This is a thread where I will periodically share an example of an aspect of life in the US as a consumer where scam artists will try to use perfectly legal means to scam me out of my hard-earned money.
I won't share anything that could potentially get SteelCageForums sued, I'll be good.
Now then, for my first example, I encountered quite a few scams under the same scam umbrella while buying a house. I hope that you can relate to my examples as a form of therapy for having also endured them, and I hope that anyone on here who intends to buy a house heeds my advice.
Some quick advice before I begin, start saving money early. I mean, if you're already 20 and you haven't started an IRA or a similar savings plan, you're too late. When I was 19, I started a savings program that involved opening multiple accounts where I would automatically contribute money from my salary and that money would be invested in various stock market funds. I know very little about utilizing the stock market to get rich, but after all this time I was able to easily borrow money from that savings account to cover the closing costs of getting the keys for the house. Roughly $9,000 was what it cost to cover the closing costs, and I was able to easily pay it because of a random decision I had made while 19.
Now then, I had obtained a no-money-down VA loan. The problem with that is that VA loans are apparently unique in that there's no limit to how many times an Appraiser can visit a property that's being purchased via a VA loan. The legal scam with that is that the bank and the Appraiser will be in cahoots, and you -- the buyer -- are expected to pay roughly $150 dollars EVERY time that Appraiser visits the house. Appraisers are not Inspectors, unless they're working on behalf of a bank that's providing a VA loan. Our Appraiser claimed that he found black mold on the deck, and there wasn't any black mold on the deck. He left, the sellers paid to powerwash the entire outside of the house and the deck, and the Appraiser came back and claimed that he STILL found black mold. Then, of course, the Appraiser remembered that he has a good friend who specializes in the removal of black mold and that he could get us a big discount on having the deck and house treated.
My realtor lit, their, asses, UP. At one point the bank tried to convince me that my realtor was being very mean, and that I should fire him for being rude. I laughed, and let her know that I knew what they were doing. The bank paid for the appraisals that occurred after the first one, and swore that they would never do business with that Appraiser ever again.
But wait, there's more.
So, there's a new trend among shady banks. I've found that a lot of people can just create a shell company and call it a bank. I have my loan through an actual bank, but I receive at least 10 letters everyday in my mailbox that attempt to trick me into selling my loan to their (shell) bank. These letters never say "We are a bank, and we would like to buy your loan. Here are some estimates of what you could pay if you sell to us", more like they're disquised in some pretty stupid ways.
One method is a letter that begins with "Notice of Available Funds". This is intriguing, because it implies that I may have overpaid on a previous account and that a company is being tasked with returning my balance to me. This does indeed happen if you setup automatic payments, and forget to turn them off. When I read further, it's obvious that their definition of "available funds" implies that my house's equity is available and that if I sell my loan to them then I could get that money. So... without being clear about how much I'd have to pay monthly, or what exactly my new interest rate would be, or how their bank would appraise the house, I'm expected to take a payout that would likely ruin me financially in the long-run.
Another method is to disguise the letter as a notice from the IRS, indicating that I should contact them because this is the "THIRD NOTICE" that they've sent me. As I read further, I see that they explain that I need to contact them to "update my information". When I read the fine print at the bottom, or sometimes hidden in a corner of the blank side of the letter, I read the legal statement where they admit that they're an obscure bank who has no affiliation with the IRS. That's a very odd disclaimer when they put the official IRS seal at the top of the letter.
I've even received giant shiny cards that one might immediately recognize as something that car dealerships send to random consumers to announce their big deals of a random holiday. The one I received indicated that (seriously) Antifa was on the march and that I needed to protect myself by siding with a true American Patriot and former soldier who would happily grant me the privilege of selling my loan to him. On the glossy card was a picture of some doofus wearing body armor over a short sleeved brown shirt and the fake background of a desert behind him.
So, yeah. As long as there's fine print explaining the real deal, these assholes can go balls out with their bullshit in the hopes that they'll catch someone who's senile enough to fall for their nonsense. I've looked up these "banks", and they're basically just small groups of scam artists that obtained the bare minimum to be able to legally call themselves a "licensed mortgage broker".
Even when things go well, buying a house is a headache. These assholes go balls out in an attempt to trick you into enduring that whole process all over again with a group of people that will likely deposit your payments into a bank account in the Bahamas. It's terrible, it sucks, and somehow it's all perfectly legal.
Originally Posted by Spidercanrana
Reply With Quote