War on the Home Front | Mortgage Loan Investigations | Securitization Audits

THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE YOUR LENDER

EDITOR’S COMMENT: Here is an interesting comment from Scott Baker — someone who “has no dog in the race.” They paid off their mortgage. The point here is that Lenders knew exactly who their customer was, but the borrowers never did. In a “free” marketplace, this choice was taken out of the hands of the borrowers by concealing the real source of funds and the identities of the players.

The comment makes a good point when he says that he chose a Lender based upon reputation and his perception of the relationship he wanted with a Lender. This was also eviscerated. And his point is fairly made — there was no disclosure and he was coerced into doing the deal because “everybody’s doing it.”

Sound familiar? If it does, it is because that is exactly how the rest of the deal went and our society is slow to realize that amongst the many freedoms we gave up over the last decade was the freedom to choose the party with whom we do business.

I’m not in the same dire situation as so many commenters on this page, having paid off my mortgage before the s*^t hit the fan.
However, I did try to object to the clause in my mortgage that allowed my bank to split my mortgage via securitization to other investors. My reasoning was that not only should a lender be able to choose their borrowers, but a borrower should be able to choose their lender, even if the terms ostensibly don’t change. In fact, I specifically chose (what I thought) was a reputable lender, based on size, reputation (at the time), and, finally, terms. I specifically did not want any of the fly-by-night lenders that flooded my spam folder in those days (thankfully, these seem to have disappeared).
However, my RE lawyer said I had no right to object to securitization because “they all do that.” So, reluctantly, I signed the contract with that clause. It turns out that the bank did, indeed, securitize my loan, and virtually all others, but I paid it off in full shortly after anyway.
I still maintain that a borrower has a full right to decide to borrow from one party and not another.

Filed under: foreclosure