M
manny15
Guest
By John W. Schoen
Senior Producer
MSNBC
Updated: 7:31 a.m. PT April 10, 2007
Mark and Kerrie Russo, a Jackson, N.J., couple raising two young daughters, are struggling to hang on. Less than a year after buying a home in 2005, which they financed with a 30-year fixed rate loan based on a solid credit history, a local mortgage broker began sending letters offering to refinance their loan. A new product, the sales pitch said, allowed home owners flexibility to choose from a menu of different payments from one month to the next.
What the broker didn't explain, Kerrie Russo says, is that this was a ?negative amortization? loan ? an expanding debt that buried the couple deeper in hock even as they thought they were paying down their mortgage balance.
Like many borrowers who were sold mortgages they couldn't afford, Russo says that when she called the broker to complain, she was told that because she failed to read the fine print, the responsibility for getting in too deep was hers.
After coming up with about $14,000 to get out of the downward spiral into yet another loan, Russo says she's learned an important lesson.
?I have learned a new term called 'predatory lending,'? she said. ?And that is what I am a victim of.?
Senior Producer
MSNBC
Updated: 7:31 a.m. PT April 10, 2007
Mark and Kerrie Russo, a Jackson, N.J., couple raising two young daughters, are struggling to hang on. Less than a year after buying a home in 2005, which they financed with a 30-year fixed rate loan based on a solid credit history, a local mortgage broker began sending letters offering to refinance their loan. A new product, the sales pitch said, allowed home owners flexibility to choose from a menu of different payments from one month to the next.
What the broker didn't explain, Kerrie Russo says, is that this was a ?negative amortization? loan ? an expanding debt that buried the couple deeper in hock even as they thought they were paying down their mortgage balance.
Like many borrowers who were sold mortgages they couldn't afford, Russo says that when she called the broker to complain, she was told that because she failed to read the fine print, the responsibility for getting in too deep was hers.
After coming up with about $14,000 to get out of the downward spiral into yet another loan, Russo says she's learned an important lesson.
?I have learned a new term called 'predatory lending,'? she said. ?And that is what I am a victim of.?
half the people i know have mortages on there mortages refinance buy a pool,boat,new car, you name it when and if they sell they'll find out what that lil word equity means 
