apartments maybe cheaper but a healthy 350 square foot apartment in the East Village can cost a lot more than a mortgage in Atlanta.

The real worry for home owners should be the surrounding suburbs where supply is looser, land is available and there are plenty of opportunities to tear down and rebuild. However, Atlanta is not so different from New York. While Atlanta has had steady but reasonable growth in real estate property values, the I-285 perimeter is slowly becoming the equivalent of Manhattan's shoreline. Every square inch of land inside the perimeter is being devoured by home builders in a last ditch efforts to cash in before they are forced to build further out. The perimeter in particular is beginning to see high concentrations of condominium developments which is a sure sign of land drying up.

Traffic and congestion into the city has become so bad that commuters are spending up to two hours a day on the highways and this is only going to get worse. The DOT has pretty much come out and said that no matter what they do, they will continue to loose the battle against traffic congestion. Every exit on GA-400 is expected to feature round the clock gridlock in just 5 to 10 years. Tack on $4.00 a gallon for gas, higher car repair bills, higher interest rates on car purchases and lost hours to commuting, homes inside I-285 could see a surge in home values like never before. Regardless of interest rates.

By contrast, homes further out may share a very different fate as community after community of $300+ homes sprout up like weeds in an ever widening arc of available land. Home builders need only build a new community at the same price of a nearby existing communities to soak up demand. When combined with an interest rate sensitive environment, competition among home sellers can become quite fierce and produce some downward pressure on home sales.

In the end, rising interest rates will have some sort of impact but unlikely to cause the real estate crash like what we saw in the late 80s and early 90s. But home builders have also learned to manage their inventory extremely well and can forecast to a person the number of home buyers within any given market. I would be more concerned about purchasing a home in a community where an abundance of surrounding land could give way to new homes. After all, if rising interest rates do sink the real estate ship, wouldn't it make more sense to have purchased close to the shoreline?

Atlanta Mortgage

Atlanta Mortgage Rates

Atlanta 30-year mortgage hits 6.4%, Rates rise on inflation worries --15-year hits 5.9%, 5-year hits 5.8%, and 1-year hits 5.1%

Atlanta Mortgage News

The average rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rose to 6.4 percent for the week ending Nov. 10, 2005, from last week's 6.3 percent, a Freddie Mac survey said Thursday.

In the year-ago period, the 30-year mortgage averaged 5.7 percent.

The average rate on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages rose to 5.9 percent, roughly even with the previous week. A year ago, the loan averaged 5.2 percent.

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Atlanta Mortgage Rates

Atlanta 3 year Arm Mortgage Rates are about to go WAY up.

Atlanta Mortgage

3 Year Arm

Many Atlanta adjustable rates are coming due, and higher interest rates will add hundreds to monthly bills. In the past few years, nearly a third of all mortgage loans have been in the form of adjustable rate mortgages.

Now, it's time to pay the piper.

There are several types of ARMs but all share one feature: After an initial period of fixed payments with low rates, the loans adjust -- usually to the prevailing yield of one-year Treasury bills plus a margin of one to three percentage points.

For example, a borrower with a 3/1 ARM pays at the initial interest rate for three years and the loan adjusts once a year after that. A one-year ARM, which has a lower initial rate, adjusts after one year and a 5/1 adjusts after five. There are also 7/1 and 10/1 ARMs.

The Mortgage Bankers Association estimates that some $330 billion worth of ARMs will adjust in 2006 and $1 trillion worth will reset by the end of 2007.

Read full article on CNN.com

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