Deals leave home buyers devastated

Cleveland Plain Dealer ^ | Sunday, October 09, 2005 | Michael O'Malley

[Experiment 6-2-6]

I went and dialed the 1-800-sucker, but it's one numeral short. Could you resend that phone number?

I am tired of trudging to work each morning, stuck in traffic in a long commute, dealing with a nasty boss, hostile co-workers, and intransigent subordinates.. I too want to become the newest millionaire...

[Old Professer]

Mathematically, the odds of landing there are as good as landing on any other square.

[Felicity Fahrquar]

I am tired of trudging to work each morning, stuck in traffic in a long commute, dealing with a nasty boss, hostile co-workers, and intransigent subordinates..

But you have that nifty calm blue ocean! What else could you want?

[BlackbirdSST]

There's one born every minute ...

Yep, vultures and fools, but why only scorn for the fools? Blackbird.

[Tax-chick]

why only scorn for the fools

Because the article presented them as deserving of sympathy.

[Cap'n Crunch]

I live in nearby Lorain, Ohio. Just as bad as Cleveland.

I don't think of it as a crime plagued ghetto anymore, I think of it as a Democrat Utopia.

It's all in one's perspective.

[Dont_Tread_On_Me_888]

Brown and Crosby are either victims of their own stupidity

The author did not need to write any more of the article past this phrase.

Of course, stupidty is the only answer as the USA continues to sink fast on the national IQ scale.

[mombonn]

Brown and Crosby are either victims of their own stupidity or dupes in a type of housing con game that city leaders see as a growing cancer . . .

Rule of thumb - If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

housing con game that city leaders see as a growing cancer . . .

Citizens that are this stupid and worthless are an equally insidious cancer. They feed off each other.

[Katya]

"Dan Spahr, president of Greater Cleveland Appraisals Inc., a Fairview Park company that appraised Crosby's properties, said he has been trying to track down Rutherford for a year but can't locate him. "He owes me a grand," he said.

Citing privacy laws, Spahr declined to show the appraisals to The Plain Dealer, though he acknowledged that he gave them to the FBI when an agent asked for them about two months ago."

It would have been against the law for Spahr to show the newspaper the actual appraisals. Spahr may be worrying about prison for entirely different reasons, particularly if he helped inflate the appraisals. In the end everyone will point their finger at him, the appraiser. However, the FBI could also be ascertaining whether the mortgage broker was the one who manipulated the paperwork that was turned in.
Though one still has to wonder how these buyers were sold a bill of goods without a sales slip. The gentlemen thought he was going into a business partnership, and the woman got caught up in the moment.....huh?

[William Tell]

Katya said: "It would have been against the law for Spahr to show the newspaper the actual appraisals."

Follow the money.

Appraisals permitted the lenders to loan based on presumed security. The amount loaned appears to be triple the true market value. Since it is unlikely that property values in that area have varied dramatically downward recently, only a fraudulent appraisal can explain that.

That means that the seller, who probably obtained the properties at the lower market value sold them for triple their value and pocketed the money. This fraud is not about lender's fees. It is about fraudulently inflated appraisals.

[Katya]

Unless it was the broker who "tamperd with" the appraisal values. I'd wait to judge, since it's the broker they're trying to find and the appraiser is still in town.