Here is what the Department of Justice found at Countrywide: From 2004 to 2008, the height of the housing bubble, Countrywide purposely charged over 200,000 black and Latino qualified borrowers more for their mortgage loans than similarly qualified white borrowers.
The short story is that Countrywide steered those black and Latino borrowers toward riskier sub-prime loans, even when they qualified for prime loans, or simply charged them higher rates. These borrowers paid an average of tens of thousands of dollars more than they should have, that includes costs up front and throughout their mortgage.
Countrywide also illegally required spouses to surrender their claim to a mortgage as a condition of approval. So: in order for a man to qualify for a mortgage (for example) his wife would have to sign away her right to that mortgage.
No comments:
Post a Comment