Trying to Hold Onto Home

Metropolitan Money Store Put Their House at Risk, Md. Couple Say

The dining room table is draped with a blue plastic tablecloth, left over from an 11-year-old's birthday party a few days earlier.

George and Jacqueline Prunty's son wanted a sleepover, but his parents said no. Facing eviction because their house has gone through foreclosure and been sold at auction, they have banned all sleepovers.

"I'd hate to have all his friends over and there be a knock on the door with someone saying, 'You have to be out,' " George Prunty said.

The Pruntys, like millions of people nationwide, took advantage of a hot real estate market to borrow on the equity in their house. Now, entangled in what investigators call one of the largest mortgage scams in Maryland history, they risk losing the split-level brick home in Fort Washington they've owned for eight years.

All they had wanted to do was fix the roof, replace the front door and some windows, and pay off bills.

Instead, family time is stretched thin: Only one parent goes to their sons' baseball and football games in case the eviction notice comes while they're gone. And finances are tight: The family no longer eats out and saves money for an uncertain future. "We're under a lot of stress in the household that was never there," George Prunty said.

The spike in foreclosures across the Washington region and the nation has done more than disrupt corporate lending and damage financial institutions. It has left thousands of people hopeless, questioning day to day whether they will have a roof over their heads.

Maryland's foreclosure ranking jumped from 40th in the nation last year to 18th in June, state officials said. Prince George's County has the highest percentage of homes in foreclosure in the state, and Fort Washington is one of the hardest-hit communities in the Washington region.

With a booming real-estate market doubling the value of his house, Prunty decided last year to do what many homeowners did: refinance.

While he was getting money for the repairs, Prunty decided last October that he would pull out additional cash to pay off bills, including credit cards and back payments to the Internal Revenue Service that were dragging his wife's credit score down.

The Pruntys purchased the three-bedroom house in February 1999 for $146,000. It was their first home. With their combined $60,000 salary at the time, they got a 30-year fixed rate loan with a 7 percent interest rate.

George Prunty, a boiler operator, and his wife, Jacqueline, a clerk for a federal agency, were glad to get out of an apartment. They saw it as no place to raise their family. Wanting to escape Mississippi Avenue in the District, he headed to where many African Americans have moved in search of a better life: Prince George's.