For her, settling down meant purchasing a home, building equity in real estate, and solidifying her financial status with an investment in real estate. Unfortunately, for her, the boys in the bank’s credit band were bound and determined that no single woman was creditworthy enough to purchase a home, and even if she was, giving her a loan would take money “from a man who needed to support his family.”
Unfortunately for them, their target refused to give in to their bigotry and unprofessional attempts to keep her from getting her loan. She triumphed and paved the way for dozens of women in the same situation to leave dead end apartment living and move on up the financial ladder into home ownership.
The drive to improve one’s self and invest in homeownership has lifted tens of thousands of women out of subsided apartments, but the price many of them have paid is steep. With financial illiteracy running rampant across the country, many of these neophyte homeowners have lost tens of thousands of home equity dollars in shady real estate deals, due to cozy relationships between mortgage lenders, title companies and real estate brokers.
According to a real estate report, in 2005 in Los Angeles, single women represented 21% of homeowners, far outpacing single men who then represented 9% of the same market. According to one real estate blog:
Last year, 1.5 million homes were sold to single women in the US. "Nearly twice as many homes as were sold to single men, there's no sign of this trend slowing down, Fannie Mae is estimating by 2010 as many as 31 million single women will be homeowners. That accounts for 28 percent of all U.S. households."
The fraud in the mortgage business is ensnaring single women, but there are also cases where married men have been taken to the cleaners, allegedly by their wives and unscrupulous real estate agents. One such victim asked for help in a mortgage fraud blog.
His wife allegedly obtained a mortgage as a single woman, reportedly with the help of one of the largest lenders in the country. According to the victim, the bank admitted that they failed to verify any of the information on his wife’s loan application. Now, he’s wondering how to get out of the mess.
Some experts blame the high cost of real estate in California on greedy investors. Supposedly, real estate investment in California real estate has driven the price of an average home out of reach of the average person. It has also generated lots of paper for the courts in financial fraud cases such as this one:
Filed in Riverside County Superior Court Jan. 5, the suit alleges that the defendants acted as a network of scam artists to pocket cash from mortgage lenders and saddle her with about $3 million in mortgage debt. The lawsuit alleges that the brokerage, Stonewood Consulting Inc., obtained at least 12 home loans in Reiss' name by filling out loan applications with false information about her financial status after she signed incomplete forms. (The Californian)
Here’s another California case. A single man who allegedly owns no property in his own name is reportedly at the center of a real estate scheme which
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