Predatory Lending - Disputes Over Predatory Lending

Disputes Over Predatory Lending

The organization ACORN claimed that predatory loans are usually made in poor and minority neighborhoods where better loans are not readily available. Organizations such as AARP, Inner City Press, and ACORN have worked to stop what they describe as predatory lending. ACORN has targeted specific companies such as HSBC Finance and H&R Block, successfully forcing them to change their practices.

On the other side of the issue are various subprime lending advocates, such as the National Home Equity Mortgage Association (NHEMA), which say many practices commonly called "predatory," particularly the practice of risk-based pricing, are not actually predatory, and that many laws aimed at reducing "predatory lending" significantly restrict the availability of mortgage finance to lower-income borrowers. Such parties consider predatory lending a pejorative term.

Some subprime lending practices have raised concerns about mortgage discrimination on the basis of race. African Americans and other minorities are being disproportionately led to sub-prime mortgages with higher interest rates than their white counterparts. Even when median income levels were comparable, home buyers in minority neighborhoods were more likely to get a loan from a subprime lender, though not necessarily a sub-prime loan.

In addition, studies by leading consumer groups have concluded that women have become a key component to the subprime mortgage crunch. Professor Anita F. Hill wrote that a large percentage of first-time home buyers were women, and that loan officers took advantage of the lack of financial knowledge of many female loan applicants. Consumers believe that they are protected by consumer protection laws, when their lender is really operating wholly outside the laws. Refer to 15 U.S.C. 1601 and 12 C.F.R. 226.

Media investigations have disclosed that mortgage lenders used bait-and-switch salesmanship and fraud to take advantage of borrowers during the home-loan boom. In February 2005, for example, reporters Michael Hudson and Scott Reckard broke a story in the Los Angeles Times about “boiler room” sales tactics at Ameriquest Mortgage, the nation’s largest subprime lender. Hudson and Reckard cited interviews and court statements by 32 former Ameriquest employees who said the company had abused its customers and broken the law, “deceiving borrowers about the terms of their loans, forging documents, falsifying appraisals and fabricating borrowers' income to qualify them for loans they couldn't afford.” Ameriquest later agreed to pay a $325 million predatory lending settlement with state authorities across the nation.