Predatory mortgage lenders

[bascule]

I'm a mortgagor. On a near daily basis I receive a stream of offers to refinance. Many of them take the form of:

 

• A lender pretending to be my current mortgage lender
  
• A lender pretending to be a government agency
  
• A lender pretending to be a credit monitoring agency, noting I should refinance to keep my credit score up
  

 

I really have to wonder why, after this giant debacle, lenders are still allowed to get away with this crap. I open every single one of these offers because I'm worried they might contain important information from my mortgage lender or the government agency that manages my loan.

 

I think it'd make an awful lot of sense to require that solicitations for mortgage refinancing are clearly marked as such so they can't be confused with official correspondence from my current mortgage lender, the government, or credit monitoring agencies.

[waitforufo]

I do agree that the general practice is predatory but caveat emptor. My favorites are the ones that look like they might contain a check.

 

To stop these offers you may want to freeze your credit reports and opt out of credit prescreening (see below). When I did this myself, these types of offers also stopped coming. Freezing your credit reports will stop most identity theft, and it is cheaper than LifeLock. Equifax charges $10 every time you want to change your status or temporarily open your credit report. You will need to do this if you want to get a new credit card, or open some other form of credit.

 

http://www.atg.wa.gov/freezecharts.aspx

The above is a Washington state website but I think the information is applicable to everyone.

 

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/opt_form.cgi

[Pangloss]

Every time I... how shall I put this... visit the restroom, I have sitting on the back of the toilet this old marketing piece that came in the mail one day extolling the virtues of buying a house with no money down and only paying the interest. On the piece a beautiful, happy, somewhat lascivious couple laughs and grins up at me, and I find myself wondering if they're still laughing and grinning about their decision.

 

I keep it as a souvenir to remind me of the day I showed the piece to my wife and suggested we do the same, and she said "No dear, that's not what we're going to do." (grin)

[iNow]

I've often wondered why I get like 10 mailings per week, some via snail mail and others via email, all from the same mortgage company, but each telling me to dial a different phone number to refinance.

 

Am I correct in assuming that most of these have nothing to do with my actual mortgage company, despite the commonality of logo on the top left of the letterhead? Just curious. I've wondered for a while why I would be provided so many different numbers just to refinance.