First Ohio Home Finance

(HT to Alex Stenback)
We all know that most online mortgage aggregators are champions of selling and re-selling and re-selling any information you put online. They also have been linked in urban legend to unscrupulous lenders with varying degrees of bait-n-switch tactics.

A recent incident with LendingTree - which takes a short loan application and farms it out to national lenders - highlights the real problem with throwing your personally identifiable information online. Yes, even with recent innovations in “secure” protocols like SSL.

Apparently, LendingTree had employees who were re-selling borrower information to non-affiliated mortgage brokers (and maybe others).

“several former employees” may have shared confidential passwords with “a handful” of lenders that were not approved by the company. The lenders then used those passwords to access customer information files that contained mortgage request data such as name, address, e-mail address, phone number, Social Security number, income and employment information. The files did not contain credit card information, LendingTree said…. The company said it does not believe the disclosure led to identity theft or fraudulent financial activity, but recommended customers check their credit reports for suspicious activity.”

Needless to say, this underscores the benefit of dealing with a local or regional direct lender like First Ohio Home Finance. Nothing beats being able to look in the loan officer’s eye and personally seeing where they conduct business.

Don’t trust your information or your mortgage to just anyone - the result could be more than you bargained for!

I have been involved recently in a surprisingly cooperative effort to find solutions to the residential real estate slowdown. I won’t call it a bust, because it hasn’t been catastrophic in the central Ohio market. It really is becoming – and will continue to be - more difficult to find loans for buyers with a poor history of paying their bills and for marginal investors. But by and large, the market is moving on. There are a solid number of buyers in the market, and more than enough sellers.

Every week, one of the top news stories is the steady rise in home foreclosures here in Ohio. The issue is affecting our local economy and, more importantly, the lives of real people in our own neighborhoods.

State executives - including the governor, attorney general, treasurer, chief justice and others – seem to be really worried about housing in Ohio. Executives have been touring the state with news conferences and collaborative meetings. Foreclosures are quite common in some neighborhoods of Cleveland and Toledo, which unfortunately leads to theft, vandalism and general deterioration of communities.

Among the solutions being rolled out:

• Lenient property tax payment plans by county treasurers around Ohio
• A new foreclosure mediation program headed by the state Supreme Court
• Increased legislation to subsidize borrowers and regulate mortgage brokers
• Increased education from and interest in public and private educational programs
• Pressure on lenders to help homeowners – including subordinating 100+% LTV second loans, easy negotiating for short sales, even partial mortgage forgiveness when a helpful refinance is held up due to appraisal problems.

The local group I am involved is the Save Our Homes Taskforce (site currently down). A task force is really a simple name for a loose group of people working toward a specific goal. This particular group, meeting on East Broad Street, is attended by non-profit educational groups, county leaders, and some lender representatives. Many of our company’s loan officers will be attending a statewide summit on April 23rd to refresh our best practices and learn about some of the above efforts.

Some of the initiatives our task force include identifying community resources, conducting homeowner and professional seminars, exploring ways to deliver foreclosure counseling, and lender remediation. The idea is catching on across the state, thanks to Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray.

Now some people may be cynical of these efforts by politicians to intervene in the market. While I share some of those sentiments, I appreciate the interest and leadership as long as the solutions are mindful of the free market and participation is voluntary.

Here at First Ohio Home Finance, we are spending tremendous resources to reach out to those with adjustable and subprime loans. We believe Ohioans who are not under the direct and regular advice of a financial planner should move as fast as possible into fixed and affordable mortgage payments. That means you need the advice of a professional loan officer who can advise you on the best mortgage product for your needs.

I’ll let you know how the Save Our Homes Summit at the end of this month goes.