North Carolina was not ground zero for the real estate bubble, but we had our pockets of insanity: "The deals were perfect for speculators who planned to sell quickly for a profit: an interest-only loan with no payments due for two years."
The courts will decide the legal cases, but it seems clear that both buyers and sellers were playing a game that always ends the same way.
Damning, if provable:
He said prices of the lots were artificially increased via fraudulent appraisals and that the lender - BB&T in most cases - signed off on the loans knowing the prices had been hyped. The frontline bankers approving the loans were paid bonuses of up to 100 percent of their annual salary for hitting targets for the number of loans written, he said...
...teams of sales assistants would drive onto lots adjacent to those that potential buyers were being shown, with one pretending to be another potential buyer, all to create a false sense of urgency.
More legal issues related to housing: Mortgage Fraud, Anyone
Posted by: Jim Caserta | Apr 05, 2010 at 10:53 AM