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refianance problem

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Carole JMA

Guest
What is the name of your state? New York.January 18th had a closing with Ameriquest to refinance my home.I was promised at the closing that I'd receive my cash amount a week from that Tuesday,the 28th.According to Ameriquest they called my creditors and told them they would be paid by the 31st.Included in those creditors was a Plumbing Service that I bought a $3,800 new gas burner,I had no heat.They were also told they would get to put the check in the bank on the 31st.Today is Feb. 5th the creditor's are all calling me.I've spoken to Ameriquest's manager John,lost count of how many times,the last time being Monday Feb. 3rd.He told me I should get my check tomorrow!No such luck!!!Help,what do I do about this situation?Thank you,Carole
 


Z

zappy

Guest
I hope it doesnt turn out like this:

============================



Don't let them get away with it.
Make sure they make the Rip Off Report!




Category: Mortgage Companies
Submitted: 1/3/2003 2:19:38 PM
Modified: 1/3/2003 2:19:38 PM


Ameriquest Mortgage ripoff deceptive company
fraudulent ripoff business ripoff fraud business
Orange California



Ameriquest Mortgage
Address:
1100 Town and Country Rd., Suite 1560
Orange California 92868
U.S.A.
Phone Number:
800-430-5262
Fax Number:
-
Email:




This company has deceptive business practices. They engage in predatory
lending. Through my own research, I have discovered that they appear to
target minority groups and ones with some credit issues, convincing them
that they will be unable to secure mortgage financing from traditional lenders.
They place customers in high interest rate loans, with exorbatant
pre-payment penalties. They contract with property appraisers who over
value properties, in order to secure higher loan amounts. Which makes it
impossible for customers to refinance at lower fixed interest rates or for that
matter sell the property. The interest rates are only fixed for the first 2 years
and then become adjustable and can increase an additional 6% over a 4 year
period of time. Which means that your payment WILL increase by 700-800.00
per month and when customers express concern about this adjustable rate
their response is that you can refinance in 2 years and avoid this adjustable
rate. However, what they fail to explain is that there is a prepayment penalty
of 6 months interest should you refinance within the first 3 years of your loan.
Which means that if you refinance within the 2 years as they suggest you will
have to pay a prepayment penalty, and if you wait the 3 years to avoid the
pre-payment penalty they your interest rate will increase. Basically, there is
no way out of this loan. You can't sell the property and you can't refinance it
either, unless you have the means to come up with a large sum of cash, and
Ameriquest knows this and they have thrived by making it nearly impossible
for customers to get out from under these loan terms.

Stephanie
Lynwood, Illinois
U.S.A.

Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on Ameriquest Mortgage Company



REBUTTAL BOX
MY COMPANY HAS BEEN REPORTED!
HOW DO I RESPOND?
Are you an owner, employee or ex-employee with either negative
or positive information about the company or can you provide
'insider information' on this company? Do you have a consumer
suggestion on how to resolve this problem or how to avoid it in the
future? ONLY these types of responses will be added to the filed
report, and will be posted within 24 hours of receipt. Make your
voice heard. Let them know your side, too!
CLICK HERE to Send us your rebuttal on this specific report only.
or
***If you are also a victim of the same company or person,
YOU NEED TO FILE YOUR OWN RIP-OFF REPORT.
CLICK HERE to File your OWN Rip-Off Report



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Copyright © 1998 badbusinessbureau.com, LLC
 
Z

zappy

Guest
Home » Top Stories »

The Legal Fleecing of the Poor
By Michael May, TomPaine.com
April 15, 2002

Daisy Thompson, a 48-year-old African American Headstart teacher
with a round, friendly face and smooth dark skin, sits at the living room
table of her modest two-bedroom home in South Dallas. Her daughters
cook meatloaf and cornbread for dinner, while her four grandchildren
wriggle in and out of her lap, stretching out their blue Kool Aid- stained
tongues and hamming for a laugh.

Thompson gives a weary, appreciative smile, but as her eyes lower to
the mortgage refinancing papers stretched out in front of her, her
expression sinks into confusion and despair. "I used to think that I would
be leaving this home for my family," she says with a sigh. "Now I will
just be leaving them a mountain of debt."

It only took a blown engine and a half hour with the loan officer from
Beneficial, a subsidiary of lending giant Household International, to
convince Daisy to turn her home from an asset into a burden. In 1998,
when Thompson's four-year old Hyundai rolled to a stop with a loud
knock and a plume of smoke, she was left without any way to get to
work. When Thompson realized it would take a few thousand dollars to
replace the engine, she called Beneficial, whose flashy brochures had
appeared regularly in her mailbox. Filled with smiling customers and
bright, bold slogans like "We're here to help you," the brochures seemed
to provide an answer.

But when the Beneficial loan officer arrived at her house, Thompson
found out the loan would come with a steep price. He told her that she
didn't qualify for a personal loan, but she would be able to borrow
$10,000 by rolling all her debt together and refinancing her home at
18.5% interest. Thompson, who at the time had only seven years left on
her mortgage, felt like she didn't have any other choice. "He smiled a lot,
looked me in the eyes, and told me that he was here to help me with my
financial situation," she recalls. "I needed to get to work, I didn't know
what to do. I just signed it."

Thompson says she later tried to get out of the loan, but couldn't. So last
year, when she needed a new roof, desperation drove her back to
Beneficial. Once again, they told her refinancing her house was her only
option. This time, even though her mortgage was extended until 2030 at
14% interest, she did not receive any cash for refinancing. Beneficial, on
the other hand, made out pretty well. They issued Thompson a $4,300
personal loan at 19% interest to fix her roof, and the refinancing earned
the company almost $3,000 in fees.

The fees included $1,800 for single premium credit insurance (insurance
where the premium is added to the principal instead of charged
monthly), which adds thousands of dollars to the interest payments.
Consumer advocates such as Rob Schneider, Senior Attorney at the
Consumers Union argue that single premium credit insurance is a scam.
"Single Premium Credit Insurance is only sold in the predatory market,"
says Schneider. "Since they initially finance the cost of the insurance, the
interest can easily end up doubling the cost - with no added benefit." In
Thompson's case, the blow was softened a few months later when her
application was rejected by the insurance carrier, and she was issued a
refund.

Schneider says that an honest banker would never have refinanced
Thompson's house for a $10,000 loan. If a conventional lender had
agreed to issue a loan, Thompson's options would have included
borrowing against the equity of her house, without refinancing. But since
Beneficial got to her first, she now pays $647 of her $1,400 monthly
salary in loan payments ($534 for the mortgage, and $113 for the
personal loan), leaving only $753 to support a seven-member family.

If she doesn't make her payments, she risks losing her house. She will
continue to pay off her mortgage until she is 76 years old, and unless she
refinances for a better deal, the fees and interest will add up to more
than $100,000. That's enough money to buy a whole fleet of Hyundais,
or put a grandchild or two through college. Thompson's story is just one
example of a widespread practice known as predatory lending, which
has grown exponentially in the past decade along with growth in the
so-called "subprime" lending market. Subprime lending, which features
an interest rate as much as twice that of prime loans, can provide credit
to individuals with low incomes, few assets, or poor credit history.
However, critics say that lax laws allow unscrupulous lenders to take
advantage of borrowers who are desperate and lack experience.

The debt burden is hardly necessary. A 2001 Fannie Mae study found
that 35 to 50 percent of subprime borrowers could have qualified for a
prime loan. Many of these borrowers end up tethered to debt for years,
and those who can't keep up lose their homes. A study by the Coalition
for Responsible Lending estimates that predatory lending costs
borrowers $9.1 billion dollars annually through excessive interest rates
(above what would be reasonable for the additional risk), hefty fees,
prepayment penalties, and single premium credit insurance. Including the
cost of foreclosures would likely add billions more to this estimate.

"Homeownership gives families a stake in keeping their neighborhoods
clean and free of crime," says Schneider. "Predatory lending works to
undermine this fundamental principal, and it is having a devastating effect
on low income communities across the country."

Beneficial vehemently denies that their loans are predatory. They say
that not only was Thompson's loan legal and fair, but that they provide a
valuable service to low-income customers. "A bank would never have
given a high-risk borrower like Thompson a loan," he says. "But we did.
People who argue that our loans are unfair and deceptive are, in fact,
saying that poor people are too stupid to make their own financial
decisions. We believe that individuals should be allowed to think for
themselves."

The loan officer who closed the deal with Thompson agrees. "Beneficial
would not have loaned her money without refinancing the house," says
Darrell Everett, who no longer works for Beneficial. "She may not think
it was such a great deal now, but at the time she was fully aware of the
consequences, and made her own choice. She had the option to go to a
competitor, or simply not take out the loan."

This argument – that freedom of choice exists in the lending market –
ignores the fact that minority neighborhoods have always tended to have
less access to credit. Banks don't tend to open local branches there, so
predatory lenders market hard to fill the void.

Despite the 1977 passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA),
a bill intended to force banks to make mortgages equitably across class
and racial lines, minority applicants are still about twice as likely to be
turned down for conventional mortgages than whites at the same income
level, according to a study by the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). These would-be borrowers
are then faced with a difficult choice – turn to a subprime lender, or
forgo the credit and the dream of home ownership.
 
Z

zappy

Guest
In Thompson's mostly poor South Dallas neighborhood, eight of the top
ten lenders to blacks are subprime, according to a study by Consumer's
Union. Facts like these, says Schneider, prove that much more needs to
be done to level the playing field. "The CRA says you can't discriminate
based on race," he says. "But that hasn't forced conventional lenders to
suddenly serve the needs of whole communities. To this day, very few
conventional lenders do outreach in minority communities." Just as the
last dinner plate at Thompson's house is scraped clean and stacked in
the sink, Thompson answers a knock at the door. The visitor is
Kimberly Olsen, a young, energetic brunette bearing an armful of
newsletters focusing on predatory lending in Texas. Olsen is the lead
organizer at the Dallas chapter of ACORN , which is part of a coalition
working to pass a state law protecting subprime borrowers.

The two sit at the table to review the details of the testimony Thompson
will give at a legislative hearing later that week. "This hearing will be the
first time Texas senators will be able to hear directly from victims like
yourself," Olsen tells Thompson. "It's amazing, but we might even pass
legislation in a conservative state like Texas."

ACORN's Texas campaign is part of a national effort to make
predatory lending illegal. The toughest law, passed in North Carolina in
1999, prohibits a host of practices, including "flipping," or repeatedly
refinancing a single loan; single premium credit insurance; and fees of
more than 5 percent of the principal of the loan. By Fall 2001, ten other
states and municipalities had passed laws of their own, and several
others are currently considering some form of regulation.

But a federal law will be harder to pass. Although Sen. Paul Sarbanes,
D-Md., head of the Senate Banking Committee, has called predatory
lending a "frontal assault on homeowners" and introduced legislation to
regulate the industry, Congress has shown little interest in passing it. "It
is hard to describe how outgunned we are at the federal level," says Lisa
Donner, Director of ACORN's Financial Justice Center. "The banking
industry as a whole is opposed to any form of control. We have had a
lot of success at the state level, where politicians are literally closer to
the people being affected."

Even without tougher laws, some of the worst abusers are being taken
to court. On March 21, 2002, the First Alliance Mortgage Corporation,
accused by the Federal Trade Commission of cheating elderly
homeowners, settled for $60 million. And in February, ACORN filed a
class action suit in California against Household International,
Beneficial's parent company, that alleges that the company deliberately
misled tens of thousands of California borrowers. "It is very difficult for
Household to change," says Donner. "They spend so much money on
marketing that they really are forced to make it back through deception
and fraud. What they need to do is stop aggressively targeting poor
communities, and that would allow conventional lenders to compete
effectively in the subprime market."

Although Household representatives deny any wrongdoing, they
released a list of "best practices" for their branches to follow shortly
after the case was filed. The best practices include limiting fees to 3
percent of the loan value, and offering easy-to-read disclosures of all
terms and conditions. Donner is skeptical of the changes; she says that
Household promised to stop selling single-premium credit insurance
almost a year ago, but borrowers report that they are still sold the
dubious product in some states. Household says that it takes time to
institute changes in their 1,400 branches. "Our best practices set a
standard for the subprime industry," Streem responds. "We are on the
vanguard, but ACORN refuses to give us credit because we won't sign
a deal with them."

Sometimes lenders can be convinced to change their behavior without
lawsuits or legislation. In 2000, ACORN struck a deal with Ameriquest,
the largest subprime lender, after a series of noisy protests that included
filling the company's national headquarters with angry borrowers. In
response, Ameriquest not only agreed to stop many of its abusive
practices, but agreed to partner with ACORN to make loans at
discounted terms in certain neighborhoods. "When ACORN first
targeted us, we felt unfairly harassed," says Adam Bass, Senior
Executive Vice President of Ameriquest. "But ultimately we decided to
hear what they had to say. We found out we could learn a lot from
them, and things have improved substantially."

However, ACORN has found itself on the opposite side of Ameriquest
in the fight to pass anti-predatory legislation. Ameriquest, along with
most lenders, feels that federal laws already prohibit predatory lending,
and all that is needed is better enforcement. "If we keep passing tougher
laws to regulate loans," says Bass, "then fewer people will have access
to credit. ACORN might argue that those people can't afford loans, but
we believe it is a personal decision."

Thompson doesn't feel empowered by the loan she got from Beneficial.
She thinks about the music and ballet lessons she can't afford for her
grandchildren now that so much of her paycheck goes to inflated
mortgage payments, and hopes that a law will be passed to protect low
income borrowers. "Looking back, I know I should have talked to a
bank and asked for financial advice," she says. "But, at the same time,
lenders shouldn't be able to take advantage of people in desperate
situations. Beneficial cheated me out of my life savings, and they didn't
even have to break the law."

Michael May is a writer living in Austin, Texas.

Reproduction of material from any AlterNet.org pages without written permission is strictly prohibited.
© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
 
C

call_to_action4

Guest
AMERIQUEST MORTGAGE

I have done alot of research with regard to AMERIQUEST MORTGAGE and have found that they are PREDATORY LENDERS. They typically go after older retired people and people in lower class neighborhoods. There is an organization who can possibly help you with your situation. It is ACORN ( www.acorn.com ) they have been successful in making AMERIQUEST accountable for their actions. They pretty much forced AMERIQUEST to sign an agreement saying they would discontinue their PREDATORY practicies. However, AMERIQUEST has tried to get around this by going just beyond these areas and and they HAVE CONTINUED going after lower income and older individuals. They have been sued by several Attorneys Generals and are currently being investigated by the PA DEPARTMENT OF BANKING. Please either call ACORN or visit their website and you will have a better chance of resolving these issues.

I would be very happy to speak with you on the telephone if you would like. I know this company ( AMERQUEST ) very well. Also, I have been investigating other lenders AND in all fairness to AMERIQUEST, there are other lenders with the same practicies.

Good luck and I look forward to your response.
 

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