Mortgages expert witness Joffrey G. Long will moderate a special session on title insurance as part of the January 30-31 educational program presented by the California Mortgage Association in Universal City, CA. In Securing a mortgage expert witness: Types of real property lawsuits, Mr. Long writes:
There are many types of lawsuits involving loans secured by real property; they often fall into one of six general themes:
1) The sub-prime (or other institutional type loan) borrower lawsuit: Here, the owner(s) of a dwelling, (usually their residence) obtained a refinance loan or loans, (or loan to purchase a property) and later determined they didn’t understand, couldn’t afford, or were otherwise unhappy with the loan terms or some part of the process.
Cases often involve loans taken out in 2007 or before, when “sub-prime” loans with easier qualification standards were widely available, often in much larger loan amounts due in part to the higher property values of that era.
Typical allegations in these cases are that the originator of the loan (who may have been a loan broker / arranger, or the actual lender who loaned the funds) misrepresented the terms of the loan to the borrower, failed to properly qualify the borrower for the loan, breached a fiduciary duty, engaged in and unfair practice or predatory lending, or in some other way behaved so as to cause or contribute to the borrower’s loss.
While “Institutional loans” made by banks, mortgage banking companies, or credit unions are referred to, this category of loan problems also impacts private money or non-institutional lenders, who are sometimes referred to as hard money lenders. (For the purpose of this article the term “private money,” or “private money lender” will be used for hard money or other types of non-institutional loans or lenders.)
Read more: Joffrey Long.