| Page 2 of 2 < |
Mortgage Companies Sued in Pr. George's
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"I was supposed to be able to stay in my home for a year and then they would let me get the house back. Now I'm worried about a roof over my head," Reid said.
Alys Cohen, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center in Washington, said the housing market has made the climate ripe for such schemes.
"The worst part about this is that many of these people are in these positions because of abusive lending, and then to add insult to injury, they end up being taken advantage of on the back end also," Cohen said.
Robinson said most of the advertising for the mortgage foreclosure rescues was done on street signs and on radio and television stations that catered to African Americans.
As foreclosures have risen across the Washington region, Prince George's has been particularly hard hit, with more than 2,300 cases recorded this year, according to court records. That is more than in any other local jurisdiction.
State regulators did not return a phone call yesterday about the suit against Metropolitan, but a memo attached to the lawsuit from the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation notes that it and other government agencies were conducting a "major investigation" about the "mortgage brokering activities" at the company.
Veronica Savoy was 23 when she bought her home in Waldorf four years ago. She was paying $753 a month for her three-bedroom townhouse but began to have trouble making ends meet because of frequent layoffs from her job as a dump truck driver. She filed for bankruptcy. Then she heard about Metropolitan Money Store and signed on.
She said the company promised to keep her home from going into foreclosure and to get her a new mortgage with a lower interest rate.
Savoy and her two children are remain in the home, but the deed is no longer in her name and the equity is gone.
She "felt like everything was swept from under my feet" when she talked to Robinson and learned there were others like her, she said.
"How could people do something like this to me?" Savoy asked. "I'm still afraid that someone is going to say: 'This not your home anymore. You have to go.' "
Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
