On bad apple can spoil the whole bunch Marc...  It's the same with real estate agents as well. 

Marc,

I don't agree with: "The majority of the time the person was scammed, tricked or just flat-out lied to."

People so often hear only what they want to! When you also age their memory/mortgage two or three years this gets worse. Then there is the unfortunate use of the term "fixed for... years," the loan was never "fixed!" If it were "fixed" for the first three years, then why wouldn't it remain "fixed" for the next year and the year after that...

I'm sure some are "scammed," but personally I believe it's a small minority of extremely stupid and naive consumers. There are so many disclosures and the note to be signed, it's possible the consumer was "scammed," but much more likely they have a selective memory!

Either way, it's a good posting and good to see you back. Besides you gave me a great idea!

Bill

William J Archambault Jr

The Real Estate Investment Institute

Marc, here in Connecticut this it would be difficult for this to happen.  A Loan Officer or Broker might be able to hide the true terms of the Mortgage from the Borrower up until the time of the Closing, but that is where it would end.  Here in Connecticut the Closings are done at the Borrowers or Sellers Attorney's office.  One of the things that the Borrowers Attorney ALWAYS does is to go over the terms of the loan.  So if a Loan Officer or Broker was able to hide the terms of the loan from a Borrower that did not take the time to look at the loan application and disclosures that the Loan Officer or Broker gave them, it would all come out at the Closing here.

Marc, Great post.  (The whole post) I agree with you many people don't realize what mortgage they are really in.  To me I don't understand that. Lets face it their is a lot of paper work envolved in getting a mortgage but the most important one is the TIL. IT spells everything out. But people never really look at it.

Fran- There certainly are some rotten ones out there!

Bill- Very true :"People so often hear only what they want to!"  If they just opened their ears just a BIT more.....

George-Same here, plenty of information is given and re-explained several times.  I think too many people get stuck on "I got a house, I got a house!" and they should be paying a bit more attention to everything else.

Matt-  a while back I started to ask people to explain the loan BACK to me to see if they understood what they were told - it does help!