I was thinking of going to Intercontinental Capital Group to refinance my house. I recently got a divorce and I can’t afford to keep up with the mortgage payments, but I also can’t afford to go. Most of the banks I’ve met with have been extremely unsympathetic, and I’m starting to lose hope that I’ll be able to keep my house. Can you recommend someone specific over at Intercontinental Capital? I don’t make a lot of money but I receive alimony, child support payments and insurance money that I can place towards housing costs. And I have okay credit.

Yeah my wife and I refinanced with them and they did a real smooth job for us. Got us a excellent rate, took care of everything over the phone or fax so we didn’t have to leave work or anything and closed on time. Never seen that before! If they can close more loans that quick it certainly will help values in the neighborhood.

Really, I live in Phoenix, AZ, and a new mortgage bank just opened here, Intercontinental Capital Group, that hired about 50 bankers and is making all sorts of buzz about our real estate market. It’s too early to tell, but if more people are able to get loans and buy up the houses that are sitting on the market, I reckon it may really improve values in the area.

Really to answer your question the answer is—sort of. But I can know your point. First off, mortgage companies throughout the United States were involved in fraudulent mortgage loans that over time came crashing down.

Let me clarify two types of mortgage banks. There are portfolio lenders and correspondent lenders. Portfolio lenders (like Wells Fargo or Bank of America are capable of funding a loan in their name+maintain that loan as they collect payments and interest). Portfolio lender’s were hit hard once many of their loans went soar as they started to lose money. But, it was the correspondent lender’s that caused problems in our economy as a whole. Correspondant lender’s are lenders that 1) fund the loan in their name BUT don’t keep the loan in their institution for very long. Instead, they then sell that mortgage loan to the secondary market such as Fannie Mae or in the stock market. The problem is that once the mortgage market crashed due to poor/fradualant loans—investors stopped buying these loans. As a result, lender’s stopped providing further mortgages as they started to recuporate their loses. As a result, a crisis started and portfolio lenders stopped being so "SIMPLE" with funding loans. The month of late August 07 and September 07 was the worst months in mortgage lending history in a very long time.

As a result, portfolio lenders (again such as your neighborhood Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, WAMU) started to increase their interest rates on credit cards and rates on personal and mortgage loans. We can blame irresponsible mortgage brokers who would refer these "fake" loans to the portfolio and correspondent lenders’ but it’s too late. The hurt has been done. The problem with trying to restrict stated income loan programs is that many people in self-employed positions NEED these programs because their source of income is tooooooo hard sometimes to prove and document. For this reason…their assets need to reflect an honest and REASONABLE relation to their stated income. This is why stated income loan products exist. Why stated income AND stated asset programs came about I’m not sure. But the most irresponsible part came in California when lender’s started to provide stated programs on salaried employes. Stated income programs were originally intended for "self-employed" borrowers…but banks and brokers got tooooooo greedy. This is why we have what we have today.

But the economy is starting to re-emerge. In this sense, mortgage companies are not making our neighboorhoods "poor" the market is just fixing it self.

Property value is starting to stabilize from over-inflation. We are returning to "ancient-school" full documentation loans. So to answer your question more correctly….MORtgage BROkers are ruinning our economy. More specifically, irresponsible mortgage brokers. I’m a broker…but I provide decent and right mortgages for my clients and there are many of us. Don’t buy the media’s hype about ALL mortgage brokers being terrible…because there are many of us that do our job right.

The same tale was with accountants with the fall of Enron. All accounts were not liars and untruthful…just a few. The same goes with mortgage brokers.